By John Coleman
The Horseshoe Run watershed, located in West Virginia, is home to some of the largest trees in the state, according to the State Big Tree List. Last winter, volunteers working to protect the community from excessive clear-cutting found an eastern hemlock that stood out as particularly large. We measured it, contacted the West Virginia Division of Forestry Big Tree Program, and recently learned that after re-measuring it, they determined that it’s the third largest hemlock ever recorded in the state. Being just a mile from the unincorporated community of Leadmine and near the Forest Service Horseshoe Campground, we were surprised that we hadn’t found it before, but then those hills are fairly steep for a Sunday walk in the woods.
The Horseshoe Run watershed is not only home to some impressive trees, but also home to rare plant communities identified by the Nature Conservancy, four species of bats, bald eagles and bobcats, and a mountain lion was recently caught on camera in the headwaters. Heavily impacted by near-complete logging in the 1900s, the forests and waterways are now beginning to recover. As a sign of this recovery, the elusive Hellbender aquatic salamander was recently rediscovered in the area.
Unfortunately, extensive clear-cutting by industrial forest owners, and now proposed by the Forest Service, threatens to undermine this progress. The Horseshoe Community Group has been trying to work with the Forest Service to reduce clearcutting on the steep slopes in the area, fearing that the proposed clearcutting of an additional 3,500 acres in the Upper Cheat River projects will muddy the streams and exacerbate the flooding that already occurs here.
Finding a state record hemlock this past winter in the logging project area seemed like a gift in our efforts to change the Forest Service from focusing on eliminating older trees to a focus on conserving water quality and reducing flooding. The hemlock we found is not as big around as some of the oaks, tulip trees and white pines in the area, but it has an impressive height of 131 feet.
With surveys in the Horseshoe Run area this winter, volunteers have visited and measured 293 trees that are greater than 8 feet circumference with the largest being 17 feet around. That included red, white and chestnut oaks, sugar maples, beech, tulip poplars, black cherries, hemlocks, white pines and basswoods.
So far we have made it to only 3 of the 120 stands proposed to be clearcut as part of the Forest Service Upper Cheat River project. So who knows how many more big trees there are out there?
We’re hoping that the Forest Service will reconsider its plans to clearcut 3,500 acres of forest stands in the Upper Cheat River Project, one of which is home to the newly found champion hemlock. Most of the stands proposed to be clearcut are on what the Forest Service defines as steep or very steep slopes, raising concerns among local residents about the amount of flooding in the Horseshoe watershed. As to the other 117 forest stands in the project that we have not yet been able to visit, 53 of those forest stands are listed by the Forest Service as more than 150 years old. We’re excited at the thought of what might be found in some of those areas.
There are now two state-listed champion trees in or next to areas proposed to be clearcut in the Forest Service project in Tucker and Preston counties of West Virginia. One of the trees next to a proposed clearcut, is a 17-foot-around Northern Red Oak that has been known to folks for generations, and it seems like everyone in the community has visited it at one time or another. Because it’s a difficult climb to get there, few folks make frequent visits to that tree overlooking a nearby Forest Service campground. The other tree is inside one of the proposed clearcuts and is the Eastern Hemlock we found this winter.
If you’re in or visiting West Virginia, keep an eye out for future announcements of hikes this summer to these impressive trees.
For more information about the Upper Cheat River Project, visit our website:
https://nfip-abra.hub.arcgis.com/pages/usfs-upper-cheat-river
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John Coleman has many years of training in Forestry and Wildlife Ecology and has worked for the Chippewa tribes in the upper midwest for 30 years.