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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 ... containing ... an aggregation of these habitats seldom found in the eastern United States. It is unique as a northern Boreal ecosystem 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 Canaan 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".
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 at the summit of 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.
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 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.
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 holds snow depth on the ground to below what it would be without mild periods and rainfall occurring.
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-laiden, easterly winds.
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 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 speculation 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
Canaan Valley had a tragic history, and its comeback has been a slow one. A hundred years ago valley and surrounding ridges were covered by red spruce forest of a density that is hard to imagine today. Under such a forest the sun never reached to ground level, humus accumulated through the ages, and fire was not a threat. The lumbermen came, ultimately, and if total and permanent destruction of the entire area had been an aim it could scarcely have been more fully realized. An official of the company boasted that in they had not left one stick of timber that would make a two-by-four. Log yields were fantastic; some land on the valley floor scaled to of lumber ... With all cover removed, organic material at ground level began to dry out; soon it was high-grade fuel, and the inevitable fires got started. There followed such a ground fire as this state has never seen before or since. For months this humus layer smoldered, and neither rains nor snows could stop the fire's slow advance. The village of Davis was saved by a series of deep trenches around it, these kept filled with water carried from the Blackwater River. When the destruction was complete, all vegetable matter that wasn't soaked had burned ... Bare rocks remained, and thin mineral soil, this often several feet lower than ground level in the original forest. Canaan and environs had become a desert. I have often wondered if the Pittsburgh company responsible for this has been proud of its job, and if it has enjoyed the resultant wealth.Brooks, Op. cit., pp. 127-128.
By the 1920s, the Babcock Lumber and Boom Company had virtually exhausted its commercial prospects in the Valley. In 1923, the West Virginia Power and Transmission Company (WVPTC, later called Allegheny Power Systems), bought in the northern half of the Valley from Babcock with a long-range plan to construct a hydroelectricity that would flood much of the ValleyMichael, Edwin Daryl (2002), A Valley Called Canaan: 1885-2002, Parsons, West Virginia: McClain Printing Company.:212 The WVPTC was not, of course, motivated by any preservationist or environmentalist impulses, but this land purchase was decisive for the fate of the Valley and the power company proved an unwitting guardian of the natural wetlands from development. According to Michael—a wildlife biologist with 30 years experience in the Valley—had this purchase not occurred by a public utility at a time when the scientific and environmental value of wetland was not yet recognized, the northern Valley would undoubtedly have been drained and developed by commercial and private interests in the 1950s and '60s, as happened in the southern Valley.
Serious accidents, even fatal ones, were not uncommon in the logging industry in West Virginia in its heyday. A particularly noteworthy one occurred on 5 February 1924 in Canaan Valley when Babcock's Engine #4 wrecked and killed superintendent Fred V. Viering.Teter, Don (2011), Goin' Up Gandy: A History of the Dry Fork Region of Randolph and Tucker Counties, West Virginia, 2nd Edition; Parsons, West Virginia: McClain Printing Company, p. 44, n20. (The 1st edition was published 1977.)
In the late 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps undertook as one of its projects the reforestation of Canaan Mountain. In areas where there was no soil at all to work with, trucks were run from the Valley continuously bringing dark muck soil to the mountaintop. Spruce seedlings were packed in, each requiring a bushel or two of soil, and by the 1940s a new spruce forest had been established on the slopes overlooking the Valley.Brooks, Op. cit., pg 129. In 1943–44, as part of the West Virginia Maneuver Area, the U.S. Army used the Canaan Valley area as a practice artillery and mortar range and maneuver area before troops were sent to European Theater of Operations to fight in World War II.
Beginning in 1950, the Ski Club of Washington, DC was developing ski slopes on the Valley side of Bald Knob of Cabin Mountain:595-596 Within the decade, a slope on Cabin Mountain and a slope on Weiss Knob had been developed. Because of its protection from the sun, snow on that side of the mountain often remains until April or later.
In the early 1970s, Canaan Valley Resort State Park was created at the southern end of the Valley in an attempt to further develop a ski industry in the state. An 18-hole golf course was also constructed there at this time.
In 1994, about of the Valley were purchased by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to establish a National Wildlife Refuge, the nation's 500th. In 2002, Allegheny – having kept development of most of the Valley at bay since its 1923 land purchase – finally sold its to the government to be added to the Refuge. With additional acquisitions, the present Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge is almost in extent.
Mammals
The valley and surrounding highlands provide some of the most southern pockets of snowshoe hare habitat. Other local mammals include , , , Didelphimorphia, and grey and . Seen far less frequently are black bears, , , and . Of special note are large groups of white-tailed deer which can often be seen from the main roads. The deer have become so conditioned to human presence that they are no longer frightened; feeding and interacting with the deer is strongly discouraged.
Birds
Birdlife is prolific, especially those species attracted by the valley's wetlands. These include ducks (, mallards, black ducks), Canada geese and the great blue heron. These wetlands are the southernmost nesting site for the American bittern. Notable migratory songbirds finding seasonal homes in the valley include the golden-winged warbler, scarlet tanager, indigo bunting, and Canada warbler. Raptors include , Northern goshawk and the occasional peregrine falcon and bald eagle.
Fish
Smallmouth bass and various other Centrarchidae are found in the upper Blackwater River. Native brook trout and introduced rainbow trout are also found in some of the cold, clean streams of the area.
In addition to the two state parks and one wildlife refuge, the valley is home to two Alpine skiing ski resorts (Canaan Valley Ski Resort and Timberline Mountain) and one Nordic skiing ski area (White Grass Ski Touring Center).
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