Qualla: Ramsey's Draft Wilderness

Ramsey's Draft Wilderness: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bennington200, CC BY-SA 3.0. Hurricane Camille rewrote the geography of Ramsey's Draft. When the 1969 storm flooded the central Appalachians, walls of water tore through the streambed and erased most of the road the Civilian Conservation Corps had built thirty years earlier. Another flood in 1985 finished the job, washing out what remained and changing the watercourse in several places. The streambed today is not the streambed of an older photograph. This is the rhythm of Ramsey's Draft - a 6,518-acre wilderness on the western side of Shenandoah Mountain where everything appears permanent until weather rearranges it. Ancient hemlocks rise overhead. Beneath them, the stream finds a different path every few decades.

Image: Bennington200 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ramsey's Draft Wilderness: A Forest Never Cut

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bennington200, CC BY-SA 3.0. The U.S. Forest Service first bought land in this drainage in 1913 for what was then called Shenandoah National Forest, a predecessor to the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests. Much of the upper basin had never been logged - a rarity east of the Mississippi, where c...

Image: Bennington200 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ramsey's Draft Wilderness: The Hemlocks

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bennington200, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ramsey's Draft is best known for its stands of old-growth eastern hemlock, particularly along the northern reaches of the draft. Some of these trees are well over 300 years old, with trunks several feet thick and crowns sheltering everything beneath them. Walking among them is to...

Image: Bennington200 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ramsey's Draft Wilderness: Trails and What the Floods Left

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bennington200, CC BY-SA 3.0. The main Ramsey's Draft Trail follows the streambed and what remains of the old CCC road. After the 1985 flood, the Forest Service rebuilt the trail, which now requires multiple stream crossings - more than thirty, by some counts - and is impassable in high water. One guidebook c...

Image: Bennington200 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ramsey's Draft Wilderness: Why It Matters

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bennington200, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ramsey's Draft is small as wildernesses go - just over ten square miles - but it represents a particular kind of preservation that is hard to recreate elsewhere. The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources notes that the high-elevation forest provides nesting grounds for neotro...

Image: Bennington200 | CC BY-SA 3.0