North Fork Mountain runs roughly northeast to southwest for 34 miles (55 km) throughout Grant and Pendleton Counties in West Virginia.

Future Generations Graduate School's main campus is located at the top of the ridgeline near U.S. Route 33, the only major road that crosses the mountain.

Kile Knob (West Virginia), the highest point of North Fork Mountain, has a humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb).

Tuscarora quartzite (or sandstone), a layer of erosion-resistant Silurian rock only about 50 feet (15 m) thick, the major ridge-forming stratum in eastern West Virginia, caps most of North Fork Mountain, often as a broad, slightly eastward-tilted slab, forming numerous west-facing cliffs and various larger outcrops such as Chimney Top and Harmon Rocks.

The lower, western slopes of the mountain and the adjacent Germany Valley are underlain by the easily eroded Ordovician-aged New Market Limestone and are penetrated by numerous caves, such as the celebrated Hellhole.

These few early settlers were of English, German or Dutch stock and constituted a community known as "Smoke Hole", named for the gorge to the east of the Mountain.

None of these smallholders owned slaves, a fact that determined their Unionist sentiments during the American Civil War and brought them into sometimes violent conflict with surrounding communities during that time.

[13] Botanist Paul J. Harmon studied the flora of the entire length of North Fork Mountain's ridgetop, presenting his findings in 1981.

[15] In March 1930, after an unusually mild and dry winter, an epochal forest fire ravaged North Fork Mountain consuming most of the undergrowth and smaller trees.

Many locals – "Smoke Holers" who lived on the gentler-sloping east side of the Mountain – blamed the Forest Service program for the deterioration in the quality of forage needed by their free-ranging swine and sheep and for the decline in the huckleberry patches.

[3] The exposed sandstone cliff edges so characteristic of the west side of North Fork Mountain support narrow zones of persistingly open, treeless habitat characterized by several unusual or regionally endemic plant species, including the silvery nailwort (Paronychia argyrocoma) and the white alumroot (Heuchera alba).

[4][14] Chestnut oak (Quercus montana) and Table Mountain pine (Pinus pungens) are often found just back of the cliff edges.

[3][4] The lower slopes of those mountains are covered by mixed Appalachian hardwood forests dominated by sugar maple (Acer saccharum), beech (Fagus grandifolia), and yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis), with red spruce (Picea rubens) abundant at higher elevations.

North Fork Mountain's fine-grained Tuscarora quartzite erodes into sand, which either quickly disperses or persists in cracks and crevices, sometimes even forming tiny dunelets on wide, nearly flat open outcrops, as on Panther Knob.

Other rare plant species on the mountain's slopes include butternut (Juglans cinerea) [citation needed], Smoke Hole bergamot (Monarda fistulosa var.

The cliff-skirted 4,508-foot (1,374 m) summit of Panther Knob supports the world's largest population of variable sedge (Carex polymorpha),[citation needed] a fire-dependent globally vulnerable plant.

Beach heather (Hudsonia tomentosa),[4][14] typically found on coastal dunes, and Michaux's saxifrage (Saxifraga michauxii),[4][14] a Southern Appalachian rock-outcrop endemic, also occur there.

Wildlife on North Fork Mountain includes whitetail deer, wild turkey, black bear, Coyotes, bobcats, gray foxes, timber rattlesnakes, eastern newts, and a variety of other bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian species.

Fish and Wildlife Service Species of Concern are found on North Fork Mountain, the peregrine falcon and the Allegheny woodrat.

Various locally abundant but globally rare species of bats that roost in nearby limestone caverns are also often seen foraging over North Fork Mountain's western slopes.