Fox Dam

Rarely has a day in the forest been so strange. It had a surreal, vision-like quality. Not only did I wander aimlessly through unknown territory, but this was the first day the woods had a genuine feel of summer.

A friend called and invited me to go along with him while he cleared and reblazed a section of the North Country Trail that he maintains. He said he was going to start at Fox Dam, an old town site in the forest that I've been hoping to visit. I've never been to Fox Dam because old timers will tell you that, yes, it does exist, and you really ought to go there. But nobody can tell you how to get there. Like so many places deep in the forest, you just have to know the way already, or else follow someone who does know, because the roads out to the place are a labyrinth, a complete rabbit's warren.

A brief history of Fox Dam: Some say that the town of Ludlow originated here, and many of the buildings in Ludlow were moved up to Route 6 from this far-flung site. There was a dam here to control the water levels on Tionesta Creek. Of course, Ludlow was a tanning town and a hellacious place until the wealthy Olmsted Family built their fine estate there.

Fox Dam is a good place to fish, camp, and swim. And that's what folks were doing when we got there today. This spot is one of those annual Brigadoons of the ANF: it's an empty space in the forest that becomes a town again on Memorial Day weekend, a tent city this time around. Come Tuesday, it will disappear and anyone who chances across the place will see little more than a grassy clearing in the woods and a footbridge over the East Branch of Tionesta Creek.

And so, I followed my friend out to Fox Dam, saw dozens of people camped out there with children and dogs. We went our separate ways; him to the North Country Trail and me up along a gated forest road that led far out into remote and wild country along the creek. I thought my trail was a loop that would bring me back to the crowded little town site. I was wrong---which was pretty surreal in itself---and I wandered far off into the woods.

Even with a map and compass, I couldn't be sure where I was. When you don't really know where you're going in the summer forest, the place becomes an incoherent vision of deep green and birdsong. The heat was stifling, too. In time, I chanced upon a bridge, which is rare, and the semi-permanent camp site pictured here.

And I settled down at the campsite and took a nap. That, too, was odd. I don't know if I slept half an hour? An hour? Upon waking, among late afternoon shadows, I decided to admit defeat and retrace the long route back to the town site and my car. On the return trek, I came face to face with the hiker's worst fear: a lone bear cub. Fortunately, the little fellow tore off into the greenery before I even had time to think about where its mother might be lurking. I was impressed by how fast that little guy could run.

I located the car and managed to find my way back to Route 6, but honestly, I couldn't tell you how to get back out to Fox Dam. It was all a blur.

Mystery Pines of Granere

There are about six rows of red pines in the old residential section of Granere, the abandoned town site described in the last post. On one hand, it's pretty clear that these tattered pines didn't just sprout in perfect rows. Someone planted them. On the other hand, they don't look more than 60 years old, and Granere has been unoccupied for 107 years.

So the question is: Did the Forest Service plant these trees in an attempt to reclaim the gaping clearing at Granere? (And for that matter, why is the town site still mostly treeless after all these years?) The CCC did have a penchant for planting these gangly red pines back in the 30s, a tradition that the Forest Service continued into the 60s.

Or are these trees actually remnants from the days when the town was occupied? As noted in a long-ago post, our hardy ancestors planted pines around their homes as a windbreak and in order to prevent snowdrifts from piling up against their doors and windows. I remember reading once that some evergreens are often older than they appear because the loss of needles on their lower branches causes them to subsist in a sort of malnourished state.

Speaking of suffering trees, I've been getting creeped out by all the dead trees that line the roads, especially the interstate highways. Evergreens are most affected, with dead orange needles; the branches closest to the roadway are always the worst. But deciduous trees are also dying, their gaunt, bare branches clutching at the sky like dead hands. Turns out it's the salt that we use on the roads in the winter. Trees hate salt. So there's a "catch 22." Bad winters are good for trees because they help to kill off invasive species, but the worse the winter weather, the more salt we put on the roads, killing off more trees.

From Here to Granere

Granere is a ghost town if ever I met one. It's exactly the kind of discovery that makes life in this woodland region worthwhile.

I heard about Granere from Troutdude, a member of that vast Kane Diaspora, a faithful reader of The Journal, and a fellow blogger. Unlike most of the Diaspora, who now live in North Carolina, Troutdude has the originality to spend his exile out in Columbus. So, let's all lift our collapsible water bottles to the Troutdude!

Unlike other ANF ghost towns that I've documented (McKinley, Guffey, Windy City, and Corduroy), Granere's name does not appear on any map. You can Mapquest it and come up with nothing. It was a logging town with 65 homes and a large sawmill, centered around a logging pond. It was a straw fire of a place, active from about 1898 through 1903.

In fact, it seems that Granere was the successor to Gardeau. As one logging company made its destructive path through the forests of Northern Pennsylvania, it built temporary towns, used up all the lumber, and then abandoned the towns. When the lumber at Gardeau was depleted, the company moved on to Granere. In the long run, Gardeau fared a little better than Granere, since the tomb of a once-famous Civil War officer is located there, as well as many hunting camps.

So what will you find if you visit old Granere? You'll find a broad clearing with the swampy remains of a pond. East of the pond is where the town's residential neighborhood stood, and if you pay attention, you'll see the telltale red pines standing in rows. The highlight of any trip to Granere is the stone foundation of a large sawmill that was constructed in a small tributary to the Kinzua Creek. There are some old millstones. There also seems to be the silted-up remains of a canal, not pictured.

I also chanced across a few shards of crockery. It appeals to the latent archaeologist in me, sifting through the remains of these old towns. Who were the unfortunate souls who spent five toilsome years here? What were their names, and where did they go from here? Surely no one ever considered this sad little shantytown "home," and yet surely some child made his or her first steps here. Surely a mother died giving birth somewhere on this site. Surely a man, wracked with the desperation that only the poor can know, hanged himself from the rafters of one of its gloomy houses. Surely there was love here once, and generosity, and addiction, and fear, and hope. Who were they? And where did they go?

At times, when I'm fed up or underwhelmed by my lot in life, I wish I'd paid better attention in Hebrew class. I could have made a life of archaeology.

I've double-checked, and Granere is on public land. To get to it, take US219 north from Lantz Corners about 2 miles, then turn left onto Mead Run Road. Take that to FR186, and follow the forest road for 1.2 miles to a place where it intersects with a well-marked snowmobile trail. (This trail is the old railroad grade for the trains that took the dead tree trunks out of Granere.) Follow the snowmobile route south until it veers back east and descends into the town. You can hear a rooster crowing from the town site, so it's sure that there's a current settlement nearby.

Troutdude also sent me some photos of Granere when it was a living place. I'll try to include those in a future post.

[An anonymous message to The Journal on August 23, 2011, claims that Granere is actually on private land, so it's off limits to hikers.]

Sleeping Giant

In case you haven't noticed, my attentions have been turning more and more toward rock cities. A rock city is nothing more than a cluster of boulders. They're called "cities" because the best ones have dramatic skylines, like a city.

Truth be told, I'd take an abandoned town site over a rock city any day. But I've already explored most of the ghost towns within a half hour drive of Kane. Rock cities, by contrast, can be found at the tops of most valley walls.

Locals call this place "Sleeping Giant." The rock city itself is sort of unremarkable, aside from a few curious formations, like a boulder--second photo from the bottom--that I call the Flatiron.


Sleeping Giant is a spacious hollow beneath the vast overhang a boulder. Some say the Indians used to camp here, and it's easy to see why they would. The top photo is taken from the top of a nearby boulder. If you look closely, you can see the fire ring and the stone benches that campers have set up inside the camp site. The second photo was taken from the inside; there you see the fire ring with smoke stains on the ceiling.

It's the perfect spot to hang out for half an hour, listening to the rain falling in the forest.

If you head southeast from the rock city, you come to an overlook, seen in the bottom photo. The brook at the valley floor is known as Fools Creek, and from this height, you can hear a waterfall far below.

To get to the fabled and much visited Sleeping Giant--where I found an unopened bottle of diet pepsi--take PA666 almost to Minister Creek campground. Just before rounding the bend into the campground, turn right and ascend a big hill on FR24. The first road to the right is gated and unnumbered (it also doesn't exist on the ANF map). Park there and walk in.

This road passes through brushy forest, recently cleared. In less than ten minutes, you'll begin to sense something big, a looming presence in the trees off to your left. At first it raises the "fight or flight" hackles on the back of your neck, until you take a closer look to see that it's not forest elephants or an army of gray sasquatches, but a rock city. That's your destination.

There's a lesser rock city off to the right, sort of a Newark living in the shadow of Manhattan. It's actually worth a visit, too.

There's no hiking for me this Sunday, and I'll be working on Saturday, so I took half a day today.

Dutchman Run

Seneca Head

Here are two shots of a rock that I call Seneca Head. If you look at it long enough, maybe you'll see why. Seneca Head presides over the deep ravine of Dutchman Run, one of the most scenic brooks feeding into the Kinzua Bay.

Like all the best streams in the region, Dutchman Run has a grassy old forest road on one bank, and this old track follows the stream into Warren County. The forest here is magnificent, remote, undisturbed by all the heavy machinery that bedevils its more southerly reaches. Because the terrain around Dutchman run is so rocky, the stream itself tumbles over many mini-waterfalls, and these--coupled with spring birdsong--add a musical quality to the hike.

Also, there's a scent to the forest at this time of year which reminds me of New Orleans long ago. It's a spicy, vegetal smell, pungent and rich.

This old forest road twists and strays but never wanders far from Dutchman Run. It offers spectacular views of the stream, sometimes far below, sometimes very near. The track gets dicey, but never fully disappears.

I wonder if someone, somewhere knows how Dutchman Run got its name? Of course, long before I'd ever heard of the Netherlands, I knew a "Dutchman" to be an Amish person... As a small child, whenever I mispronounced words, my grandmother used to say, "Oh, you're Dutch." She didn't mean Netherlandic; she meant Amish.

You've probably noticed a pull-off parking area on the outside of a sharp hairpin curve in the Longhouse Scenic Byway. The parking area is exactly 3 miles south of Dew Drop and exactly 3 miles north of the entrance to old Camp Cornplanter. There's a narrow path from this parking area that leads into the trees and follows Dutchman Run. This becomes that old forest road that follows the stream for three or four miles. Seneca Head is only about ten minutes in.

["Seneca Head," "Dutchman Run." Why is geography so...racial?]

Eternal Rocks

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the starlit heaven,
The glorious sun's life-giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind's tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.

~Patrick of Ireland

Watson Run Caves

The geologic oddities that I call "caves" probably wouldn't do much for a serious spelunker. On the Big Level, we only have caves of the "tectonic" variety. That's to say, we have shallow, hollow areas between boulders: tunnels, crevasses, recesses in the rock, and none of them very large.
Boulders tend to be found near the tops of hills, except that there aren't really "hills" around here. The things that look like hills are the crumbling edges of a vast plateau. This plateau is crisscrossed by steep valleys that have been carved by streams and rivers. And, because most roads and settlements are on the low streams, the tops of these valley walls create the illusion of a mountainous countryside. In fact, there are very few mountains around here, only the jagged upper reaches of a rugged plateau nicknamed "The Big Level."


And I don't know why the boulders tend to be near the tops of the valley walls, but they are. And that's also where you find the tectonic caves. Unlike true caverns, which remain 50 degrees year round, a tectonic cave is usually about the same temperature as the outside world. And yet, a tectonic cave does offer refuge for human and beast, deep shade, and shelter from the elements.

These photos show several of the five tectonic caves that I've explored at Watson Run Rocks, near PA66 at Pigeon. (I returned there today with a real camera.) The bottom photo is the best. It's a high, sheltered ledge under a stony overhang, a restful perch above the one of the most spectacular rock cities in the Allegheny National Forest.


You can't really tell from the photo, but there's a ten or twelve foot drop just beyond the ledge and a good view of the fourth tier of the five-tier rock city. A great place to lay in wait...but I don't know what for.