Dolly Sods is a rocky, high-altitude plateau with sweeping vistas and lifeforms normally found much farther north in Canada.

To the north, the distinctive landscape of "the Sods" is characterized by stunted ("flagged") trees, wind-carved boulders, heath barrens, grassy meadows created in the last century by logging and fires, and sphagnum bogs that are much older.

The summit area around Mount Porte Crayon is the largest flat-topped plateau in Eastern North America containing 5.5 square miles (14 km2) above 4,500 ft (1,400 m) elevation.

Drainage on the east side of the ridge crest flows into the headwaters of the South Branch Potomac River, which is part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

[3] The present-day DSW encompasses some 17,371 acres (70 km2) of U.S. Forest Service land and is part of a larger 32,000-acre (129 km2) area now known as "Dolly Sods".

The premier viewpoint within the wilderness, affording a vista of the entire Red Creek drainage, is at a set of rocky crags known as Lion's Head Rock.

Like the cliffs constituting the eastern edge of the DSW at Rohrbaugh Plains, Lion's Head Rock consists of a mixture of sandstone and conglomerate.

David Hunter Strother wrote an early and somewhat breathless travelogue of the area, published in Harper's Monthly magazine in 1852: In Randolph County, Virginia, is a tract of country containing from seven to nine hundred square miles, entirely uninhabited, and so savage and inaccessible that it has rarely been penetrated even by the most adventurous.

The settlers on its borders speak of it with a sort of dread, and regard it as an ill-omened region, filled with bears, panthers, impassable laurel-brakes, and dangerous precipices.

They did actually penetrate the country as far as the Falls of the Blackwater, and returned with marvelous accounts of its savage grandeur, and the quantities of game and fish to be found there.The name Dolly Sods derives from the family name of Johann Dahle (1749–1847), a German immigrant who settled nearby.

Local historian Hu Maxwell described the Dolly Sods area in the Wheeling Intelligencer in 1886: "The top of the mountain is flat, except here and there rugged ridges and huge promontories of rocks rising above the level of the plains, and giving the scene an appearance of distance and mystery that must be witnessed before it can be understood".

Serving under General Cornwallis, he was captured at Yorktown (1781), the battle which effectively ended the war, and was imprisoned for a time at Winchester, Virginia.

Eventually the family land holdings in Pendleton and the surrounding area grew to several hundred acres which may have included what later became known as scenic "Dolly Sods".

[8] The area surrounding Dolly Sods was formerly described as the best spruce-hemlock-black cherry forest in the world, with some enormous trees up to 12 feet (4 m) in diameter.

In 1899, the Parsons Pulp and Lumber Company established a sawmill at Dobbin on the North Branch Potomac River in Grant County.

The Monongahela National Forest was created in 1915, largely motivated by a desire to mitigate the sort of wholesale destruction that had swept over the Sods.

A particularly ferocious fire raged in late July 1930 in the northernmost Red Creek and southernmost Stony River watersheds (along the Grant/Tucker County line).

In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps made some modest attempts to remediate the damage to Dolly Sods by re-planting stands of red spruce there.

By 1972, it had purchased the coal rights under the future federal wilderness (15,558 acres or 63 km2) of the Sods and Roaring Plains for $15 million.

Dolly Sods finally became a federally designated wilderness area in 1975 which resulted in greatly increased numbers of visitors.

Despite the overall vigorous winter, the relative southern location (39th North parallel) allows for occasional intrusions of warmer, well above freezing air from the Gulf of Mexico.

Where spruce are protected by a shrub layer, luxuriant webs of branches extend for a radius of a dozen feet, giving a mat-like look to vegetation.

[15] Dolly Sods is well known for its open expanses of sphagnum bog, heath shrubs and scattered and stunted red spruce—all creating impressions of areas much farther north.

According to botanist Earl L. Core, "The silvery sheen of the grass, against the dark green background of the spruce, attracted the attention of the early settlers....

Core favored a multi-factorial explanation involving a "bald-susceptible zone" present at mountain summits where various causes (extreme weather, fires, etc.)

The extensive views across the tundra-like windswept open meadows in the northern section of Dolly Sods are reminiscent of Alaskan landscapes.

Members of Rosaceae (the rose family) also abound: chokeberry, mountain ashes, serviceberry, and pin cherry (Prunus pensylvanica).

Spruce-edged sphagnum bogs are found in the upper sections of Red Creek and its tributaries, often in association with thickets of speckled alder.

Other animals that may be encountered include red and gray foxes, bobcats, black bears, groundhog, timber rattlers, wild turkey, and grouse.

Due to severe winter weather, FS Rt 75, flanking the eastern side of Dolly Sods, is typically closed to vehicles from January 1 to April 15.