PA Gallitzin State Forest - County Line Trail / Buffalo Road

Our second hike in Gallitzin State Forest traversed the very edge of the Allegheny Front on the County Line Trail with a loop back on the Buffalo Road, a dirt and gravel state forest road. The trail was very overgrown, mostly with springtime grasses and ferns, but without blowdowns or obstacles. Just pushing through was not difficult. To reach the trailhead I drove up a steep pass that reportedly marked one of many routes made by Bison that connected summer high grazing areas with protected winter valleys below. These ancient animal-made paths were worn into the landscape over thousands of years of seasonal migration and also used by indigenous people as footpaths. Many of the great Indian Paths of Pennsylvania followed migratory animal routes north to south and east to west, the Warriors Path among them in the valley below.  Later these paths were made over as wagon roads and then highways. 

Amos on the Mountain Road Pass

The hallmark of the Pleistocene in PA following the retreat of the last glaciers was existence of large herds of grazing animals including Bison, Wooly Mammoth, and Giant Elk when grasslands and tundra-like savanna defined the landscape. Animals moving en masse across the land began the network of migratory routes that today appear as mundane as the curvy paved two-lane RT 56 or the side slope- climbing Mountain Road.  Paleo-Indians would have followed these herds, living nomadically. By the end of the Late Pleistocene and into the warmer Woodland Periods of 8,000 years ago, these migration routes connecting the Allegheny high country with the Appalachian lowlands were well-worn into the massive wall of the Allegheny Front.   

Lunch spot 

During the 1700s  Euro-settler expansion and hunting pressure reduced historic modern Eastern Elk, White Tailed Deer, and the few remaining herds of Wood Bison to near extinction. The last Bison in PA  were killed in the early 1800s. Woodland Period Peoples who became the Shawnee, Erie, Iroquois, Susquehannock, and Lenni Lenape suffered too as herds disappeared and their lifeways were debilitated by colonizer culture and land use. By the mid-1800s as the last migratory herds of grazing animals disappeared, the ten thousand year old bioregional links that connected ecosystems of Appalachian Valley and Ridge province with the Allegheny Mountains flickered out. Then came the 20th century scientific controversy. Were these large herds of animals ever in Pennsylvania at all?  

Wild Sarsaparilla

There is scant archeological evidence that large herds of Bison survived up into the historical period. There are no skeletal remains, no physical record of trading of Bison parts, hides, or meat between indigenous and European settlers. Archeologists argue that Bison were not important elements of pre-contact culture because they do not appear in any form among in curated materials kept in collection. 

Paleo-archeologists argue that large herd animals were very early victims of rapid environmental change and improved human hunting strategy as evidenced by large caches of Clovis spear points found Western and Central PA. Historians of the early settlement period argue that settler journals and oral accounts of Bison roaming our lands cannot be used as physical evidence. But modern Native People of Pennsylvania disagree especially among the story-keepers of the Shawnee. They claim that ancestors participated in great Bison hunts along the Allegheny Front, hunting near the great migration paths that traversed the steep-sided mountain wall. The Shawnee story-keepers living today insist that Bison were an integral part of the pre-contact landscape and to argue otherwise is a form of white-washing their history on the land. This is an example of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) being contested by modern Western science (archeology in particular). It is a controversy I have my college students study in class. Who to believe and why? Science or story? 

A blaze ahead! Press on!

I spoke with an archeologist friend of mine about how to think about this debate. Kate said believe the people who were here to witness it, believe the lay of the land, and remember we haven't scientifically discovered everything there is to discover. "Lack of evidence is not evidence of absence." 

So I hiked along, wading through fern and high grass, imagining that a thousand years ago Amos and I might have observed hungry Bison emerging up through the gaps to reach the lush grasslands here before forest became the primary land cover. The Allegheny grasslands were most likely a product of periodic burning which kept the forests at bay, partially because of high altitude fires caused by lightening in a flammable grass and conifer ecosystem and partially because native people used managed fire to favor the grassland habitat that attracted Bison. 

As we walked I became more and more convinced - both mentally and spiritually - that we were walking an ancient path of gathered, moving herds of Bison on a high country spring migration. I could imagine the sounds of large animals moving across the land, the sharp tug and tearing of grass being pulled and munched, the grunts and grumbles of a moving mass of wooly, social creatures. I've followed a small herd of Bison to know what that sounds like and I will never forget how safe and content I felt walking along behind them at a good distance but close enough to smell their wooly coats and hear their conversations. The County Line Trail in all its overgrowth and windy bluster had this feel.     

Northern Starflower

Marsh Violet

Oak Apple Gall

Archeologists explain that yes, there have been many fragmentary discoveries of Bison in the central region of Pennsylvania but the evidence was not retained or collected. Physical evidence that has not been curated is considered simply hearsay. Bressler (1938) reports Bison bones from several Woodland Period sites near here including a midden where a Bison skull with an embedded arrow point was excavated. A worker tried to pull the arrow from the skull and broke everything including the fragile skull so they tossed it all! No evidence remains. Late Woodland and Pleistocene dig sites in the central and western Pennsylvania Alleghenies claim lots of finds for evidence like bits of bone and teeth but were done so long ago that no one thought to secure the evidence for future confirmation. Archeology and paleontology were such new branches of scientific discovery in the mid-1800s that protocols for future confirmation and recording hadn't been put into place. 

But what about all the places in Pennsylvania that include the word buffalo?    

Appalachian Ridge and Valley looking east from the Allegheny Front

Places names don't count as evidence either even though there are literally dozens of places in Pennsylvania with the name buffalo-something. There's Buffalo Mills near here, several Buffalo Creeks and a Buffalo Run in the valleys below. Further east there's Little Buffalo State Park and  Buffalo Township west of here. George Washington wrote in his journals while on assignment to Western Pennsylvania about abundant buffalo paths, buffalo salt licks, and the Shawnee trade in buffalo hides. But even our first president's written accounts are considered not admissible as evidence of Bison in Pennsylvania.  Even settlers and soldiers captured by Shawnee, who lived among them for decades as tribal adoptees (not slaves or prisoners) wrote or told of buffalo hunts and the use of "buffalo roads" to traverse difficult terrain. All this is considered anecdotal and not proof of real scientific evidence. 

Red Columbine (native)

Red Columbine

But Shawnee TEK includes stories of complex socio-ecological relationships between the Shawnee in Pennsylvania and the animals who they depended on in the times before colonization. My favorite story is "Brother Crow and Brother Buffalo" that highlights the interactions among hunters and the animals. In this story the people found it frustrating that crows and other scavengers would often get so excited for a buffalo hunt that their commotions would warn the buffalo away. Scavenging animals often follow hunters (human or non-human) in hopes of striking a win for the pickings and is observable today among deer hunters who shoo away crows and jays excited at the prospect of a gut pile or carcass to feast on.  

In the story the human hunters resorted to covering themselves in buffalo hides to disguise their actions from the crows. Still, the crows gave away the hunters. They captures Brother Crow to silence him and as a warning, put him into the coals of a campfire which singed his feathers and turned him black. Brother Crow promised to calm down and stop ruining the hunts. The Shawnee hunter explained that because everyone will starve or freeze, including the wild animals that depend on human hunters for scavenging their kills including fox, vulture, eagle, wolf, hawk, bear. Brother Crow was sworn to keep it down, stop calling to the whole world "Hunt! Come! Come! Hunt!" 

The Shawnee hunters release Brother Crow with an understanding that "Crow is our brother. Buffalo is our brother also. Brother Crow, who is now black, will promise not to ruin the hunt which could mean suffering for many. We will hunt buffalo only when we need food and skins. We will always remember to give thanks."  

On the edge

Yellow Birch

Halictid, Green Metallic Sweat Bee (native)

Descendants of the great mound-building cultures of the Woodland Period, the Shawnee of Pennsylvania and Ohio were in constant motion across  Allegheny landscapes never building permanent settlements. They were dependent on the movements of game animals and the seasonal resources of forests and grasslands which disappeared steadily under the White settler's axe and plow.  Driven steadily west by European colonizers and bloody military engagements, later by government decree and federal policy, the Shawnee fought hard for their homelands for more than 200 years but were finally forced onto Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma reservations.  

Shawnee story-keepers like the late Ron Higgins (see Notes) maintain critical ties to Shawnee environmental history.  The work of these men and women to preserve the TEK of the Shawnee People should be conserved as evidence of the socio-ecological relationships of people to the animals that once lived here. My archeologist friend agrees. "This evidence should not be white-washed by modern science. TEK is real evidence."

False Solomons Seal

False Solomons Seal

Solomons Seal

A great grass river

According to my All Trails app which was tracking our hike via satellite - that comforting little blue dot -  we were very close to the Buffalo Road, now a forest access road maintained by Gallitzin State Forest. The grass was so high on the nearly non-existent trail, however, that Amos was almost submerged beneath it. Minus the trees, I could imagine a great grasslands here "as high as a buffalo's eye" rolling across the plateau. The grass covered Amos and came up to my waist. We continued to follow this vast green stream through the woods until - poof! - we were standing on gravel! What a metaphorical cultural mind bender, going from dense corridors of grassland to open road in an instant. 

Anise Root

Wild Yam

As we walked the road back to where I'd left the truck, loose flocks of migrating birds - warblers, orioles, thrushes - crossed the opening overhead. My Merlin app was super busy recording the songs of passing birds. Growing along the roadsides I photographed a wide variety of plants including the largest field of native Red Columbine I've ever observed. These plants are all mentioned in traditional Shawnee TEK as being important medicinally and for food and fiber. I stopped to compare the False Solomon's Seal with "true" Solomon's Seal, one blooming profusely with single dangling flowers in a line beneath the zig-zag leaves from nodes in the stem and the other blooming in little sprays of tiny flowers at the terminal end of the ruffled leafed stem. These plants look alike but had very different medicinal uses and were collected and processed for treating upset stomachs as tea or poultices for cuts and bruises. 

View from County Line Trail

Back at the truck we rested for a little bit and I brushed Amos free of the thirty thousand grass seeds stuck in his short coat. I reviewed the many pictures I'd taken at the overlooks along the trail as I munched a trail snack. I thought about Kate challenging the rules of scientific evidence. It is hard to find and curate evidence of people and animals who have moved constantly across a landscape. And, it is easy afterwards for the colonizer argument to contest their existence, leveraged by Western scientific protocols. 

I am certain that Bison had long been on this land, the evidence for them embedded in the land itself. Their great migration routes are buried beneath our roads and highways. Their side-winding herd paths from valley to highlands well established along the Allegheny Front thousands of years ago are hiding in plain sight. Though beautiful views, I felt a kind of loneliness, a sadness for what was missing.

View from Buffalo and Mountain Roads overlook

Does the land miss its animals once they are gone? Does the land wish for its People to return? A modern Shawnee tribal leader, Jim Lee, whose family has lived in Oklahoma for generations stated in an interview that a generations-old wish among his band of former Pennsylvania/West Virginia people is to their return to the Alleghenies. "We have been away and we are going home"  

Notes:

The Great Archeological Bison Debate still rages on in Pennsylvania. https://twipa.blogspot.com/2020/02/bison-in-pennsylvania-yesnoprobably-not.html

James Swank (1918) "Buffaloes in Pennsylvania" Lancaster Historical Society https://www.lancasterhistory.org/images/stories/JournalArticles/vol12no8pp295_302_212827.pdf

Dr. Maria Wheeler-Dubas (2018) "Were They or Weren't They: The Pennsylvania Bison Natural History Mystery" Phipps Conservatory. https://www.phipps.conservatory.org/blog/detail/biopgh-blog-were-they-or-werent-they-the-pennsylvania-bison-natural-history

Ron Higgins, Wehyehpihehrsehnhwah, Shawnee Story-Keeper (TEK) passed away in 2015. He is greatly missed by all who knew him and learned from him.  People.  https://www.toledoblade.com/MattMarkey/2015/08/23/Tales-of-ancient-Shawnee-hunters-sadly-go-silent/stories/20150822171

Jim Lee, Shawnee tribal leader, video history of Shawnee removals and resettlements, with the Johnson County Library, Kansas, 2021. https://youtu.be/0DOTJPYSjXU?si=XoJaK1gf_6XgvvS5

PA Clear Shade Wild Area/ JST - Gallitzin State Forest

High up on the plateau of the Allegheny Front in the beautiful Gallitzin State Forest, Amos and I did a muck hike on a portion of the John Saylor Trail (JST) of about 7 miles. What another spectacular bog walk but in a region much less visited than the Black Moshannon State Park Great Bog we walked last week. 

At 2,700 feet, this area is the southern-most location in PA to see a true northern hardwood forest and northern bog complex. With recent heavy rains and some flooding on the Clear Shade Creek, the almost 3,000 acre wild area embedded within the 27,000 acre state forest was sopping wet and so much fun to explore.

Northern Pitcher Plant

After parking at the Fishermen's Access on the gravel and dirt Shade Road, we climbed down the steep timber steps down, down, down to Shade Creek which had just settled back into its banks at the marshy edges of the forest. The trail was deep in tannin-stained water until we got to a washed over section of Hemlock grove and the cable bridge which was freshly slick with mud and clogged with debris. Amos gave the bridge a hard nope so we changed our route to the main track of the JST. 

Yesterday's forest floor flood scrubbing!

Nope!

The flooded trail gave the impression we were hiking through an ancient, mystical age-old bogs that had been here since Wooly Mammoths roamed the tundra savanna. But not so! These ancient-looking northern woods and wetlands began growing over clear cut, deforested and heavy fire-scarred land, a time when a lot of Pennsylvania was a treeless landscape of slash and tailings from the late 1800s through 1920.  

In 1916 the Pennsylvania Forestry Commission took possession of this destroyed landscape and allowed the forest the space and time to restore itself with a lot of help in regulatory and ecological stewardship. Named for beloved 19th century Catholic priest Fr. Dimitri Gallitzin, "Apostle of the Alleghenies," the forest began to rebuild, seeming to echo his frequent mission homilies on resurrection and rebirth. A forest service worker who I met while walking the forest road back to the truck recalled that his grandmother had an icon of Fr. Gallitzin on her dining room wall when he was growing up near Pavia in the 1960s. "I'd like to know more about him," he said. "So would I!" I replied.  

A good old-fashioned muck trail!

Solid ground!

We crossed a series of boardwalks that crossed domed bogs of deep, bouncy moss mounded high with clumps of Northern Pitcher Plants. Painted Trilliums ringed the bogs on the higher ground, always under or near Hemlock surrounded by beds of Canada Mayflower. So much water was moving under the moss, each boardwalk we crossed caused the bog beneath to wiggle and burble. Amos stepped off one boardwalk on to what he thought was solid ground but he broke through and sank up to his knees! Quick! Back to the boardwalk! He was quite proud of himself. 

Staghorn Lycopodium

Heath wetland with fern hummocks

Marshy edge of the Clear Shade Creek

Balsam Fir and Larch ring a bog

Another boardwalk! Oh boy!

The land-use history of this landscape is industrial:  a logging railroad bed serves section of the JST, a large holding pond contained by a splash dam once submerged much of this section of forest, landings for logs and the roads to support trucks and horse teams cross cross the hills.  Rush beds encircled numerous depression bogs formed in the hollows of  long-gone stump pits. I watched tadpoles wiggle away from Eastern Spotted Salamanders that tried to gobble them up in one pool. A Northern Water Snake sat half hidden in the halo of rushes next to another. 

Jack-in-the-Pulpit

Bladder Rush

 Depression bog 

Railroad bed

Stacks of sandstone and siltstone appeared indicating the predominate geology of the Allegheny Mountains and the Allegheny Front. This bedrock formed from the bottoms of ancient inland seas and large river deltas.  Migratory birds, arriving from their wintering grounds in the Southern Hemisphere were everywhere - Chestnut-Sided Warblers, Black-Throated Green Warblers, Black-Throated Blue Warblers, Yellow Warblers, Yellow-Rump Warblers, Black and White Warblers, Bay-Breasted Warblers - so many warblers! They moved like water flowing through the canopy, some singing, some silent, an enormous wave of migratory activity which continued throughout morning. 

Sandstone formed from sediments of ancient inland seas

The immensity of this once destroyed forest turned wilderness was stunning. It actually slowed me down. I couldn't walk at more than a monk's pace (I know a little something about how monks walk) as my senses filled up with the miracle that is the Clear Shade Wild Area. These kinds of landscapes are survivors from an age of complete industrial degradation and have returned as great swaths of wilderness and varied ecosystems. But these places didn't come back on their own - they had a lot of help. 

Century-old Black Cherry

From the late 1890s through the 1920s Pennsylvania conservation leaders across the Commonwealth, especially in forestry, rallied behind new concepts of ecology and the science of ecological restoration as they looked despairingly at what had happened to our state. The most vocal and active of those early conservationists was Dr. Joseph Rothrock. "Sixty years ago, I walked from Clearfield to St Mary's, thence to Smethport - 60 miles - most of the way through glorious white-pine-and-hemlock forests. Now (in 1915) those forests are gone. I wish I could devote a week exclusively to photography along the banks of the Clarion (River). Mile after mile is simply laid waste. I could not 'abomination and desolation' out of my mind."  See: "Father of Pennsylvania Forestry" 

Rothrock on an overlook in Michaux State Forest (1917)

Rothrock's activism to conserve Pennsylvania forests resulted in dozens of newly established restoration projects for some of the state's most heavily damaged landscapes. One of those sites, the Gallitzin State Forest region is today as wild as it gets and if I weren't an environmental historian with an eye for signs of human impacts on the land, I would have guessed this place a forest primeval, as pristine and as perfect as a northern woodland one could find. But knowing that it had been the scene of incredible destruction and ecosystem loss, made this hike even more awesome. 

Golden Ragwort

Being the southern-most northern woodlands in Pennsylvania, however, means that Gallitzin State Forest is bearing a heavy burden when it comes to experiencing the greatest human impact of all - environmental change brought about on a warming planet. Some changes include cycles of long-term drought coupled with an increase in the number of annual severe weather events over the Mid-Atlantic region that play out as periods of torrential rains, high wind events, and the gradual creep of range expansions due to warming winters. 

On the horizon for this forest is the displacement of northern habitats and species with southern species range expansions, especially among tree species. Finding a Southern Bald Cypress living happily in a northern bog environment rather startled me as we walked the JST out to a forest road through a complex of lush, wet meadows. I stood facing a stand of Bald Cypress then turned around to see an Northwoods assemblage of White Pine, Hemlock, Birch. I was standing literally at the edge of environmental transition  while leaning on the John P Saylor Trail sign. 

I asked the forest worker later about the Bald Cypress. "It's been a mystery as to how this little stand started. To date, no one has found evidence of humans planting them so seeds must have been brought in from the swamps of Virginia or Southern Maryland on the feathers or in defecations of migrating birds. No matter, they are the leading edge of what's to come I suppose."  The migratory birds were still pouring through the canopy as we talked so I could imagine that a seed eater like a grosbeak or other finch could have dropped viable seed on a day like today on their way north. But how did we encounter that forest worker even to ask that question?

Southern Bald Cypress (?!)

 

As Amos and I left the JST to make the road walk back to the truck (2 miles) a Blackburnian Warbler landed directly in front of us. It did a little hop in the loose, warm dirt. Its orange and black head bobbed here and there. I realized it had found some big juicy ants and was scarfing them up like me with a bag of M&Ms. The last time I'd seen a Blackburnian was in the Shenandoah Mountains a few years ago and I was holding back a little jig until it flitted away into the canopy. So then we danced, me and the dog, down the road until embarrassingly the forestry truck rounded the bend and the forest worker stopped to ask if I was okay. "Tell me about those Bald Cypress," I said as if he hadn't seen me doing my bird dance. 

Painted Trillium

Cinnamon Fern

Blue Violet

Common Columbine (European)

Common Blue Violet

With almost 3,000 wild acres to explore our little day hike had me wanting more, so I know I will be back. The greenish-yellow highlight on the map below shows our alternative loop on the JST after Amos refused to cross the cable bridge to the south loop. 

Notes:

Gallitzin State Forest https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dcnr/recreation/where-to-go/state-forests/find-a-forest/gallitzin.html  and map https://elibrary.dcnr.pa.gov/GetDocument?docId=3253541&DocName=D06%20Gallitzin%20Public%20Use%20Map.pdf