Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge

Canaan Valley sits at an altitude of 3,200 feet in the Appalachian Mountains. At 14 miles long and 3 miles wide, it is the largest valley of its size east of the Rocky Mountains. Within that valley is the largest freshwater wetland area in the southern and central Appalachians. Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge contains 15,245 acres of the valley with another 10,214 acres within its designated acquisition boundary.

Canaan Valley NWR is located in Tucker County, West Virginia. This is an area filled with plants and animals that are more common further to the north. Many of the species represented on the property are at the very southernmost limits of their range. Most of them got here during the last Ice Age as the glaciers slowly pushed them south. The glaciers didn't reach this far but many of the plants and animals that did come here were stranded here, high in the mountains, when the ice retreated. Back in those days, the valley was heavily forested. When the Europeans arrived, they set about chopping down all the timber and shipping the usable wood out over the railroad. Slash piles remained, many of them burning and leaving behind inorganic soils. Forests were slow to regenerate but drier open areas became grasslands. Farming and grazing slowly became viable uses for the land.