Qualla: Allegheny Front

Allegheny Front: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jakec, CC BY-SA 4.0. For more than a century after the first European colonies took root on the Atlantic coast, this wall held them back. The Allegheny Front - a continuous east-facing escarpment rising from southern Pennsylvania through Maryland, West Virginia, and into Virginia - was the geological reason settlement of the American interior stalled at the eastern Appalachians. No waterway crosses the Front from east to west. None. The drainage flows downhill, and on this ridge, downhill happens to mean two different oceans.

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Image: Jakec | CC BY-SA 4.0

Allegheny Front: Where the Continent Divides

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Allegheny Front marks the boundary between the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians to the east and the higher Appalachian Plateau to the west. Just behind the Front's crest, the Eastern Continental Divide separates two of North America's great drainage systems. Water that falls on ...

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Image: Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Allegheny Front: Why the Railroads Took So Long

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anthony Finley, edited by User: Fabartus, Public domain. The Front's most dramatic effect was on transportation. Few roads and fewer railroads cross it directly. For most of the 19th century, freight had to be portaged over the escarpment or routed through one of a handful of gentle passes. The Pennsylvania Railroad's solution, complet...

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Image: Anthony Finley, edited by User: Fabartus | Public domain

Allegheny Front: Dolly Sods and the High Plateau

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Knotnic at English Wikipedia, Public domain. In northern West Virginia the Front reaches its most spectacular form. East of the Mount Storm coal-fired power station, the escarpment passes along the eastern edge of the Dolly Sods Wilderness - a windswept Pottsville conglomerate plateau at roughly 4,000 feet, capped with spha...

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Image: Knotnic at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Allegheny Front: Wind, Birds, and the Modern Economy

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was AlbertHerring at English Wikipedia., CC BY 3.0. The same orography that made the Front a barrier to wagons makes it one of the windiest places east of the Mississippi. The NedPower Mount Storm Wind Project lines twelve miles of the Front's crest in Grant County, West Virginia, with 132 turbines built between 2006 and 2008. At ...

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Image: The original uploader was AlbertHerring at English Wikipedia. | CC BY 3.0