by Dave Payne, Sr.

	Most Appalachian residents will tell you their mountains are unique, but most probably don’t understand just how special they really are. It isn’t the highest mountain range in the world, by any means, but it once was.
	 What is most remarkable about the chain is its incredible age, about 300 million years. It’s possibly the world’s oldest mountain chain, or at least among the oldest. When the last dinosaurs died, the Alps and Himalayas didn’t exist. The Rocky Mountains were just being created. The Appalachians, by that time were already visibly worn- the formerly majestic, craggy peaks worn eroded down to stumps.
	The Appalachians, like nearly all other chains, were created when continents crashed into one another.
	The earth is mostly comprised of liquid rock, magma, upon which the rigid blocks of solid rock, called plates, float. The continents drift along with the magma’s currents and sometimes slowly crash into one another.  Earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain-building is a caused by this process, called plate techtonics.
	When a large plate collides with a small one, the lesser will normally slide under the larger plate, sometimes creating earthquakes as they slide back and forth. The entire earth’s surface, or lithosphere, is comprised of about a dozen large plates and several small ones.  
	Sometimes, however, large plates crash into one another with such violence that their edges crumble, thrusting rock upwards. When this happens, mountains are born.
		The Appalachians began about 380 million years ago, when North America collided with Europe. The earth began to buckle, starting in New Hampshire and running along the meeting point of the two plates. This collision began the Caledonian mountain system, which runs from northern Alabama to Scotland. 
	A hundred million years later, the Southern Appalachians were formed as North America collided with Africa as Pangaea was formed. This is why the highest mountains in the Appalachians are so far apart, Mount Washington in New Hampshire and Mount Mitchell in North Carolina and why the mountains height tapers slightly in the middle of the chain, i.e. Pennsylvania and West Virginia. This two-pronged creation also accounts for the different character of the Northern and Southern parts of the chain, from the disorderly, random configuration of mountains in New England to the long, multi-state north-south spines in the Southern United States.
Over the next two hundred millions years, while the dinosaurs came and went, and the rugged Appalachian peaks eroded to stumps. Likewise, deep sediment, eroded from the peaks, covered the bases of the mountains, by 100 million years ago, before the Himalayas, Rockies, or Alps were even created.   
	All mountains, with the exception of volcanoes, begin this way, as an upward thrust of rockthe Himalayas (10 million years old) are tall and craggy. Old mountains, like the Appal. Of course, some mountains are higher than others. 
	Height is not an indication of the violence with which plates collide, but simply age. All mountain chains begin as rugged, rocky peaks, but over millions of years, erosion wears them down. Young mountains like the Himalayas (10 million-years-old) are tall and craggy while older chains, like the Appalachians (300 millions years old) , are lower, the summits more rounded. 
	Three hundred million years from now, the mighty Himalayas will look much as the Appalachians do today, and Mt. Everest, the highest peak on earth, will look more like  North Carolina’s Mount Mitchell or New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, themselves once among the world‘s highest peaks. Newly created ranges will take the Himalayas place as the world’s highest chain.
	The collision which created the Appalachians, created the super continent Pangaea, where all the earth’s major land masses became one in a random configuration of the lithosphere at a random moment in earth’s history.
	With no natural barriers, plant and animal life were free to expand their ranges from continent to continent,. But some animals which today thrive in Appalachia, didn’t arrive until much later. The brook trout, West Virginia’s state fish, an ice age immigrant  has only lived in southern and central Appalachia for the past few thousand years.
	There were several ice ages. During each of them glaciers flowed across the northern Appalachians. 
	During an ice age about 10,000 years ago, the weight of the massive glaciers nearly two miles thick, caused the northern half of the North American plate to sink into the molten magma below, while the southern half of the continent was thrust upwards by the action. East and westernly  flowing rivers were replaced by new ones flowing northwardly. 
	Brook trout, moving away from the advancing glaciers, swam up these temporary ice age rivers, fleeing from advancing glaciers nearly two miles thick. They swam up scores of Appalachian rivers, establishing reproducing populations to the headwaters. 	As the earth warmed, however, the glaciers melted and water in most of Southern Appalachia’s fisheries became intolerably warm for brook trout, hindering reproduction and eventually, they died out, except for those in the northern part of the chain and along a narrow north-south corridor along the Appalachian’s highest ridges, extending down through Pennsylvania and West Virginia, all the way to the Great Smoky Mountains.
	The next major changes would take place in a few thousand years, when Europeans first landed upon North America’s shores. The Appalachia they saw was far different than what we see today. The entire makeup of the forests was starkly different- bison grazed in grassy fields throughout Appalachia, elk munched chestnuts along the edge of clearings, wolfpacks circling around, looking for an easy meal. By the 1800s, the last of the wolves, bison and elk had been killed. By the 1940’s, the American chestnut, the primary hardwood of the region had succomed to a Chinese blight.
	The Appalachian forests of today are a second growth, primarily of oaks, hickories and beech. The American Chestnut was a very common tree, competing with oaks and pines for dominance in the mature forest. 
	The American chestnut was also the region’s most valuable hardwood. It grew very quickly and trees over one hundred feet tall were common. Some New England forest ecologists estimate that the American chestnut once accounted for half of the standing timber.	
	The wood was also very strong and resistant to decay, the exclusive choice for railroad ties and the first telephone poles. Its nuts were a primary source of forage for wildlife and were enjoyed by humans as well.
	Today, however, the Appalachians are primarily forested by hickories, oaks, maples and beech. The American chestnut is limited to a few shoots growing from the century old root system, which still lives, in wilderness areas.
	The disease which wiped out millions of chestnuts entered New York City in 1890, carried by some infected nursery chestnut trees imported from china. In 1904, the epedemic had been identified, but no measures were imposed to control the disease and the disease spread, at a rate of 20 miles per year. By the end of World War II, the blight had killed the last stands of the American chestnut in the Great Smoky Mountains. Today, only one small colony of American chestnuts remains in Michigan, far enough removed from the Eastern chestnuts to escape the blight’s path.
	While over the past two hundred years, drastic changes have occurred in Appalachia, the likes of which not seen in thousands of years, the environment is adapting. Oaks and hickories have replaced the American chestnut as mast. The whitetailed deer herd has increased to fill the void left by the elk extinction. And though it took nearly two hundred years for them to arrive, the coyote has replaced the wolf as a natural canine predator. 
	As the frontier moved westward, it didn’t take long for the first settlers to erradicate the wolf. Eventually, they moved into the coyote’s range. The coyote moved eastward, filling the vacuum left by the wolf’s extinction. By the 1970’s, they had entrenched themselves in Appalachia. 	 
	Scientists predict that the continents will come together again in another couple million years, new mountains will be created and the process will begin anew.