Have you ever heard of the roof garden of Pennsylvania? That's what people sometimes call Somerset County, which makes perfect sense if you consider its other usual nickname, the Land of Milk and Maple (which, by the way, Vermont also uses thanks to its abundance of trees and cows.)
Somerset County is in the southwestern part of Pennsylvania, known as the Laurel Highlands. It has a rich history of agriculture. It also boasts the highest point in the commonwealth: Mt. Davis, at an elevation of 3213 feet on a ridge of the Allegheny and Appalachian Mountain range close to the Maryland border.
It's up there, hence the roof garden reference. But locals know that's where sugar maples thrive. Come February and March, when days are a bit sunnier and nights are still cold, sap from those trees is used to make pure maple syrup, and Somerset County will once again celebrate the tree that helped put it on the map.
