Cultural History

Learn More about William B Rogers, the man for whom the mountain is named.

The two articles on this page provide interesting background for those who wish to better understand the mountain and the surrounding high country. The first article,"William B. Rogers: A Man and A Mountain" is a condensation of an article that appeared in the Appalachian Trailway News issue of May/June 1984. The article provides biographical background and was written by George E. Beetham, Jr. The second article appeared in the same issue of ATN. "A Fitting Monument" provides an insightful description of the Mount Rogers High Country. See copyright notice at the bottom of this page.

William B. Rogers: A Man and A Mountain

George E. Beetham, Jr.

William Barton Rogers, the first Virginia state geologist after whom Mount Rogers is named, was primarily a scientist, but, over his 77 years, became pre-eminent, too, as a university professor and administrator in both the North and South.

He was chairman of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, corresponding secretary of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a charter member and president of the National Academy of Sciences.

Along with his younger brother, Henry Darwin Rogers, he charted the geologic structure of the Appalachian Mountains. Rogers was recognized for several important geologic discoveries, including the identification of several fossil forms.

Rogers held science chairs at the College of William and Mary and the University of Virginia in his thirties and forties.

He later was Massachusetts' first state gas meter inspector, work that required setting scientific standards for the meters and organizing the office of inspector. He then founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, filled its science chair and served as its first president at age 60.

Rogers was born in Philadelphia, Pa., on Dec. 7, 1804, the second of four sons of Patrick Kerr and Hannah Blythe Rogers. Rogers' father was appointed professor of natural philosophy and chemistry at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., in 1819. All four sons took up scientific careers after his tutelage.

William studied in Baltimore public schools and at the College of William and Mary. By 1827, William and brother Henry were struggling young instructors at Maryland Institute. When his father died the following year, Rogers was appointed to succeed him in the chair of natural philosophy and chemistry at William and Mary.

In 1835, Rogers was named first state geologist of Virginia and appointed to the chair of natural philosophy at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. In the meantime, Henry had conducted a geological survey in New Jersey and, that same year, was named first state geologist of Pennsylvania. The two brothers often compared notes, and Henry even served as William's assistant for a time.

Rogers' tenure as state geologist was marked by his work with greensand marl, which he felt had agricultural applications; his discovery of diatomaceous earth, which was used as a polishing agent, and the work with his brother to document the geological structure of the Appalachians.

When classes ended in the summer, Rogers took to the field himself. Even when the university was in- session, Rogers liked to sneak away for a short geology sampler at some nearby spot, such as Turk's Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Rogers could wax poetic over the nature he observed: "Yet in the walks I take through nature in quest of truth and demonstration, I recognize a poetry in earth and sea and sky, ruled in their cycles of harmonious actions, deeper and more sublime than ever muse un- taught in science could inspire."

Taken with the appearance of spring blossoms on the University of Virginia campus, Rogers wrote, "Spring is now exulting in the hills and valleys; graceful and lovely is the livery she wears."

Rogers took his bride, Emma Savage Rogers, to Europe in 1849 for their honeymoon and some geology field work (what else?). He must have nearly swooned: "What pictures there and elsewhere in the Alps have been en- graved upon our hearts!"

There were field trips with Henry, too. The brothers scoured New England, New York and the Great Lakes region, finding assurance that their observations about the rock sequences of the Appalachians held true there.

The brothers compared notes with European geologists Charles Lyell and Louis Agassiz. And, they followed the work of another contemporary, Charles Darwin, and thought his theory on evolution credible.

The Rogers brothers theorized that earthquakes had much to do with the building of mountains, deduced that the earth's core was molten, and believed that the folding of the mountains was caused by waves propagated in the core. (The brothers were not too far from being right. The modern theory of plate tectonics holds that continental plates float on a viscous mantle, in which convection currents cause the plates to drift around the globe. Where plates collided, mountains were formed.)

Meanwhile, at the University of Virginia, Rogers continued to build his reputation and academic credentials. He continued as a professor at Virginia but was longing for more challenge and a more stimulating scientific environment. Henry moved to Boston and found a compatible intellectual environment. William and his wife followed in 1852.

Henry, ironically, moved to Scotland about this time, accepting a position as professor at the University of Glasgow. Though the two brothers were close and longed to work together, they spent most of their lives separated by distant jobs.

About 1861, Rogers' feelings about a school for scientific study were realized when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was incorporated. The Civil War was on, though, and funding was hard to get. The school would not open until 1864.

When MIT opened in 1864, Rogers was appointed as its first president. He was sent to Europe to procure equipment for the fledgling school and returned uncashed a note the school sent him to cover expenses of the trip.

Rogers resigned the presidency in 1870 because of health problems. By 1878, the school was in financial trouble, and Rogers' health was some- what improved, so he was reappointed president.

Rogers intended to serve only until a successor could be chosen. During this period, Rogers was honored scientifically, but turned down the proffered presidency of the Appalachian Mountain Club, explaining that his health was not good enough to accept the position.

By 1882, a successor at MIT was chosen and Rogers stepped down again, remaining professor emeritus of geology and physics. On May 30, 1882, while preparing to confer diplomas on the graduating class, Rogers began to speak, stopped in mid-sentence, and collapsed, dead at the podium.

Academicians of MIT and the University of Virginia eulogized Rogers. MIT had already named its first building for Rogers while its founder was still alive. Virginia followed suit after his death, memorializing its first state geologist by changing the name of Balsam Mountain to Mount Rogers in 1883.

The state's highest peak, at 5,729 feet, Mount Rogers sits astride the Grayson-Smyth County line and forms the divide between the Tennessee River and the New River drainage.

In 1884, the geology reports that Rogers had submitted to the Virginia General Assembly 40 years before were published under the editorship of Jed Hotchkiss, who served as a cartographer to Stonewall Jackson during the Civil War.

The book, titled A Reprint of the Geology of the Virginias, contains the annual reports submitted from 1835 through 1841 and other papers. A pocket contains the state's first geologic map and structural cross-sections of the Appalachians, drawn by Hotchkiss from Rogers' geology studies.

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A Fitting Mounument

George E. Beetham, Jr.

Virginia's monument to its first state geologist is made out of granite. In order to see it, though, you have to put on your hiking boots, and it doesn't hurt to outfit for an overnighter. That's the way this trip transpired, anyway.

It had rained the night before, and the roof of the shelter leaked. Part of the night had been spent moving gear out of the way of marauding drips and enlarging puddles. By morning, the spirit was one of weariness and damp chill at a time the body wanted elevated spirits to get it moving.

Old Orchard Shelter sits at the fringe of an old meadow, with apple trees nearby. In late summer, blackberries that grow in the meadow are plump and juicy -but somewhat tart.

Old Orchard sits at about 3,000 feet, which means a 2,000-foot climb. The Appalachian Trail is surprisingly gentle in that climb, though, and the Konnarock work crew had just done a superb job of clearing back summer growth.

Soon, the crest of the ridge came into view through the trees and the mist. A flock of chickadees, tiny and frail looking, flitted in and around the birch and spruce at the top, offering a welcome in chickadee language.

There is a trail junction here. The A. T. makes a wide swing around what is known as the Crest Zone - 5,000-foot high meadows of grasses, rhododendron, and something guaranteed to get the body and spirit in tune with the will: the blueberries of the Grayson Highlands, plump and sweet.

Soon a glimpse of Wilburn Ridge - its rocky outcrops stark and foreboding - materialized and then slipped back into the mist like an apparition. Was it real or imagined? No way to know except to plod on.

The last rocky knob revealed that Wilburn Ridge was no apparition, but the revelation came slowly as sheets of mist blew past the mountain and played with the mind.

At Rhododendron Gap, where catawba rhododendron puts on a dazzling display in June, Mount Rogers itself finally appeared through the lifting mist.

The top is a rounded hump on a long ridge - clearly the highest point around, yet hardly impressive in the same sense as Mount Washington or Mount Marcy. Wilburn Ridge, in fact, is more rugged and has more character.

Fraser firs, nicknamed balsam, spill down from the summit of Rogers, thinning out in blackberry thickets that now occupy former pastures that are slowly returning to forest.

Mount Rogers is the northernmost limit of Fraser fir -very similar to the true balsam fir of the northern United States. It is a remnant of a glacial-front forest. The two species likely evolved differently when glacial ice retreated northward, leaving the Fraser fir stranded in the high elevations of the southern Appalachians.

From the Appalachian Trail, which rejoins the Pine Mountain Trail at Rhododendron Gap, it is a short walk to the spur trail that leads to the summit of Rogers in a half-mile climb of slightly less than 300 feet. The spur was once the route of the A. T., which now slabs around the side of Mount Rogers.

The climax of the climb is anti-climactic. The summit is forested entirely in Fraser fir, and three U.S. Geological Survey benchmarks are placed in boulders.

A wooden sign proclaims that, at 5, 729 feet, Rogers is the highest point in Virginia. Would a peak be as high without a sign to advertise the fact? Probably so, but where would the fern that sprouts from the post grow? Besides, nearly everybody except William Barton Rogers has carved their name or initials on the sign -a multiple-use memorial!

The firs have taken over the summit. People generally have submitted to their wish -there is no view outward from the peak.

Views, if they are your wish, can be had abundantly from Wilburn Ridge, however.

There is no such thing as a lousy metaphor while walking Wilburn Ridge. They come to mind and slide away without a shudder of disgust. Feeling expands with the view -there's just too much to take it all in.

The ridge is in meadow, except for the stacks of rock at intervals along its spine. A scramble up the highest, which tops out at about 5,500 feet, shows everything around except what the higher Mount Rogers blocks out.

The meadows of the Crest Zone are a relatively recent addition. Accord- ing to Cecil Thomas, a range and wildlife technician with the U.S. Forest Service, the entire area was covered with a spruce and fir forest in the early 1900s. At Massie Gap in Grayson Highlands State Park, the forest was once "so thick, it was like darkness underneath, " Thomas quotes old-timers.

About 1906, Martin Hassinger and his three sons, William, John and Luther, came to the area from northwestern Pennsylvania. They built a sawmill at Konnarock, nestled in Laurel Creek Valley just northeast of Damascus. A rail line had been built from Abingdon to Damascus about 1902, and, from then unti11928, the area was timbered.

According to reminiscences of Martin A. Hassinger, Luther's son, it was a costly investment. It cost $90,000 to build a three-mile section of railway from Konnarock to Whitetop Gap -in 1912 dollars.

Hassinger timber was marketed in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. As the lumbermen stripped the forest away, farmers moved in behind them, and grazed cattle on what became the upland meadows.

The lumber companies left the area in the late 1920s. The Hassingers sold their holdings to the Forest Service when it began buying cut-over land between 1926 and 1930 to establish what has become the Jefferson National Forest.

The Forest Service continued the grazing under its multiple-use concept, while wildfires helped to create and maintain additional meadowlands. Elk reportedly were introduced into the area in the 1930s but do not seem to have fared well, based on their current absence.

The rangelands, according to Keith Lawrence of the Forest Service, "are an esthetically valuable contrast to the conifer and hardwood forests. "

Some 3,000 acres of the Crest Zone are set aside for grazing from spring until fall - a factor that makes it necessary to scamper over stiles, keep a wary lookout for any potentially irate bulls, and watch what lies underfoot.

But the policy also opens up the area for the fat blueberries, rhododendron and expansive views, and the cattle generally mind their own business.

The area around Mount Rogers was declared a National Recreation Area (NRA) by Congress on May 31, 1966. The Forest Service has declared the stand of Fraser fir atop Rogers as the Mount Rogers Scenic Area and banned camping and open fires within the zone.

Another milestone for the Mount Rogers area could come this year. U.S. Reps. Frederick Boucher and James Olin of Virginia co-introduced a Virginia wilderness-area bill on March 14 that would bring three NRA sites into the National Wilderness System.

In his report to the Virginia General Assembly in 1841, William Barton Rogers remarked that the elevation of Whitetop and Balsam Mountains exceeded 5,000 feet - an elevation he believed to be "the greatest altitude yet satisfactorily ascertained in Virginia."

It is the only reference in his reports to the then-Balsam Mountain that now bears his name. But, it is an appropriate granite monument to a man and his work -a man who learned what the mountains were made of and appreciated the poetry he found in them.

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Both articles above are copyrighted by the Appalachian Trail Conference and the author. Use of the articles here is through the kind permission of the author.

US Forest Service - George Washington and Jefferson National Forest
Last Modified: Friday, 27 June 2008 at 12:59:26 EDT