Qualla: West Virginia Maneuver Area

West Virginia Maneuver Area: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In July 1943, a detachment from Camp Hale in Colorado arrived at Seneca Rocks in eastern West Virginia and started teaching soldiers how to climb cliffs. The students rotated in every two weeks - about 180 men per class. They learned to scramble on quartzite, drive pitons, work tension cables, and rig assault ropes with pulleys. Each class ended with two tactical night climbs on unfamiliar rocks. By the time the program shut down in July 1944, more than 100,000 soldiers had passed through some part of the West Virginia Maneuver Area, learning a kind of warfare the American military had not really needed before: how to fight up a mountain that looked, to the Army's eye, exactly like Italy.

West Virginia Maneuver Area: The Apennines in Appalachia

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Army needed a training ground that resembled the European Theater's hardest terrain. Italy's Apennines and the Alps were not the rolling Mid-Atlantic country most American soldiers knew. The Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia, with their steep escarpments, narrow va...

West Virginia Maneuver Area: Tent Cities and Live Fire

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Tent cities went up across Elkins and surrounding towns as troop numbers swelled to about 16,000 by early 1944. Classes ran on eight-week rotations. Artillery training used a 60,000-acre live-fire area in the eastern part of the WVMA, including parts of Dolly Sods - what is now t...

West Virginia Maneuver Area: Soldiers Who Used the Training

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Many of the units cycling through went straight to Europe. The 94th Signal Battalion, trained in part at the WVMA, would later fight in the Battle of the Bulge, where its communications work helped hold the line against the German counteroffensive in the Ardennes. The skills taug...

West Virginia Maneuver Area: Shells in the Wilderness

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Dolly Sods today is one of the most popular wilderness areas in the eastern United States. Its high-altitude heath barrens, rocky outcrops, and bog plant communities feel ancient and untouched. They are also still salted, in places, with unexploded ordnance. A Defense Environment...