Land of Many Uses

Most of these national forest signs include the unpoetic and utilitarian phrase
"Land of Many Uses."
It's not a catchy motto, but it does tell it like it is. I used to think it was a slogan unique to the Allegheny, but apparently the Forest Service says it to all its girls.

And too many uses, some might say. I mean, why do you go to the woods? Why did Thoreau go to the woods? I go to get away from the kids. I go to escape career life, and domestic life, and the need to produce, and behave, and impress. I go to the woods to be alone, for the silence, for the beauty, for the adventure of discovery. I park my car along some old, forgotten forest road, and I strike off with a compass, a stick, and a bottle of water. And the further I get from my car, the more the tension in my shoulders relaxes. The usual tightness rests on my shoulders, like Bluebeard's parrot, it gradually takes flight. By the time I'm away from the noise of passing cars on the nearest blacktop, I'm a whole different person: a man without pretense, without pressures, without burdens. I go to the woods because it reduces me to something primal, and there's not enough "primal" in my life.

I hope to avoid politics in this blog. I hope I can talk mostly about some of the hidden wonders of the Allegheny. But a political battle rages over the use of this forest like none I've seen. I know the local economies depend on exploitation, but when I round a corner and running into an oil derrick or a clearcut, I'm right back to square one! Annoyed, angry, composing letters to the proper authorities in my head.

Ghost Towns of the Allegheny

So, I recently got back from a "ghost towning" trip in North-eastern New Mexico. Fantastic place to sift through the wreckage and detritus of bygone settlements. However, I will leave that for other bloggers to explore. (In fact, the ghost towns of New Mexico are the subject of many Internet sites.) Lesser known are the ghost towns that can still be discovered in the ferny glens of the Allegheny.

Around here, ghost towns don't usually have much in the way of abandoned buildings. Unlike New Mexico, the wet climate and bitterly cold winters of the Pennsylvania highlands quickly reclaim the territory once conquered by fickle humanity. You have to look a little closer to find an Allegheny ghost town because they tend to consist of rows of cellar holes, foundations, domestic trees in artificial rows, and overgrown lawns. When you're hiking out in the woods and you come across a non-native brand of tree, or ornamental shrubbery, or a patch of daffodils, then you just might be standing in a ghost town.

I've documented two abandoned villages on the popular website ghosttowns.com. Click here for a link to McKinley, and here for a link to Windy City. If you google either town, you'll get an online map of their whereabouts, and they still appear on official maps of the National Forest as if they were inhabited. (This is a snapshot of the main street in old Windy City, which is--as they say--gone with the wind.)

There are other ghost towns on the Allegheny, and I'll post them as I discover them. Does anyone out there know of ghost towns other than McKinley and Windy City?

A Blog about the Allegheny National Forest

As far as I know, there's nobody out there blogging about this stretch of woods. As our national forests go, the Allegheny's not the sexiest. And frankly, what little marketing it gets is institutional-looking and not at all user-friendly.

And it's true that the Allegheny started out with some disadvantages. It looks pristine to the untrained eye today, but in reality, these hills were long-since pillaged by loggers, oil-men, natural gas drillers, and even the otherwise harmless folks whose business was to treat leather...using tree bark. Photos of this land prior to its designation as a "national forest"--in 1923--show bare, eroded hillsides littered with tree stumps and brush, dotted with oil derricks, and crisscrossed by logging roads. It was an eerie, unsightly place of choked streams, polluted gullies, rowdy boomtowns, and barren hills. Only 4,251 acres of virgin forest remained (and remain to this day in the Tionesta and Heart's Content Scenic / Natural Areas). Even today, though the forest is carefully managed using "sustainable forestry" techniques, many people feel that logging and drilling are far too widely practiced.

And yet, since this place was made into a national forest, some 90 years ago, a lush, rich, amazingly diverse woodland has flourished here. Although the original forest was a shadowy place of hemlock and beech, the Allegheny today is home to an immense variety of species, dominated by its signature tree, the black cherry. The streams and brooks once again run clean. And the forest is home to all the wildlife you would expect as well as coyotes, numerous black bears, red foxes, and bobcats.

Beneath the rich understory of ferns that blankets the forest floor, you'll still find evidence of the forest's industrial past: rusted pipelines and forgotten tools, all returning to nature. Occasionally you'll come across an old cottage where oil drillers used to sleep or an abandoned derrick. The old forest roads are too many to map, and you'll find them running in all directions throughout the forest, all in varying degrees of "overgrown." Old town-sites remain, replete with the vacant foundations of houses and stores, stairways to nowhere, and ornamental front yards still planted with daffodils. These relics of bygone days add to the mystery and the wonder of the Allegheny and stand as a powerful reminder that Nature catches up to us all in the end.

Exploring these woods is my favorite pastime, and so I decided to document my discoveries online. If other woodland enthusiasts can use the info, fine. If not, that's fine, too. Happy hiking.