page_title: Canaan Valley
section_title: Recovery and development
hierarchical_section_title: Canaan Valley / History / Recovery and development
caption_attribution_description: English: View of the northern half of Canaan Valley, Tucker County, West Virginia, USA. Photo taken from atop Harmon Knob.
context_page_description: Canaan Valley is an oval, bowl-like upland valley in northeastern Tucker County, West Virginia, USA. Within it are extensive wetlands and the headwaters of the Blackwater River which spills out of the valley at Blackwater Falls. It is a well-known and partially undeveloped scenic attraction and tourist draw, associated with the Canaan Valley Resort State Park and the Blackwater Falls State Park.
  Canaan Valley was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1974. The National Park Service citation indicates that the Valley is "a splendid 'museum' of Pleistocene habitats ... contain[ing] ... an aggregation of these habitats seldom found in the eastern United States. It is unique as a northern boreal relict community at this latitude by virtue of its size, elevation and diversity." Since 1994, almost 70% of the Valley has become the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge, the nation's 500th National Wildlife Refuge.
  The local pronunciation of "Canaan" is, rather than the conventional for the Biblical region from which the area takes its name. According to legend, this is the result of improper pronunciation by the person who named the valley.
context_section_description: In 1920, the southern third of the Valley was included in the newly established Monongahela National Forest, the first attempt to restore the forests that the previous generation had cut down. The logging railroads in the Valley were abandoned, then the rails were pulled up in 1925. The outside world intrude again in 1932, however, in the form of West Virginia Route 32 which bisects the southern end of the Valley, connecting Davis to Harman. This is the only north-south highway in the Valley and it was along this route that the later development of the 20th century occurred. Electrification came to this part of the Valley in 1938.:221
  In the late 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps undertook as one of its projects the reforestation of Canaan Mountain. In areas where there was no soil at all to work with, trucks were run from the Valley continuously bringing dark muck soil to the mountaintop. Spruce seedlings were packed in, each requiring a bushel or two of soil, and by the 1940s a new spruce forest had been established on the slopes overlooking the Valley. In 1943–44, as part of the West Virginia Maneuver Area, the U.S. Army used the Canaan Valley area as a practice artillery and mortar range and maneuver area before troops were sent to European Theater of Operations to fight in World War II.
  Beginning in 1950, the Ski Club of Washington, DC was developing ski slopes on the Valley side of Bald Knob of Cabin Mountain:595-596 Within the decade, a 3,600-foot (1,100 m) slope on Cabin Mountain and a 3,900 feet (1,200 m) slope on Weiss Knob had been developed.  Because of its protection from the sun, snow on that side of the mountain often remains until April or later.
  In the early 1970s, Canaan Valley Resort State Park was created at the southern end of the Valley in an attempt to further develop a ski industry in the state. An 18-hole golf course was also constructed there at this time.
caption: View of the northern half of Canaan Valley from atop Harmon Knob.
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