Old Growth Report Shenandoah National Park (working document)

National Park Service

This report should be viewed as a working document--and it is so called. It is far from a finished product. Much of the information was not collected with an "old growth report" in mind. Although informal inventories of varying depths have been conducted at most of the sites, an orderly inventory and formal monitoring of the sites has only begun at one location: the Upper Staunton River site. (Even at this site, monitoring has only recently commenced, and not all elements of the monitoring program are in place.) Several unconfirmed reports of old growth areas in Shenandoah National Park still need to be investigated. Over 1000 tree cores have been collected in the Park that have yet to be aged. Various sources of potentially useful information need to be more closely examined including logging records, land acquisition files, and miscellaneous documents in the Shenandoah National Park archives. Three 1 sizable parcels of land in Shenandoah National Park were never owned by anyone (except for English nobility or other large landholders in absentia prior to the Revolutionary War). Where they are located, what their history is, and what they now look like are questions worth pursuing. Moore (1937) refers to areas of mature timber that are not mentioned elsewhere. Darwin Lambert (p.170) has this tantalizing statement: "Hall found 9,700 acres that could still be called 'virgin forest' in 1914, but it was rapidly dwindling." This document is prepared at this stage to make some preliminary information available to interested individuals and organizations. It is at this point more of an introductory interpretive guide than a scientific report. Some information will undoubtedly need to be corrected as further information becomes available. Some of the sites themselves (e.g., Bolton Branch, Upper Hazel River, Pond Ridge) will need to be further evaluated to determine the exact nature of the area and the validity of their continued inclusion within this document. Other areas will perhaps be delineated and added to the list. However, due to the needs of various people and groups, it has been deemed appropriate to provide current information on old growth in Shenandoah National Park, even if some of the information is somewhat cursory at this stage.