VA - Booker T. Washington National Monument: A Reconstruction Landscape

On my way home to Pennsylvania from South Carolina this week I stopped at Booker T. Washington National Monument in the Piedmont hills of Hardy County, Virginia. It's an interesting park to roam around, especially for reading the layers of landscape that portray an historic, commemorative, and conservation chapter in the American story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. 

Booker T. Washington

This is hard-scrabble farm country. The Virginia Piedmont hills and a long history of working the land hard, mainly for tobacco, stripped topsoil and nutrients from the ground. Clay and hard pan peeks up from overused areas and paths not covered in tarmac. Out on the pastures, a small mixed herd of livestock drops manure that revives, in a small way, some pretty tired land. "The livestock have only been around as long as the park," Ranger Betsy, park manager, explained. "Before acquisition  by the park service, this was quite a busy little tourist attraction. Before that, from when the farm was sold by Mrs. Burroughs after the Civil War to NPS acquisition, it was run-down, neglected, and very scrubby."  A small post office was constructed over the site where a slave cabin may have stood, where Booker was born into slavery in 1856. They issued commemorative stamps and minted coins to sell to visitors. "It was a booming attraction - but a lot was lost because of the lack of conservation concern. Hopefully we're making strides to correct a lot of those problems."

Tobacco hanging in the reconstructed drying barn.

I took a hike around the park, following the farm paths and then wandered down through a wooded valley on a mile-long loop trail. There are several open fields and a few meadows that at the time Booker was a boy, would have all been in tobacco. A hungry and labor-intensive crop, tobacco feeds heavily on the soils where it grows. It doesn't take long, less than a decade, for tobacco lands to show nutritive exhaustion. Considering that tobacco was grown through the Virginia Piedmont and Coastal Plain since the 1700s, this would have been some very tired land. Still, it was a cash crop that - in a good year - could make the farmers a decent dollar. In a bad year, when insects, drought, or blight got the better of a crop, families like Booker's worried that their masters would sell one or more of them off to cover the loss of tobacco earnings.

Tobacco in the demo garden.

Booker's family was owned by the Burroughs family who also owned the land they farmed. Land ownership was an important source of social position and wealth, a carry-over from colonial times thanks to the English concept of the estate, landed gentry, and social status. Even small holders gained a certain amount of prestige and respect from their community for owning land, and even after American won its independence from England, this very English system of class and position lasted well into and beyond the Civil War. But what didn't transfer quite as well as the class system, as an environmental student from Roanoke pointed out on our hike, was the idea of land care. "Every minute of the day, nearly year 'round, time was given to the tobacco crop or preparing the ground for the tobacco crop or curing the crop or weeding the crop. Setting time and effort aside to address issues of soil exhaustion, especially for small holders with limited labor forces - it affected the bottom line."

Slave cabin reconstruction.

At the time of the Civil War, scrubby, washed out edges of tobacco fields might erupt in pioneer stands of white pine or red cedar. These grew quickly and were certainly harvested as the wood was needed. A white pine sapling stand of a hundred trees could provide enough 8" round logs to build a cabin. The red cedar splits from trees less than a decade old could shingle its roof. 

Burrough's family home.

Today the site is a pleasant mix of fields and woods. Some of the wooded valley exhibits maturing stands of oak but there are signs of the nearly constant change that has defined this valley since early settlement. The small creek that starts at the livestock barn as a spring bubbling up from the meadow, descends into a valley where it begins to widen and meander. Here you can see up to four feet of soil atop a rough layer of weathered rock on the creek bed. This is washed away soil from the field upstream - two centuries of lost soils laid across a wide creek valley where a neighbor's cattle graze now.

Four feet of rich topsoil layer the valley.

Further along the loop trail the small creek joins a river. The trail leads through several open glades where high flood waters deposited berms of soil several feet high and almost block the view of the river. Hillsides show evidence of caving and scouring where floods impacted the high ground. Without forest cover upriver, or protective ground cover of any kind, naturally occurring flood cycles must have been dramatic during spring rains and hurricane season in fall as rivers ran thick with washed out soil.  By some accounts,  18th century to 19th century Virginia Piedmont lost two feet of soil when the land was nearly cleared of its forests and tobacco was King.

Former tobacco field, now meadow.

The eroded soil in the creek bed banks and the high flood berms along the river were some clues, but there were others. Looking up the hill at the high ridge of maturing poplar forest, interspersed with old pine and tulip poplar, I could see gullies running straight downhill from what would have been cleared land at the top. Hillsides too steep to plow were often left as scrub and when the farm was sold and later neglected, this scrub land released the next generation of forest. 

Maturing forest of white oak, tulip popular, and maple.

The woodlot where Booker and his family spent their precious free time, usually Sunday afternoons, offered wild berries in season, plenty of mushrooms sprouting from timbered ground, and some game hunting. Even a scrappy old woodlot provided a wide variety of forage food from second growth hickories, sumac, and walnut. This was a landscape of constant disturbance where the pioneer stage of a forest and its shaggy succession stages were most common.

Old field gullies are now thick with forest

My walk didn't take too long, but I spoke with some students about landscape history and we were back in the woods for over an hour. We heard downy woodpeckers, a red-bellied woodpecker, a pileated woodpecker. A red-tailed hawk wheeled overhead in a game of chase with a crow. We watched as the crow first dodged the hawk, then the pursued became the pursuer and the crow chased the hawk. Booker loved the woods and wrote often about  his time when he was a young boy on this land - watching nature, enjoying his time watching birds, insects, collecting leaves and flowers. As a father, he raised his children on a steady diet of nature study. The nature study movement, an important part of our conservation and education history, influenced his work as head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Nature was always a powerful influence and inspiration for Washington throughout his life and in the work of his students. 

Old red cedar on the edge of a pasture.

Looking around the woods we decided that most of the forest type we observed was transitioning from pineland to hardwood. Old pines stood sparsely among the canopies of maple, oak, poplar, and hickory. Few young pine trees can survive in dense shade, so as the hardwoods grew through and over the pine woods, young pine were shaded out. We noted that most of the young pine we saw were along the sunnier trail sides as we returned to the main farm site. I wondered out loud how long it would take for an abandoned meadow or pasture to revert to pine. One student from the area laughed and said "Don't blink!" White pine was the predominate sapling pine along the trail, but we also found pitch pine, shortleaf pine, and a few loblollly pine - all mature with a few saplings nearby. It was fun to teach students how to tell the species by the needle bundles!

An old loblolly pine in the dense woods

After saying goodbye to the students I continued my walk around the park, poking my head in the reconstructed cabins, barns, and outbuildings. These places are used for living history and program activities, so they are open, cool, and uncluttered. The tobacco barn smelled sweet and I stood under a low rack of drying leaf, remembering my Uncle Mack who smoked his own homegrown tobacco in thick cigar-like "fingers." There were, in fact, so many things in and around the log buildings that reminded me of my late uncle and aunt who lived in a cabin near the Shenandoah, that I got a little teary-eyed! I remember helping to string beans, thread apple rounds, smoke venison, and care for bees who lived not in a box hive but in a "bee gum" - a hollowed out black gum log on end with a slab of wood for a roof.

Beans on the string. 

Two holer and a smoke house.

Piggery.

Red cedar "bull walls" to keep large swine in.

A friendly heritage breed sow.

The theme of the park seems to focus on the idea of reconstruction both in the physical appearance of the place and in the period of time that the end of slavery would usher in. Although some of the farm's former slaves stayed in the area and negotiated for paid farm labor with area land owners, Washington's family decided to move to West Virginia where Booker worked in a salt packing plant and later, in a coal mine, before enrolling in a school (and continuing to work full time in the mine!).

"Snake fence" typical of Mid-Atlantic farms 1760 - 1880s.

The Reconstruction is - in my opinion - one of the most understudied period for environmental history, a period I hope to sink my teeth into a some point. From the end of the Civil War to the days of Jim Crow and the onset of World War One, there was so much social change that we can barely parse it out as it is. From the perspective of rural America, both North and South, however, women were empowered to stand up for more representation.

The Burroughs lost all three sons to the war. Only Billie is buried in the family cemetery.

It was on the farms and in service jobs once held by men who had gone off to fight, that women proved that they were smart, tough, and resilient. Former slaves, free at last to claim their own futures, worked for wages, built and graduated from higher education, and took positions once only the domain of white men. It wasn't easy for either women or African Americans during Reconstruction to claim and protect new economic and political ground. Owning property was no longer a requirement for upward mobility but both groups fought hard against institutional discrimination and racism that sadly we still deal with today. Just listen to the rhetoric of today's election cycle!

Pines along the edge.

After the war, the federal government under Andrew Johnson confiscated and redistributed agricultural land to encourage black farmers to settle and work on forty acre parcels. Named the "Sherman Reserves" these lands were given then - in a spectacular turn about - returned to former owners who worked to reinstate the plantation system in the share system.  The possibility of Southern land reform slipped away as disenfranchised land owners attempted to recover what they had lost by rebuilding a private land ownership system that closely resembled what had existed before Emancipation. Federal policy-makers were split on how to appease angry land owners and prevent what many believed would be an insurrection among freedmen farmers. White land owners were warned that they could not coerce freedmen back into an exploitative labor situation, but that they could contract with them to work those forty acre parcels as sharecroppers. Land, power, status, fear, and a new brand of terror ensued.

The bell that rang freedom for the slaves owned by the Burroughs family.

The ideas of Reconstruction and failed land reform floated around the farm as I ducked into one building then another. I tried to imagine former slaves working for wages on this land and surrounding farms. I could feel the tension and fear of intimidation and threats, even violence, that white landowners brought to bear against former slaves. Though the reconstructed farm site looks quaint, even peaceful today, we can't really get a grip on what happened after that bell rang. Fearing the retributions of their former owners, the Washington family headed west to live with Booker's stepfather who had escaped the farm years before and waited for them there. I wondered, though, what happened to the others who elected to stay. Their stories are not as well documented as Booker's. 

My head was spinning. Maybe fall allergies? Maybe overwhelmed by all the possibilities for future research into Reconstruction environmental history? I walked back to the park visitor center and sat with Betsy for awhile. She helped me regain a little balance. She agreed that landscape studies are all but non-existent for what came after the freedom bell rang on the Burroughs farm. The students from Roanoke College were just leaving, reflecting on all they had learned. It was a great afternoon of hiking, exploring, and asking lots of questions for which there are - for now - few answers.

Hey, Ranger Betsy!

Notes:

Booker T. Washington National Monument
https://www.nps.gov/bowa/index.htm
History page
https://www.nps.gov/bowa/a-birthplace-that-experienced-slavery-the-civil-war-and-emancipation.htm

A really nice NPS publication I bought from Betsy, The Reconstruction Era, I took with me on my hike to read and reflect upon. It's available here and through the online bookstore (Eparks) at (the most excellent) Eastern National, an interpretive and publishing organization that supports our Eastern National Parks. http://easternnational.org/

PA Rocky Ridge County Park: Mature Oak Ridge Forest

Rocky Ridge County Park was the first county park established in York County, PA, in 1968. It has a long history of community advocacy, volunteerism, and multi-use. Today I visited with my coonhound, Bug. She met an Eagle Scout working on a trail project, a county bird club hawk watcher, an advocacy group for families with autistic children, a deer hunter scouting the hunting area, a lady training for her Camino in spring 2017, volunteers preparing the annual Christmas light show walk, a couple from Ohio who made this their lunch break spot on their way to New York, and a park ranger who checked to see if she wanted a treat (she did!). That was all before we started hiking. 

American Chestnut is everywhere - just short.

Consolidated river cobble is the bedrock of the ridge.

Once we got underway, Bug and I hiked a combination of five miles of rough trail and smooth gravel paths through one of my favorite local mature oak forests. The Susquehanna is to the east and not far away, but with the dense canopy still holding its leaves, the river valley could only be glimpsed through the woods. To the north and south a powerline right-of-way corridor provides views over the York Valley to the south and the Codorus Creek Valley to the north. The oaks and hickories are massive and the understory is healthy and diverse. Towhees, hermit thrushes, and white-breasted nuthatches were the birds I encountered within the deep woods, and at the north and south hawk watch platforms I observed lots of turkey vultures, a sharp-shinned hawk and a kestrel. I would have spent more time on the platforms with the birders but Bug was pulling me onward!

Ancient river bottom upthrust to the top of Rocky Ridge - hence the park's name.

Conglomerate ledges give up high views of the forest glens.

Boulder fields on rough trails.

Smooth crusher run paths are wide and flat.

Once Bug had slowed down (after three miles) I was able to take the time to observe the finer points of the woods - the flaming leaves of sassafras and hickory, the tawny fern fields, late blooming fall flowers.  A tufted titmouse couple followed us noisily down the flat gravel path. 

Sassafras.

Mockernut hickory - or in these parts - "hognut" (Carya tomentosa)

Fern field under mountain laurel and oak.

Virginia creeper.

Now at a comfortable stroll, Bug and I walked another two miles. There was still some wind left over from yesterday's cold front passing. As a mature forest, there is always the possibility of limb fall during and after a day of high winds. There's a warning sign at the entrance to the park that warns hikers that this ridge is a dangerous place to be on a windy day. The older oak trees seemed to have had a summer's worth of old limb shed as we hiked along. Luckily no loud CRACK startled us as it did yesterday at the Pinnacle in Lancaster County. But there were plenty of moaning trees, leaners caught on the trunk of another. It was odd but beautiful music to accompany us on the south ridge trails. 

Carpet of red.

Late woodland blooms.

Oak, hickory, witch hazel, and hay-scented fern.

A mature forest contains a complex network of interrelated habitats and communities. The ridge top affords enough wind exposure to topple a fair number of older or diseased trees each year that create openings in the canopy. Near every fallen trunk or massive limb fall, I observed different and often competing plant communities trying to capture the gift of sunlight. On the rockiest sections of ridge and trail, there were immense mountain laurel thickets with some laurels quite old. The twisting and angle of the old muscular limbs of the laurel can be read like a book about available sunlight as tender new growth over decades, if not a century, reached towards the light of canopy openings. 

Mountain laurel thickets twist and turn.

These are surely old growth mountain laurels with trunks big and muscular.

Old mountain laurel thickets are nearly impassable.

The days are getting noticeably shorter and after five miles the light had softened as the sun began its descent in the west. The air turned a bit chillier and hikers began to gather at the overlooks for last views of the day. I stopped to chat to the Camino trainer, a wonderful women of about 70 who is walking up to ten miles per day with her poles. Just as we began to exchange training stories at a scenic bend in the trail two mountain bikers came clambering between us and the lead biker who was going too fast for the rocky trail failed to give us warning of his approach. I think he really didn't see us in time before he cut through us, barely missing the woman with his handle bars, then lost control when his front tire hit a hunk of conglomerate boulder. Down he went with the second biker right on top of him. I wanted to take a picture of the pile-up but thought better of it and asked instead if they were okay. They said yes, apologized for going too fast, and walked their bikes down the trail.  Hmm. Flash-backs of my Camino when mountain and road bikers sometimes made the way dangerous for us hikers. Bug and I walked with the Camino hiker-in-training out of the woods to the final overlook.

One last look - the York Valley.

A beautiful hike - again!

Notes:

Rocky Ridge is one of eleven county parklands, each with its own unique character and natural history. As one park user said to me today "I don't mind paying my county taxes one bit when I know that I have these beautiful parks to visit any time I want to."  (I feel the same!)

https://yorkcountypa.gov/parks-recreation/the-parks/rocky-ridge.html

I chatted quite a while in the parking lot before we started hiking with several families who were hiking the park with their autistic children. I have a grandson and nephew with autism so I am always interested in learning about community groups that provide opportunities for these families to enjoy time together outdoors. The families I met today were from Autism York: 

http://www.autismyork.org/index.php

PA Pinnacle Overlook Trails: Watching Walls and Water

I read this morning's headline story with some sadness:

"The 8-inch pipeline was breached in Gamble Township, Lycoming County, at about 3 a.m. Friday, according to a statement from Sunoco Logistics, which shut down the line after detecting a drop in pressure. The bureau said their “best guess” is that 1,300 barrels of product — approximately 55,000 gallons — spilled into Wallis Run, a tributary that flows into the Susquehanna. Comparatively, an Olympic-sized swimming pool holds 660,430 gallons of water.

"A response team from the Department of Environmental Protection is on site with local emergency responders, the bureau reported.“Personnel are still having trouble accessing the break site to put eyes on it and get a better idea of the extent and volume due to flooding in the area,” according to the alert. “Please inform local water authorities of the potential contamination if they use the Susquehanna River as a water source.”

"The breach was reportedly caused by heavy flooding in Lycoming County, which lies in the north-central region of Pennsylvania. Gockley said the area received 6 to 8 inches of rain.

“I’m sure they’re dealing with high velocity water flows because of the flooding,” he said. “My gut tells me it will take a few days to reach us, but I can’t say that for sure. This far downstream, it’s hard to know.” The gasoline will be diluted as it travels downriver, he said. And it’s still possible, he said, that emergency responders farther north will be able to contain the spill before it gets this far."
( http://lancasteronline.com/news/local/gallons-of-gasoline-spills-into-susquehanna-effect-on-lancaster-county )

Here in the Lower Susquehanna River Valley, we are on the trailing, windy edge of the huge frontal system that lumbered through over the past two days. The northern Susquehanna Valley, however, has received the brunt of the heavy rains and storms. I decided to spend the morning braving the gusty winds and hike to and around the Pinnacle near my home on the river, just to look at the water and listen to the wind and say a little prayer for the river and all the people past and present who have worked so hard to care for it. 

Pinnacle Area is now part of Susquehannock State Park.

This area has changed hands so many times it can be confusing to tell its story. When I first started coming here in the 1970s the entire enormous valley was owned and managed by the large hydropower companies that granted access (by federal law) to hikers and fishermen. After a long series of buy-outs and acquisitions, energy companies have come and gone and some have improved the area for outdoor use, while others have neglected it. Either way, a flat gravel road (sometimes open, sometimes not) has always led river watchers to the point of land that sits hundreds of feet above the water to face north into the cold winds and marvel at what's below and beyond.

View from the Pinnacle, looking north into north winds! Whew!

I met an older couple at the overlook and we started talking - though it was hard to hear in 40mph winds - about the health of the river, and how, even with gasoline expected to arrive by Tuesday, it has become a much cleaner, wilder, and loved place to spend a morning. The couple introduced themselves but the wind carried away their names. Still, they explained how they had been key players in getting important pollution legislation passed at the local and state level. "Pipe breaks, abandoned and leaking oil and gas wells, and industrial outflow was an everyday thing from the 1940s through the 1970s," they explained. "We - and our fellow river valley dwellers - had had enough when, after the incident at Three Mile Island, everyone just got together and said this was enough!" 

Roads from the 1700s can still be hiked.

The wind became so strong that we decided to go our different ways. My hands were aching with cold so I needed to get into the woods. I took to the old roads with my coonhound, Bug. Some of the roads which are now beautiful hiking trails are now maintained by local hiking clubs and Pennsylvania State Parks  (DCNR) - the land's new owner/caretaker (essentially us!) - and the Lancaster County Conservancy. I couldn't think of a better partnership for the care and upkeep of the River Hills than this.  On the heels of last summer's energy company abandonment of critical park and trails access at Holtwood (that included a public protest!), the LCC and DCNR have worked hard to connect the old roads trail network throughout the River Hills region including all of the ravine creek valleys - Tucquan Glen, Kelly's Run, Reed Run, Trout Run - and all of the spectacular waterfalls and tumbling gorges that they contain. By connecting and unifying ownership and maintenance, the problem of frequent ownership changes has ended at least here. Bug and I walked worry free for over four miles of old wagon road and enjoyed the fall colors, the singing wind, and peeks at the mighty Susquehanna far below. No trail closures, no keep out signs, no police tape. 

Hikers on a terrace trail below.

The Pinnacle Area is steep country. The old roads and trails are terraced to reduce pitch and climb, certainly a benefit to the teamsters and their horses as they traveled from the plateau to the collier's woods and the crossings far below. It is rocky terrain at any point off the wide paths and for those hiking the trails, the rocks and ledges can be tricky, so a set of hiking poles is a good idea. Throughout the old path network, signs of the past are easy to see. The road itself and well-built stone walls are obvious signs of a long-settled landscape where people lived for generations from the early 1700s until the early 1900s when the valley was acquired by the hydro companies. I'm a stonewall fan, so I took my time studying the architecture of stacked stone.

Terrace wall for wagon roads.

The river hill we call the Pinnacle juts out into the valley of the river like the bow of a ship. Very resistant rock forms the height and breadth of this wall of rock that turned the river westward at its base. Composed of ancient sea bottom schists, this hill is folded and fractured like its many sister hills.  It contains thrust faults through which ravine creeks have cut and dropped as the land mass was squeezed and lifted by continental collision faster than the Susquehanna could cut through them. Fault lines and resistant bedrock have shaped the river all along the Lower Valley. Broken slabs of schist litter the ground and it became prime material for walls. Wagon roads are supported by terrace walls four to five feet high. These can be hard to see if you are walking on the roads, but easy to observe from the trails below.

Field walls contained oxen, sheep, and cattle.

The forest here has been cut over many times. Field walls cutting through dense oak hickory woods reveal that as steep as this land is, deforested hills were once open and clear, prime pasture for livestock. Unlike the walls of New England built of glacial round till cobble and small boulders, these massive schist-built walls are sharp, edgy, and flat-topped. Built to cave inwards at the center, the characteristic V-shaped top ledge ensured that the weight of the rocks in the wall would remain in place and not roll outward or collapse. They were built to last!

V-shaped top ledge keeps the wall from collapsing.

Stone is what lasts. Sometimes you can find the wide circular collier's pits or borrow pit dug into a steep slope. But mostly what we know of the people who lived and worked on the Pinnacle exists in local historical societies and on the land in stone. What we can't learn from the walls and terraces are what the conversations of the day were about - did they look at the river far below as anything other than an obstacle, a threat, or the bringer of millions of shad? People felt much differently about the river in the early 1800s than people do today. But surely the river ran with mud after the forests were cut down and they must have wondered at it. The heavy rains upriver of the last two days haven't yet arrived. But from up here there will be a noticeable shift in color as the flood waters arrive. What we won't see is the gasoline and other chemical run-off that travels with the downriver pulse of flood.

Miles of pasture wall run through the Pinnacle area forests.

The walls may not have much to say about the intimate lives of people on the river hundreds of years ago, but the fact that they are still with us on protected land that my grandchildren and great grandchildren will be able to enjoy speaks volumes. My coonhound sniffed out every 'possum and racoon trail while I enjoyed the play of wind in the trees and fall colors - but a sudden CRACK! startled both of us! Just uphill on our old road path a large oak split open in the wind. We hurried past it and kept up the pace all the way back to the overlook!

A mighty oak split in the wind!

On our way down Pinnacle Road I stopped to look out over the Amish farms that spread beautifully out across the plateau of river hills. There has been a great effort among Old Order communities to heed Biblical and social calls for conservation and along with "English" farmers, methods have been changing to protect the Susquehanna and the Chesapeake Bay.  Bright green bands of winter cover crop are starting to emerge, planted after harvests of crops, beans, and tomatoes to take up extra nitrogen and phosphorus and provide a late winter hay or early spring forage crop. Post-harvest cornfields are deep in ground stalk waste, covering soils that twenty years ago would have remained bare until next planting in spring. At the bottom of the farm lane where run off from the dirt road and barn roof once carved a gully, a beautiful rain garden grows. I stopped at their roadside stand and bought a bundle of sunflower heads for a bird seed hanging. We stood trying to share conversation in the roaring wind but soon gave up and waved goodbye.

Atop the plateau, farmers are using conservation tillage and green infrastructure to protect the river.

Notes:

An excellent video produced by the Lancaster County Conservancy can viewed here. It does a nice job of explaining the goals of conservancy partners in connecting rover hills natural areas and trails and touches upon the abandonment of a favorite trailhead this past summer. If you live or hike in this area, please considering donating to the LCC - they do such great work!