West Virginia's Beartown State Park, An Autumn Forest Wonder
West Virginia's Beartown State Park is a natural area of 107 acres purchased in 1970 with funds from the Nature Conservancy and a donation from Mrs. Edwin G. Polan. Although it is West Virginia's smallest state park, it is probably their most beautiful one in Autumn.
Beartown State Park is located on the eastern summit of Droop Mountain, seven miles southwest of Hillsboro, West Virginia. It is on the same mountain where the only major battle of the American Civil War was fought in West Virginia in 1863. Pearl S. Buck's birthplace in only minutes away.
Here is a walk-through one of the most beautiful forested spots in the United States in Autumn and with little or no competition for the trail - just my opinion.
Beartown State Park, West Virginia - Photo by Steve Nix, Licensed to About.com
Comments
I was kind of disapointed not to see any horizontal panorama shots of the countryside full of that color you were talking about. You concentrated mainly on close ups of leaves and vertical shots of trees. It seems like “you didn’t see the forrest for the trees” as it were. Horizontals are much better than verticals in most cases.
Mr. Nix,
You have done me a terrible disservice. I spent the first 48 years of my life on the road and was more than willing to hunker down in one place. I now have two large wolfhounds who only like to explore my furniture.
This Beartown article and a number of similar articles about forested areas you have photographed and written about over the past two years have me wanting to visit some of those places. This, of course, makes it hard to stay hunkered down in one place. I especially am vulnerable to your articles describing hardwood forests photographed in places like Beartooth State Park as hardwoods are extremely lacking in my little corner of the World at the foot of the Laramie Mountains (mostly treeless due to fires and drought.
I even broke the 11th commandment a few minutes ago (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s forest!)
Thomas Mitchell
Judging from the comments, I guess this article has been posted for the past few years.
I’ve been to Beartown many times and always find it a treat. I’d like for _everyone_ to see it, yet the fact that it really is “out of the way” and thus doesn’t attract too many visitors is fine with me, too: Places that get visited a lot also seem to get trashed a lot.
To Tom (comment #1), I can only say that it’s just about impossible to get a panoramic shot of Beartown; it’s a very “tight” place with a boardwalk winding through closely spaced boulders. You’d have to be there to see what I mean . . . make sure you go there if you ever have a chance!
If you’re in the area, make sure to go to USFS’s Cranberry Glades, too. (Because of budget cuts, their visitor center may be closed in the winter.)
Long live Beartown.