Withered Heath

The Withered Heath was a region at the eastern extreme of the Grey Mountains in Middle-earth. There, the Grey Mountains broke into two spurs, north and south, between which was the Heath.
== History ==
In the eastern part of their length, the Grey Mountains forked into two thin ranges, with a narrow valley between. On the floor of this long east-west valley between the mountains was a heath, but a heath burned and blackened by its inhabitants. This heath was famed and feared in the north of Middle-earth as the breeding-ground of the dragons. At one time they had infested the Grey Mountains and the lands beyond, and even in the closing decades of the Third Age, the dragon Smaug still terrorized the inhabitants of the north.
Smaug was the last of the great dragons, but lesser members of his kind remained, so perhaps these still occasionally returned to the Withered Heath to continue their race. However, in TA 2941 Thorin spoke of the Withered Heath as the place 'where the great dragons bred', implying that it was by then deserted, or at least not frequented by dragons that could be described as 'great'.