Explore wonderful West Virginia

Two major caves are open to the public near Smoke Hole and Seneca Rocks. Seneca Caverns and Smoke Hole Caverns have been used through the ages. Native Americans used them to build fires to dry their food. During the Civil War, soldiers from both sides used them at different times to store weapons. Now these caves provide underground experiences for visitors.

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Guides lead groups on lighted paths down into the ground and through the caves. Visitors see wonderful formations hanging from the ceiling and growing up from the floor. It takes centuries for water dripping through the rock to make these beautiful formations.

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Breathtaking. Wonderful. A treasure. These are words that visitors use to describe Dolly Sods, a large wild area in the Potomac Highlands of West Virginia. About 150 years ago, a magazine described this same area as very dangerous. It said the forests and undergrowth were so dense, no one could get through them. Bears and panthers lived there but no people.

In the 1800s, a German family named Dahle raised sheep on wet, grassy open places called sods. Local people changed the spelling of the name and the area became known as Dolly Sods.

Dolly Sods once was covered with a dense ancient forest of red spruce and hemlock trees. By the late 1800s, railroads reached the area. Loggers cut down the huge trees and trains carried the wood to fast-growing cities in nearby states.

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For years, fires from lightening and logger's campfires burned through the areas where the forest had been cut down. The constant fires burned everything down to the bare rock base.

In 1920, Congress created the Monongahela National Forest. The United States Forest Service soon had trees planted in some areas and a rough road system built.

In 1975, much of the Dolly Sods area became part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. The Forest Service is protecting the area from too much human activity so it will return to its natural wild condition. Native plants and animals are returning.

Dolly Sods is up high, almost 1,000  meters. So plants and animals there are more like those found in northern Canada than in the rest of West Virginia.

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The northern part of Dolly Sods is called the scenic area. You can walk among the large rocks known as Bear Rocks and pick blueberries and huckleberries from low-growing bushes. You can spend quiet time looking at the mountains off to the east. You are up high, so even in the summer the air usually is cool.

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People come to Dolly Sods to get away from the noise and crowds of city life. They camp in the wilderness far from other people. They pick wild blueberries growing on the rocky fields and red cranberries growing in wet bogs. They hunt deer, turkey and rabbits. They fish in rivers that flow through the area. And they walk on rough, rocky paths, many of which follow old railroad tracks and roads used by loggers long ago.

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Signs along roads entering the state welcome you to "wild, wonderful West Virginia." Visitors to the Potomac Highlands have a chance to experience some of those wild, wonderful places.

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Our program was written by Marilyn Christiano and directed by Caty Weaver. To see pictures of West Virginia, and to download transcripts and MP3 files of our shows, go to voaspecialenglish. I'm Faith Lapidus.

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And I'm Steve Ember. Listen again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.

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