Belden Lane writes in Backpacking with the Saints, that in the Celtic tradition of wilderness wandering "I venture out so I can find my way back in again." And, as I left the Cranberry Glades Botanical Area and found the Cowpasture Trailhead nearby, that's just how I felt taking those first steps on an 8-mile loop that would bring me right back here. The trail would skirt the valley-bound complex of bogs, cross three feeder streams, and climb a bit on to the mountain slopes that ringed the wetlands.
As I started I noted that a few cars had arrived at the parking area so I hurried to get out on the trail before a crowd formed. A crowd for me nowadays is like three people. Soon Amos and I were deep into a Hemlock woods making our way along a rise of land with the bog a distance out. The trail followed the trace of an old road that seemed too wide for an old wagon road. As we hiked deeper into the valley I couldn't shake the feeling that a crowd of people would suddenly materialize.
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| AllTrails map of the Cowpasture Trail Loop, MNF # 253 |
Eventually we came out onto a broad open meadow of Goldenrod. I discovered two species new to me - Flat Top and Mountain Decumbent Goldenrod - and spent a few extra minutes trying to get some good pictures and sketches. Then I saw a sign and at the same time felt that crowd of people even though nobody was there. The open meadow, according to the smallish interpretive sign, was the site of the Mill Point Federal Prison. I write more about what I discovered there in my latest Uphill Road post. The wide trail we'd hiked in on was part of the long prisoner-built access road to the prison yards.
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| Site of Mill Point Federal Prison (1938 - 1960) |
In addition to holding common criminals, draft resistors, and communist party members, the prison prided itself on rehabilitating men through skills training and access to a good education. The prison had no walls or fences as it was surrounded by the huge bog valley and anyone who tried to escape quickly found themselves thrashing through miles of cold water and deep, cold, sucking peatlands. The natural history of the place, however, piqued the curiosity of three inmates who found their love for botany and teaching.
"There were also three naturalists who used their time at the prison camp to document the flora, fauna and wildlife of the area. Worth Randle, Al Simon and Albert Huber were all at the camp around the same time and found a way to “escape” to the cranberry bogs where they did their research. Randle wrote to West Virginia University professor Maurice Brooks about his findings and Brooks encouraged him to create a plant listing of his findings. “So basically, the WVU professor enticed him to escape from prison and do these lists,” Springston said. Of course, the men were soon discovered, but instead of getting punished, they were allowed to continue their research and eventually allowed to lead tours of the area. " - Suzanne Stewart, The Pocahontas Times, Sept 24, 2025
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| Decumbent Goldenrod |
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| Bushy Bluestem |
After spending some time in the open meadow I continued on the trail and crossed the first bridge, newly replaced and arched high over a stream. The bog was so thick with Cotton Grass it looked like snow. There have been a few very cold mornings here but no hard frosts yet so there was still quite a bit of flowering and green across the valley. I could imagine the interest those inmate-naturalists had taken in doing surveys and tours of this place. Because of their efforts we have a solid baseline of species found here in the 1930s that botanists and ecologists can compare to today to show change in this ecosystem over time.
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| Cotton Grass |
I scrambled up a steep hill where the trail climbed a mountain slope. Immense oaks grew along what surely had been an old wagon road and my steps crunched a heavy crop of acorns underfoot. We frightened several deer and a small flock of turkey foraging along the road up ahead. White Snakeroot was still in bloom and it frosted the sides of the path in white.
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| A newer bridge over Charles Creek |
I came upon an older man taking a break from his mountain biking. He was sitting under one of the old oaks catching his breath from having pushed his bike up that steep grade. He was glad for the company and was happy to tell me all about the area as he was born and raised and worked in one of the mountain valley towns a few miles away. He taught in a special ed program in the local public high school for nearly 40 years. He knew the history of the prison, the naturalist-prisoners' story, and about one of the prisoners I was very interested to learn had been held there, civil rights activist and draft resistor James Lawson. He even participated in some of the civil rights events that happened in West Virginia in the 1960s as a college student and remains active in civil rights issues "especially now - something I can never retire from. We always need to stay vigilant and active to protect people." Amen.
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| White Snakeroot |
White Snakeroot continued to line the footpath. This plant was a one of the most utilized panacea plants in the Cherokee and Shawnee forest pharmacy. It was used to treat just about anything related to the lower gut and reproductive organs and used also as a fever reducer. This time of year in early autumn would have been when people collected the entire plant from root to flowerheads to process into a range of medicinal products from tea blends, root powders, ground flower and tender stem poultices. It was even used to treat ailments suffered by livestock and horses when Indian peoples began to farm the valleys in the style of livestock dependent settlers who overran the area in the mid-1700s.
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| Red Spruce summit and restoration site |
When I was able to get a full view of the valley I saw how the ridge lines were topped with Red Spruce and nearby one viewpoint I could see a replanting effort site mentioned by our project leader the day before. We worked in another site but she circled the place on the map where I might see their work from twenty years ago. The replanted restoration site today is plainly visible from a viewpoint that overlooks an old prison-era orchard slope.
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| Flat-topped Goldenrod |
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| Shrubby St Johnswort |
The restoration of Red Spruce throughout the Southern Appalachian Highlands is an ongoing multi-partner effort to try and right a century-long series of wrongs that people have inflicted upon these mountainous landscapes. Those wrongs include fifty years of overharvesting, poor forestry practices, massive fires, coal-fired powerplant emissions, vehicle emissions, and introduced disease outbreaks. The restoration efforts are making progress but as our project leader stated, "Our great-grandchildren may ... may ... experience the great Red Spruce forests as they were before the logging era took the first of many swings at this species."
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| Work site sketches - Project RESTORE |
Restoration is both a theme in my hiking as well as in my job. I seem to have found a way to have the idea of restoration cross two areas of my life kind of seamlessly. I work professionally as an ecological restorationist and when possible I look for places that could use my skills in forest restoration as a volunteer. I've done a few "work-camping" partner projects with USFWS in the great Moose Bog in northern Vermont, on a restoration project with a Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve Grasslands Project in Kansas, and with a survey for American Chestnut in Shenandoah National Park.
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| Alder and Reindeer Moss |
I find the idea of restoration hopeful and encouraging, especially when I hike into places where nature itself has healed some great destruction and I have observed while hiking some really astounding reintroductions of wildlife that were only possible because vital habitat has been under careful restoration stewardship. I was even an early volunteer for the Red Wolf Recovery Project on the coast of South Carolina and when I return to the southern states and learn that the Red Wolf survives in some places because of that work, I myself feel restored.
After many miles of hiking on the edge of the Cranberry Glades bog system, we popped out of the woods on to an unpaved forest road that took us on flat land back a mile to where the truck (and lunch) awaited. Looking into the hemlock and spruce woods, speckled in sunlight and shadow, the Glades felt mysterious even seductive. I wanted to plunge right back in. We passed the trailhead sign for the Cranberry Glades Botanical Area where I had walked earlier that day and then came upon the Cowpasture Trail sign where we had started our loop hike. Amos refused to smile for the camera, looking instead through the woods towards the truck where his water dish and food bowl and comfy camp bed were. It had his rapt attention.
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| Let's eat lunch! |
The maps of the Cranberry Wilderness Trail system as provided by the USFS are pretty poor. They look like someone made them with a bunch of potato stamps! So I had to dig around the interwebs to find something better and came across this nice
USGS-based topo map made by a user on the sub-Reddit "Wilderness Backpacker." I share both maps here for comparison. I ended up using the excellent trail guide in Notes below, a downloaded map through AllTrails (there is NO signal here at all), and had an okay paper map with me that I picked up at the closed-due-to-government-shutdown Cranberry Glades Visitor Center. It was the last one in the rack and I returned it when I was done no worse for wear.
Sub-Reddit User Map:
I discovered so many great trails with this book that I dog-eared it early on. I hope to return to see more that the Mon has to offer for hikers. The Cowpasture Trail Loop in the Cranberry Glades Wilderness area is a favorite of the authors: "If you can only hike one trail on a visit to the Mon, this is the one."
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