Friends of Blackwater works to protect and promote natural beauty, diverse creatures, unique heritage, and the outdoor recreation economy in the Mid-Atlantic Allegheny Highlands -- home to the magnificent, 10,000-acre Blackwater Canyon – West Virginia’s “Scenic Crown Jewel.” Our professional staff and grass-roots citizen advocacy are a strong force for responsible conservation and sustainable progress in the Highlands. Join us!
Get the latest issue of the Friends of Blackwater newsletter online, featuring historic signs, watershed restoration, Endangered Species, and more.
Use the form at the right to send a message telling Congress to preserve the Endangered Species Act. The ESA has protected Canaan Valley, the Blackwater Canyon, and the Monongahela National Forest. National symbols like the bald eagle were saved by this landmark law. Republican and Democratic Presidents have used the Act to make our country a better place.
The ESA has been working as it was designed, and there is no reason to change it. Tell Congress that we Americans are counting on them to hold the line and preserve the environmental protections that we have fought so hard to achieve.
We are happy to announce that Friends of Blackwater will once again have a table at the Harper’s Ferry Outdoor Festival, which is June 22nd and 23rd this year. 2018 marks the 20th and final year of the festival, which raises money for river conservation. If you’re going to be in the eastern panhandle that […]
July 1st, 1 to 3 p.m., at the Cottrill Opera House in Thomas During the height of Tucker County’s industrial boom at the turn of the 20th century, a large number of Eastern and Southern European immigrants were attracted to work on the railroad, cutting timber, and mining coal and coke. The county’s population was so […]
On Sunday July 15th, join Friends of Blackwater and naturalist Doug Wood at Blackwater Falls State Park to learn about old growth forests. We will meet at the Harold Walters Nature Center (near Pendleton Lake) at 1 p.m. for an introductory talk about the characteristics of old growth forests, before heading into the park to […]
John Robert Clifford was West Virginia’s first African-American attorney, a newspaper publisher, editor and writer, a schoolteacher and principal, a civil rights pioneer, a founding member of the Niagara Movement (forerunner to the NAACP), a Civil War veteran, and a graduate of Storer College. Clifford was born in 1848, near what is now Moorefield, West […]
Take a virtual tour of the North Fork watershed with this video.
By, Steven Krichbaum (Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology) The Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta) occurs from northern West Virginia and Virginia through the northeastern US into southern Canada. They are “very rare and imperiled” and a “species of greatest conservation need” in WV’s wildlife conservation strategy. Adult Wood Turtles have a brownish knobby carapace (upper […]
