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.