Mount Rogers

Mount Rogers is the highest point in the state of Virginia, USA, with a summit elevation of 5,729 feet (1,746 m) above mean sea level. It lies in Grayson County and Smyth County, Virginia, about 6.45 miles WSW of Troutdale, Virginia, within the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area and Jefferson National Forest.

The summit is most easily accessed from Grayson Highlands State Park by following the Appalachian Trail southbound for 3.5 miles to a blue-blazed trail leading to the summit, which is covered by trees and marked with two National Geodetic Survey triangulation station disks. Because the Appalachian Trail passes with a half mile of the summit, the area is especially popular with hikers.

The Mount Rogers area contains a unique record of the geohistory of Virginia. There is evidence from the rocks that volcanoes were part of the landscape, but not for about 200 million years. Roughly 750 million years ago, rift-related (divergent) volcanoes erupted along the axis of what later became the Appalachians, and one remnant of that volcanic zone, with its volcanic rocks, still can be seen at Mount Rogers. Massive rhyolite lava flows erupted at the mountain during the Precambrian rifting event. Mount Rogers is also the only place in Virginia that preserves evidence of ancient glaciation.

Spruce-Fir Forests

Forest of red spruce and Fraser fir on the slopes of Mount Rogers

Mount Rogers is the northernmost habitat of the high-altitude red spruce-Fraser fir forests, which are found in only five other locations in the United States: the Great Smoky Mountains, the Black Mountains, the Great Balsam Mountains, Grandfather Mountain, and Roan Mountain. It is also one of the few remaining habitats of the Fraser fir, which is only found at high elevations, typically above 4,000 feet, in the southern Appalachian Mountains.

These forests have suffered recent declines due to infestations by the balsam woolly adelgid (Adelges piceae), a non-native insect that originated in Europe. It first infested Mount Rogers in 1962 and the entire U.S. population of Fraser firs suffered a 67% mortality rate during the subsequent years, although Mount Rogers was not affected as severely as other locations.

Some researchers have proposed that air pollution in the form of nitrogen and sulfur compounds originating from power plants has been a source of stress to the Fraser firs, resulting in an increased susceptibility to the balsam woolly adelgid, but this relationship has not been confirmed.

Photo gallery

• 
  Benchmark on Mount Rogers summit.

See also

• Mount Rogers National Recreation Area
• Whitetop Mountain
• High Knob
• List of tallest mountains of U.S. states