Laurel Mountain

Laurel Mountain is a thirty-two-mile ridge in north-central West Virginia that forms the western edge of the Allegheny Mountains and the boundary with the Allegheny Plateau. Named for the abundant rhododendron found there by late-eighteenth-century settlers, it is part of a larger folded geologic structure linked to nearby ridges. In 1861 it became a significant Civil War site when Confederate and Union forces skirmished for five days in the Battle of Laurel Hill before the Confederate position was abandoned after defeat at Rich Mountain; later operations there also hindered Robert E. Lee. In the twenty-first century, the ridge also became a major wind energy site.

St. George, West Virginia · United States