Eco-Tourism in Northern Appalachia

Two weekends ago, we decided to investigate a small community in Northern Appalachia known for it's Eco-Tourism initiatives. I'm referring to the fair town of Wellsboro, PA which hosts the famous grand canyons of PA. It is well known, that the Mountain communities of Pennsylvania were once famed for
their steel works and other heavy industrial plants. Some 30 years ago; however, the tide of globalization began to move the industries away from that area, and a general degree of impoverishment followed. Many cities and towns suffered a huge drop in population and commerce, but surprisingly, some communities have attempted to re-fashion themselves to suit the post industrial economy.

Driving in our fuel efficient Toyota Corolla, we swiftly left the coastal center of New York and entered the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. The roads traversed hills that gradually became mountains. I was surprised by the steepness of some of the highways. It seems that the transportation infrastructure in the Appalachia is not nearly as well developed as the coast. The countryside was extremely beautiful, filled with hills, woods, and farms scattered here and there. Every so often, we would drive by herds of cows or goats or other fine ruminants. Most of the towns that we passed seemed to be shells of their former selves. Many communities looked genuinely impoverished, what with all the abandoned factories and run down houses in many of these towns. We drove by one town which seemed to have invested a large amount of resources in the creation of vast windmills on the hills surrounding their settlement.

After about 3 hours of driving, our Car's GPS unit took us onto a one lane dirt road which ran up the side of a rather steep mountain. That was quite intimidating to Marisa who urged me to head back, but I kept driving on. After a few miles on this dirt road, we ran into a pick up truck heading directly towards us! Upon seeing this, I decided to head back down the mountain and go back onto the highway. After talking with the gentlemen in the truck, it appeared that the dirt road(called Rattler's road ) was indeed meant to accommodate 2 lanes of traffic! How that works is anyone's guess. After that little adventure, we drove for another 10 miles and finally reached the town of Wellsboro. I must say that the town is Beautiful. It seems to be a highly urbane, cultural center in the midst of many poverty stricken communities. We came to a pretty looking bed and breakfast in the middle of town and decided to get a room there. Wellsboro boasted of very decent lodgings and the restaurants were superb. At that point, both of us were wondering how such a prosperous community could exist on Eco-Tourism alone. After talking with a young waiter at a local restaurant, we learned that like is apparently the entire town hosted a huge number of Pensioners from all over the country. The regular town's folk were basically taking care of a large number of wealthy senior citizens, this along with the eco-tourism income has kept this community prosperous. With that question settled, we retired to sleep.

On the next day, we drove about 5 miles out of town to check out the Grand Canyon itself. The views were very impressive, the top of the canyon was about 2 thousand feet from the Susquehanna river tributary at it's base. The town had built out an elaborate series of trails all along the canyon. We took the "Turkey" Trail which was very scenic but also extremely narrow at certain points.

The ambiance was extremely beautiful, the entire trail down was through a dense cover of mostly Coniferous trees, probably owing to the acidity of the native soil. Every so often, we would catch breathtaking views of the entire Canyon. As we descended, we noticed many small streams all along the breadth of the ravines. As our descent continued, we noticed that the streams were gathering into larger streams. And eventually into a series of spectacular water falls, one larger than the one preceding it.

As we kept walking down, we saw that certain sections of the trail were carved into the mountain side itself, such that a cross section of the mountain was made transparent to us. In such cases, we saw the miracle of biology at work. Trees surviving on top soil only a few inches deep were implanted directly above solid bedrock. The roots of these trees, along with lichen were literally mining the bed rock for minerals. This kind of a biological system is incredibly stable, and the fertility that these minerals can supply to the trees could easily last of tens of thousands of years. I figure that humanity could create a forest garden of useful trees on these mountain sides, it would be economically productive with no maintenance for an indefinite period of time.

At any rate, we gradually came down to the base of the valley. There, all the waterfalls were happily unloading themselves into the Susquehanna river. The river itself was broad and it's waters extremely clear. All of this was exceedingly beautiful and of course we had to take a few glamor shots! :D

And that was pretty much our visit to Wellsboro, we later went to the town's Historical Society to learn it's history before going back home. I must say that Wellsboro definitely has a great beginning in sustainable eco-tourism.