Canaan Valley () is a large bathtub-shaped upland valley in northeastern Tucker County, West Virginia, USA. Within it are extensive wetlands and the headwaters of the Blackwater River which spills out of the valley at Blackwater Falls. It is a well-known and partially undeveloped scenic attraction and tourist draw. Since 1994, almost 70% of the Valley has become the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge, the nation's 500th National Wildlife Refuge, with Canaan Valley Resort State Park and Blackwater Falls State Park nearby.
Canaan Valley was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1974. The National Park Service citation indicates that the Valley is "a splendid 'museum' of Pleistocene habitats ... contain[ing] ... an aggregation of these habitats seldom found in the eastern United States. It is unique as a northern boreal relict community at this latitude by virtue of its size, elevation and diversity."
The local pronunciation of "Canaan" is , rather than the conventional for the Biblical region from which the area questionably takes its name. According to legend, this is the result of improper pronunciation by the German settler who named the valley.
As the legend goes, he described the valley as being as gorgeous as the Canaan described in the Bible. His mispronunciation of the word stuck.
However, it has also been speculated for decades now that Canaan Valley early on was called the "Canadian Valley", little resembling the biblical Canaan's land of "milk and honey". That speculation is based on arguments that the valley looks very similar to Canada and was first described by early expeditions into its wild, nearly impenetrable wilderness as a place suffix to strike terror into the hearts of men, not being fit for man or beast, and as harboring the dark River of Styx (River of the Dead), now called less frighteningly, the Blackwater River. Furthermore, the name "Canaan" is strikingly similar to "Canadian", with Canaan only missing only two letters (d & i) to spell "Canadian".2009: Leffler, Robert J.; Canaan by Any Other Name is Still Canaan: Some Thoughts on Canaan Valley’s Name: Behold the Land of Canaan, pp. 67-69: Tucker County Highlands History and Education Project.
Geography The Valley, nestled among the higher backbone ranges of the Allegheny Mountains, is about long and wide. It is defined by Canaan Mountain to the west and Cabin Mountain to the east. The northern half of Cabin Mountain is part of the Eastern Continental Divide.
The Valley floor is very flat, encompasses approximately 25,000 acres (although the greater Valley ecosystem is sometimes considered to consist of about 36,000 acres). The average valley floor elevation is above sea level, making it the highest sizable valley east of the Mississippi River. The surrounding mountains extend upward an additional to Weiss Knob () on the southeastern rim of the valley.
The Blackwater River originates in the southern end of the Valley among numerous bogs and beaver ponds. The Falls of the Blackwater represent part of a water gap through which the river exits the Valley between Brown and Canaan Mountains before cascading through Blackwater Canyon.
Geology Canaan Valley — like the very similar Burke's Garden in Virginia — is a southern "muskeg" occupying an anticline valley.Brooks, Maurice (1965), The Appalachians (Series: The Naturalist's America), Illustrated by Lois Darling and Lo Brooks, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, pp. 116–117. The Valley itself is carved into the low dome of sedimentary rock known as the Blackwater Anticline, exposing the soft shales of the Mauch Chunk Formation. In the Canaan Valley region, the Blackwater River began carving into the underlying sedimentary rock layers of Mississippian and Pennsylvanian age (345–270 million years ago) about one million years ago. The hard, erosion-resistant Pottsville Formation of sandstones is the higher layer supporting the mountains surrounding Canaan Valley and also constitutes the sharp rim of the nearby Blackwater Gorge. Tombstone-like outcroppings of Greenbrier Limestone are also exposed at places along the Valley floor. A relatively high area within the Valley – the Central Pocono Ridge – is composed of the erosion-resistant Pocono Group sandstone.
Climate Because of its relatively high elevation of 3,200 feet, Canaan Valley has a cooler, moister climate than surrounding areas at lower altitudes.
Summers are cool and humid with afternoon maximum temperatures averaging in the mid 70s °F. Summer morning minimum temperatures average in the low to mid 50s °F. The average growing season of about 95 days is shorter than in Fairbanks in interior central Alaska. Sub-freezing temperatures in the 20's F (-3 C or lower) have been recorded in all three summer months (Jun, Jul, Aug.).
Winters are typically cold and snowy with an average winter producing of snowfall. The largest snowfall of was recorded in the 1995–96 winter. Even in the mildest of winters, over of snow falls. Snow pack usually reaches a maximum depth of about or more in late February. In exceptionally cold snowy winters, packs can exceed in depth in the woods.Vogel, Christopher A., Leffler, R.; Climate of Canaan Valley, Southeastern Naturalist, Oct. 2015, pgs. 18-32.
Also, because of its topographic shape, almost enclosed basin, and high elevation with surrounding ridges, the valley is prone to some of the most frequent and intense temperature inversions in eastern North America. Fifty F differences have been recorded between the summit rim and the valley floor in only 1,000 feet difference by the relatively new Virginia Tech Canaan Valley mesonet. [ref] Email communications from climate researchers R. Leffler & Professor David Carroll (Virginia Tech). Such extreme temperature inversions can very effectively trap atmospheric pollutants, but luckily no major human sources exist currently in the area.
Due to its proximity to both the warm Gulf of Mexico and frigid interior northern Canada, periods of warm above freezing conditions alternate with frigid temperatures. This results in periods of rain and snow even during the coldest months. This characteristic of the climate normally results in snow depth being lower than it would be without such alternation.
Canaan Valley's elevation and geographic location allow it to receive significant upslope snow (Orographic lift) regularly during the winter, particularly during prolonged periods of northwesterly winds coming off of the Great Lakes. Such synoptic situations can generate prolonged blizzard conditions. Located along the spine of the Central Appalachian Mountains, the Valley is often near the western edge of Nor'easters, occasionally getting blizzards from strong, Atlantic moisture-laden, easterly winds.
History
Prehistory and settlement
Canaan Valley and surrounding areas were strongly impacted by the southward advance of glaciers some 15,000 years ago. Although the glaciers themselves did not extend this far south into the area, this climatic change resulted in a very cool, moist environment that was forest-unfriendly. Later, as the ice receded, many cold-adapted plant species remained behind and survived due to the high elevation. Soon, however, this tundra-like vegetation was largely crowded out by the growth of an extraordinarily dense climax red spruce forest, intermixed with balsam fir and hardwoods.
The first Europeans to see Canaan Valley were likely the surveyors of the famous Fairfax Line who crossed Canaan Mountain in 1746 under conditions of extreme difficulty.Lewis, Thomas, The Fairfax Line: Thomas Lewis's Journal of 1746; Footnotes and index by John Wayland, Newmarket, Virginia: The Henkel Press, p. 32 of the 1925 reprint edition: "Our horses and often our Selves often fell into Clefts & Cavities without Seeing the danger Before we felt the Effects of it ... for in Striving to Evade a Seen Dangerous or Bad place we often fell into a worse."
The origins of Canaan Valley's name are controversial. According to local legend, a German settler named Henry Fansler, who was migrating from the Shenandoah Valley, viewed the valley from Cabin Mountain in April, 1748 and exclaimed "Besiehe das Land Canaan" ["Behold the Land of Canaan"] Fansler, Homer Floyd (1962), History of Tucker County, West Virginia, Parsons, West Virginia: McClain Printing Company:593 However, numerous early documented accounts of the Valley (as discussed in the previous paragraph above) describe it as being just the opposite, a nightmarish landscape..."gloomy, foreboding", with extremely difficult access in the 1700s. In fact, the first documented description of the Valley only 2 years prior to Harness's supposed 1748 proclamation stated that it was so wild and forbidding that it was "sufficient to strike terror into any human or creature". Furthermore, the river emptying the Valley (now called the Blackwater) was called the River of Styx, meaning River of the Dead. This dark history, along with the Valley's cold, snowy climate and eastern Canadian-like forest and landscapes, have led some to theorize that the original name was actually "the Canadian Valley".
Fansler and his family hacked out a living on Freeman Creek in the Valley for three years before the harsh winters and poor farming potential forced them to move to the mouth of the Blackwater a few miles away. Fansler was the first Canaan settler whose name is known, although there is known to have been an earlier abortive homesteader in the 1770s or '80s who left descendants elsewhere in the county.:378
The rugged and remote "High Allegheny" region (what is now east-central West Virginia), including the Valley, was bypassed by development for many decades. As large-scale settlement occurred to its north, south and west the region remained relatively wild. In the 19th Century, the Valley was a last refuge for many of the large mammal species that were being exterminated from the eastern United States. In about 1843, for example, three elk were killed in Canaan Valley by members of the Flanagan and Carr families, local settlers who habitually hunted there. These were likely the last elk found wild in the region that later became West Virginia.
The earliest settler to make a successful and permanent livelihood in the Valley came more than 60 years after Fansler when Solomon W. Cosner began living at Fansler's old homestead in 1864.:378-379 The country was described at that time as one of "...original forests [which...] is swampy, but, as soon as the timber is removed, the water dries up ... Water stands in horse tracks in the woods." Cosner, a Civil War veteran known as the "Pioneer of Canaan", was a noted bear hunter. He and his sons were said to have killed more than 500 bears in Canaan Valley (as well as countless deer, two panthers and a wolf). Other families arrived to settle in the Valley in the 1870s.
In 1883, a Virginia adventurer, former Texas cowboy and land speculator named Charles R. Ruffin bought of the Valley and organized the "Canaan Valley Blue Grass & Improvement Company", but his scheme to create a vast and profitable cattle ranch came to nothing.:488-489,:595
Logging and wildfires Logging of the surrounding mountains was extensive in the 1880s and '90s, but impenetrable understories of rhododendron made passage through the Valley floor almost impossible until the advent of a logging railroad in 1915. The productivity of the timber stands extracted from the Valley floor between 1888 and 1922 (when the last virgin timber was removed) was twice that of similar stands within the state. Maurice Brooks described the ensuing environmental damage in his classic book on Appalachian natural history: