A bit over twenty years ago, during a late afternoon hike off-trail, I thought I had stumbled upon something mysterious and possibly significant. I had come up from the Upper Truck Trail somewhere near Gum Springs, having stashed my mountain bike there, looking for a legendary hole in the mountain. It was probably Ranger Dennis who told about this hole, which was said to go all the way through the mountain (don't they all?) and perhaps contain gold or some other treasure. Kent Ballew and Neeld Messler had been inside and reported seeing timbers supporting the thing like an old mine. Someone had done a huge amount of work tunneling down into the sandstone float--but who, and why?
On that afternoon I did in fact find the mysterious hole exactly where it had been described, but while making my way there I had come across what I remember as a series of long, low walls on a flat bench of the mountain. I remember thinking that they were man-made and probably very, very old. Of course, I'd come across man-made walls all over the mountain, particularly in the gullies where the CCC boys did their work even far from the nearest trail, but I remember thinking that these walls were different, perhaps ceremonial in purpose.
This past December 24th Mark Wolinsky and I had been back in the same general area as we scouted around an extremely large poplar tree off the trail near Gum Spring. I had traversed the bench from there to the Gum Spring trail looking for the walls but hadn't found them. Today, on an overcast Sunday afternoon, I went back to try again.
This time I approached from the Cravens House via the Rifle Pits trail, which of course has its own mysterious stone walls. Experts debated whether the walls we see today dated to the Civil War or were built by Indians, but ultimately the Civil War explanation seems to have won out. When I hiked the trail this past November with the Lookout Mountain Hiking Club, John Wilson had pointed out an old gate in the fence line that runs just below the trail (that fence is another mystery that vexes me). Today, less than 100 feet from the gate, I came upon what looked to me like part of an old boiler. The photo shows it next to one of the old fence posts, which give some scale. It's a big chunk of metal!
When the Rifle Pits trail began to descend steeply, I continued off-trail along the same bench, finding the going easy along game trails probably made by deer. I ventured across several flat benches that looked promising, but none contained the mystery walls. Eventually I reached the large drainage beneath the "Towers" on the Bluff Trail, which is where the "mysterious gold tunnel hole" should have been. It was still there, with obvious piles of rock and dirt that had been excavated, yet the hole itself was nothing like I remembered.
In twenty years, had my memory simply gone south, or had the dig changed dramatically? I remember an obvious hole that led vertically down into rock (I had poked my head inside but did not really enter). What I saw now was a steep sinkhole that led nowhere, with no void large enough to enter. I can't be absolutely sure (memory is a tricky thing) but I believe that sometime in the past twenty years the hole collapsed and sealed the mystery forever. I will note, however, that if Kent and Neeld didn't get through to gold or other riches, nobody ever could. Those two are pretty much unstoppable.
I made a sweep of the mountain back towards the Cravens House at a lower elevation, but still failed to find the mysterious walls I remembered. I did come across a very nice "Rocky City" of large boulders, one of which might well have been used as a campsite by ancient Indians, but no mystery walls.
Taking the Truck Trail back up past the CCC Camp the Rifle Pits trail, I followed the old fence line from the Rifle Pits trail up to the Cravens Trail. The fence continued hard up the hill towards Point Park. Just what was the purpose of this fence, and when was it built? Both times it crosses the trails, there is no sign of a gate or reinforced posts--could it predate the CCC-built trails? The vertical wires are wrapped, not welded as in a modern fence, but does that help date the fence? The fence runs down the mountain in a line with the big stone property line up at Point Park. Could this fence have been strung by Harriet Whiteside in the 1880's to help secure her property at the Point?
In the meantime, the mysteries of Lookout Mountain win another round.
Should be map of this hike at www.mapmyride.com
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