The 17,371-acre Dolly Sods Wilderness in Monongahela National Forest, WV is named after the Dalhe family, who in the mid-1800s, used open grassy fields called "sods" for grazing sheep in the area. Located high on the Allegheny Plateau, Dolly Sods is known for its rocky plains and upland bogs. It is the highest plateau of its type east of the Mississippi River with altitude ranging from around 4,000 feet to about 2,700 feet. The lower elevations consist of a forest of northern hardwoods and laurel thickets. Higher up, groves of wind-stunted red spruce stand near heath barrens where azaleas, mountain laurels, rhododendron, and blueberries grow.David Hunter Strother ("Porte Crayon") wrote an early description of the area, published in Harper's Monthly magazine in 1852:
"In Randolph County, Virginia, is a tract of country containing from seven to nine hundred square miles, entirely uninhabited, and so savage and inaccessible that it has rarely been penetrated even by the most adventurous. The settlers on its borders speak of it with a sort of dread, and regard it as an ill-omened region, filled with bears, panthers, impassable laurel-brakes, and dangerous precipices. Stories are told of hunters having ventured too far, becoming entangled, and perishing in its intricate labyrinths. The desire of daring the unknown dangers of this mysterious region, stimulated a party of gentlemen . . . to undertake it in June, 1851. They did actually penetrate the country as far as the Falls of the Blackwater, and returned with marvelous accounts of its savage grandeur, and the quantities of game and fish to be found there."