Qualla: Canaan Valley

Canaan Valley: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Hunter Strother (1853), Public domain. The growing season here is 95 days. That is shorter than the growing season in Fairbanks, in interior central Alaska. Sub-freezing temperatures have been recorded in Canaan Valley in June, July, and August. The first European description called the place sufficient to strike terror into any human or creature, and the river that drains it was originally named the River of Styx - the River of the Dead. The name we use now, Blackwater, is friendlier. The climate is not.

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Image: David Hunter Strother (1853) | Public domain

Canaan Valley: A Bit of Canada Gone Astray

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant), CC BY-SA 2.5. Ecologists describe Canaan Valley as a bit of Canada gone astray. The 25,000-acre flat valley floor sits at 3,200 feet, making it the highest large valley east of the Mississippi River. Surrounded by Canaan Mountain to the west and Cabin Mountain to the east - whose northern half...

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Image: Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant) | CC BY-SA 2.5

Canaan Valley: The Name That Stuck (Maybe)

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant), CC BY-SA 2.5. The valley's name is contested. Local legend says a German settler named Henry Fansler, migrating from the Shenandoah Valley, reached the rim of Cabin Mountain in April 1748 and exclaimed Besiehe das Land Canaan - Behold the Land of Canaan, comparing it to the biblical promised l...

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Image: Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant) | CC BY-SA 2.5

Canaan Valley: A Power Company That Saved a Wetland

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valerius Tygart, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Babcock Lumber and Boom Company stripped the great primeval red spruce forest off the valley by the 1920s. In 1923 the West Virginia Power and Transmission Company bought 13,230 acres of the northern valley with plans to flood it for a hydroelectric reservoir. The dam was nev...

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Image: Valerius Tygart | CC BY-SA 4.0

Canaan Valley: Why Skiers Showed Up

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant), CC BY-SA 2.5. The same climate that defeated Fansler turned out to be perfect for skiing. Starting in 1950, the Ski Club of Washington, DC began developing slopes on the valley side of Bald Knob on Cabin Mountain. The result, decades later, is one of the densest concentrations of winter recrea...

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Image: Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant) | CC BY-SA 2.5