Allegheny Mountains


The Allegheny Mountain Range —also spelled Alleghany or Allegany, less formally the Alleghenies—is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada. Historically, it represented a significant barrier to westward land travel and development. The Alleghenies have a northeast–southwest orientation, running for about from north-central Pennsylvania southward, through western Maryland and eastern West Virginia.
The Alleghenies comprise the rugged western-central portion of the Appalachians. They rise to in northeastern West Virginia. In the east, they are dominated by a high, steep escarpment known as the Allegheny Front. In the west, they slope down into the closely associated Allegheny Plateau, which extends into Ohio and Kentucky. The principal settlements of the Alleghenies are Altoona, State College, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania; and Cumberland, Maryland.
Using the United States Geological Survey classification of physical geography, the Allegheny Mountain range is part of the Appalachian Plateau province of the Appalachian Highlands physiographic division.

Etymology

The name is derived from the Allegheny River, which drains only a small portion of the Alleghenies in west-central Pennsylvania. The meaning of the word, which comes from the Lenape Native Americans, is not definitively known but is usually translated as "fine river". The closest approximation which makes sense is some context from the Jesuit Relations showing that Alligeh was one of several accepted renderings of the name of the Erie people among the early 17th century missionaries among the Native peoples throughout the eastern Great Lakes region, along with Rique, Yenresh and Erichronon. The suffix -ni means "of the," in Lenape, despite the irony that geh is also Iroquoian for "of the." So, most likely, Alligehni or Oligini would be the Lenape name for the original homeland of the Erie people.
The word "Allegheny" was once commonly used to refer to the whole of what are now called the Appalachian Mountains. John Norton used it around 1810 to refer to the mountains in Tennessee and Georgia. Around the same time, Washington Irving proposed renaming the United States either "Appalachia" or "Alleghania". In 1861, Arnold Henry Guyot published the first systematic geologic study of the whole mountain range. His map labeled the range as the "Alleghanies", but his book was titled On the Appalachian Mountain System. As late as 1867, John Muir—in his book A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf—used the word "Alleghanies" in referring to the southern Appalachians.
There was no general agreement about the "Appalachians" versus the "Alleghanies" until the late 19th century.

Geography

Extent

From northeast to southwest, the Allegheny Mountains run about. From west to east, at their widest, they are about. When combining the Allegheny Province with the Kanawa Province, they run.
The USGS physiographic classification of all land in the United States lists the Allegheny Mountains as a section within the larger Appalachian Plateau province. It may be generally defined to the south by the Allegheny Front, and to the east by the Susquehanna River valley. To the west, the Alleghenies grade down into the dissected Allegheny Plateau. The westernmost ridges are considered to be the Laurel Highlands and Chestnut Ridge in Pennsylvania, and Laurel Mountain and Rich Mountain in West Virginia.
Big Stone Ridge marks the southern extent of the Alleghenies and is an outlier of Flat Top Mountain, with the Tug Fork river running along its western flank. The land to the south and to the west of the Alleghenies is the Valley and Ridge physiographic province.

Allegheny Front and Allegheny Highlands

The eastern edge of the Alleghenies is marked by the Allegheny Front, which is also sometimes considered the eastern terminus of the Allegheny Plateau. This great escarpment roughly follows a portion of the Eastern Continental Divide in this area. Several gorges and valleys drain the Alleghenies: to the east, Smoke Hole Canyon, and to the west the New River Gorge and the Blackwater and Cheat Canyons. Thus, about half the precipitation falling on the Alleghenies makes its way west to the Mississippi and half goes east to Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic seaboard.
The highest ridges of the Alleghenies are just west of the Front, with an east/west elevational change of up to. Absolute elevations of the Allegheny Highlands reach nearly, with the highest elevations in the southern part of the range. The highest point in the Allegheny Mountains is Spruce Knob, on Spruce Mountain in West Virginia. Other notable Allegheny highpoints include Thorny Flat on Cheat Mountain, Bald Knob on Back Allegheny Mountain, and Mount Porte Crayon, all in West Virginia; Dans Mountain in Maryland, Backbone Mountain, the highest point in Maryland; Mount Davis, the highest point in Pennsylvania, and the second highest, Blue Knob.

Development

The Alleghenies contain relatively few large urban centers. The four most populous cities in the region are, in descending order, Altoona, State College, and Johnstown in Pennsylvania, and Cumberland in Maryland.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Interstate Highway System was extended into the northern portion of the Alleghenies. The region is now served by a network of federal expressways—Interstates 80, 70/76 and 68. Interstate 64 traverses the southern extremity of the range, but the Central Alleghenies have posed challenges for highway planners owing to the region's rugged terrain and environmental sensitivities. The central Alleghenies continue to rely on a limited network of secondary highways, and the region maintains a lower population density compared to adjacent areas.
In the telecommunications field, a unique impediment to development in the central Allegheny region is the United States National Radio Quiet Zone, a large rectangle of land—about —that straddles the border area of Virginia and West Virginia. Created in 1958 by the Federal Communications Commission, the NRQZ restricts all omnidirectional and high-power radio transmissions, although cell phone service is allowed throughout much of the area.

Protected areas

Much of the Monongahela, George Washington and Jefferson National Forests lie within the Allegheny Mountains. The Alleghenies also include a number of federally designated wilderness areas, such as the Dolly Sods Wilderness, Laurel Fork Wilderness, and Cranberry Wilderness in West Virginia.
The mostly completed Allegheny Trail, a project of the West Virginia Scenic Trails Association since 1975, runs the length of the range within West Virginia. The northern terminus is at the Mason–Dixon line and the southern is at the West Virginia-Virginia border on Peters Mountain.

Geology

The bedrock of the Alleghenies is mostly sandstone and metamorphosed sandstone, quartzite, which is extremely resistant to weathering. Prominent beds of resistant conglomerate can be found in some areas, such as the Dolly Sods. When it weathers, it leaves behind a pure white quartzite gravel. The rock layers of the Alleghenies were formed during the Appalachian orogeny.
Because of intense freeze-thaw cycles in the higher Alleghenies, there is little native bedrock exposed in most areas. The ground surface usually rests on a massive jumble of sandstone rocks, with air space between them, that are gradually moving down-slope. The crest of the Allegheny Front is an exception, where high bluffs are often exposed.
Mineral springs in the High Alleghenies attracted Native Americans and 18th century white settlers and provided a modest incentive to the local economy. The spas developing around these geological features include celebrated resorts that continue to cater to an exclusive clientele, such as The Greenbrier and The Homestead.

Ecology

Flora

The High Alleghenies are noted for their forests of red spruce, balsam fir, and mountain ash, trees typically found much farther north. Hardwood forests also include yellow birch, sugar and red maple, eastern hemlock, and black cherry. American beech, pine and hickory can also be found. The forests of the entire region are now almost all second- or third-growth forests, the original trees having been removed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The wild onion known as the ramp is also present in the deeper forests.
Certain isolated areas in the High Alleghenies are well known for their open expanses of sphagnum bogs and heath shrubs. Many plant communities are indeed similar to those of sea-level eastern Canada. But the ecosystems within the Alleghenies are remarkably varied. In recent decades, the many stages of ecologic succession throughout the area have made the region one of enduring interest to botanists.

Fauna

The larger megafauna which once inhabited the High Alleghenies—elk, bison, mountain lion—were all exterminated during the 19th century. They survived longer in this area, however, than in other parts of the eastern United States. Naturalist John James Audubon reported that by 1851 a few eastern elk could still be found in the Alleghany Mountains but that by then they were virtually gone from the remainder of their range. Mammals in the Allegheny region today include whitetail deer, chipmunk, raccoon, skunk, groundhog, opossum, weasel, field mouse, flying squirrel, cottontail rabbit, gray foxes, red foxes, gray squirrels, red squirrels and a cave bat. Bobcat, snowshoe hare, wild boar and black bear and coyote are also found in the forests and parks of the Alleghenies. Mink and beaver are much less often seen.
These mountains and plateau have over 20 species of reptiles represented as lizard, skink, turtle and snake. Some of the icterid birds visit the mountains as well as the hermit thrush and wood thrush. North American migrant birds live throughout the mountains during the warmer seasons. Occasionally, osprey and eagles can be found nesting along the streams. The hawks and owls are the most common birds of prey.
The water habitats of the Alleghenies hold 24 families of fish. Amphibian species number about 21, among them hellbenders, lungless salamanders, and various toads and frogs. The Alleghenies provide habitat for about 54 species of common invertebrate. These include Gastropoda, slugs, leech, earthworms and grub worm. Cave crayfish live alongside a little over seven dozen cave invertebrates.