Qualla: Allegheny Mountains

Allegheny Mountains: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joe Calzarette, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before they were a name on a map, the Alleghenies were a wall. For two centuries of colonial expansion, these mountains were the reason wagons turned around and settlers stayed east. The ridges run northeast to southwest for about 300 miles, from north-central Pennsylvania down through western Maryland and into eastern West Virginia, with the great escarpment of the Allegheny Front rising up to 3,000 feet above the eastern valleys in places. Martin Luther King Jr. invoked them in his most famous speech: 'Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.' But before they rang, they blocked. The first permanent European settlers west of these mountains were two New Englanders, Jacob Marlin and Stephen Sewell, who built a cabin together in the Greenbrier Valley in 1749 - then argued over religion, and Sewell moved into a nearby hollowed-out sycamore tree.

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Image: Joe Calzarette | CC BY-SA 3.0

Allegheny Mountains: The Lenape Word and the Range It Named

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. The name comes from the Allegheny River, which itself takes its name from the Lenape - the Delaware people. The exact meaning is disputed but is usually translated as 'fine river,' though some scholars argue it may preserve a much older name for the Erie people who once lived alo...

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Image: Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Allegheny Mountains: Where Six Rivers Begin

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valerius Tygart, CC BY-SA 3.0. The highest point of the Alleghenies is Spruce Knob in West Virginia, at 4,863 feet - also the highest peak in the entire Allegheny range. Thorny Flat on Cheat Mountain rises to 4,848 feet. Bald Knob on Back Allegheny Mountain reaches 4,842 feet. The Allegheny Front carves a line...

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Image: Valerius Tygart | CC BY-SA 3.0

Allegheny Mountains: Coal, Timber, and the Bitter Legacy

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jstuby at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The first roads through the Alleghenies were Indigenous trails widened by colonists - Nemacolin's Path became Braddock Road in 1751, connecting Cumberland, Maryland with the future Pittsburgh. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad started building west from Baltimore in 1828 and change...

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Image: Jstuby at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Allegheny Mountains: Disaster and Recovery

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valerius Tygart, CC BY-SA 3.0. On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam above Johnstown, Pennsylvania failed after days of heavy rain. The flood that followed killed 2,209 people and briefly flowed at the rate of the Mississippi River. Clara Barton arrived with a small Red Cross team and eventually assembled more t...

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Image: Valerius Tygart | CC BY-SA 3.0

Allegheny Mountains: Quiet Skies, Crooked Roads

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. Even in the twenty-first century, the central Alleghenies remain stubbornly under-developed. The Interstate Highway System reaches the northern part of the range, but the high country between still relies on a network of two-lane state roads winding through hollows and over passe...

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Image: Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia) | CC BY-SA 3.0