"As any resident can testify, Lake Floyd is a great place to live. In a wooded valley, the Lake is one mile long, wide at the dam and curving to the left as it narrows. The Lake is 1080 feet above sea level (329.18 meters), in north central West Virginia, in the central Appalachians. Headwater streams flow from the steep hillsides into Lake Floyd. The feeder stream, Hall’s Run, flows into Ten Mile Creek, on to the West Fork River, the Tygart River, the Monongahela River, the Ohio River, the Mississippi, and the Gulf of Mexico. The oldest mountains on earth, the Appalachians date back to about 480 million years ago.
Lake Floyd’s rich variety of Appalachian plants and animals spring from a pre-ice age circumpolar forest growing from North America to Eurasia. In the Appalachian forest are flowers whose distribution once was continuous from West Virginia to China and Japan, 8000 to 9000 miles away. The rhododendron, the Lady’s Slipper orchid, ginseng and many other Appalachian plants are common in China today." - David Powell