Or vice versa. To geologists, the mountains tell the story of granite uplift, volcanic activity, sediment buildup, glacial carving and erosion during the last billion years or so. Naturalists like the way conditions of weather, geography and plant ecology have combined to create a mountain forest of the sort that might have covered most of the East before lumberjacks and farmers came along. Visitors love the beauty of it all, now that the National Park Service has allowed the oaks, hickories, and more than 1,500 other plant species to return. And wildlife has found another home, protecting snails, woodpeckers, owls, black bears, bobcats and vultures alike.
Experts disagree on the origin of the name.
European immigrants began taking an interest by the middle of the 17th century, and the early white settlers tried everything they could think of to eke out a living in the Blue Ridge Mountains. They took any lumber that the rocky terrain made accessible. They farmed the valleys, turned the meadows into feedlots for cattle, mined for copper and quarried granite. A chestnut blight in the 1920s wiped out the most profitable trees. Thin soil at the higher elevations made farming difficult.