This species, as clarified by the molecular genetic study of Tilley and Mahoney (see comment), is distributed in the "Ridges of the Ridge and Valley Physiographic Province, including Brumley, Clinch, Walker, and Potts Mountains of southwestern Virginia; the Cumberland Mountains and Plateau of southeastern Kentucky; and the Allegheny Mountains and Plateau of West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York through the Adirondack Mountains to southern Quebec." In a subsequent study, Anderson & Tilley (2003) extended the range of this species into the northern Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee because populations there were found to be genetically identical to more northerly populations in New York, West Virginia and Kentucky. In the Cumberland, D. ochrophaeus contacts another ecologically similar but genetically distinctive species, D. abditus with which it hybridizes over a narrow zone. Populations that occur outside of this area that were once considered to be this species, specifically those that occur in the Southern Appalachian Highlands from Virginia through the Tennessee and North Carolina Highlands, the southern Blue Ridge, northern Georgia and northeastern Alabama are now variously assigned to other taxa (see D. orestes, D. carolinensis, D. ocoee).