The Dolly Sods Wilderness — originally simply Dolly Sods — is a U.S. Wilderness Area in the Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia, USA, and is part of the Monongahela National Forest (MNF) of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS).Dolly Sods is a rocky, high-altitude plateau with sweeping vistas and lifeforms normally found much farther north in Canada. To the north, the distinctive landscape of "the Sods" is characterized by stunted (“flagged”) trees, wind-carved boulders, heath barrens, grassy meadows created in the last century by logging and fires, and sphagnum bogs that are much older. To the south, a dense cove forest occupies the branched canyon excavated by the North Fork of Red Creek. The name derives from an 18th-century German homesteading family — the Dahles — and a local term for an open mountaintop meadow — a "sods".GeographyTopographyDolly Sods is the highest plateau east of the Mississippi River with altitudes ranging from 2,644 ft. (806 m) at the outlet of Red Creek to 4,123 ft. (1,257 m) at the top of the eastern edge mountain ridge on the Allegheny Front. Much of the high plateau section lies at nearly 4,000 ft.(1,220 m) elevation. Prominent summits within the Wilderness are Coal Knob (3766ft), Breathed Mountain (3848ft), and Blackbird Knob (3960ft). The highest point in the immediate area (just outside the Dolly Sods Wilderness area in the Roaring Plains West Wilderness) is Mount Porte Crayon (4770ft). The summit area around Mount Porte Crayon is the largest flat-topped plateau in Eastern North America containing 5.5 square miles (14.2 square kilometers) above 4,500 ft. (1,372 m) elevation.
