Lights Mill

According to various sources, the federal government constructed a mill on Lookout Creek near the southern boundary of Reflection Riding in 1803. One route of the Old Federal Road crossed the creek at or near this spot. Back in the early 1990's I had taken a canoe across the creek and explored briefly on the other side, finding the roadbed but little else. Today I was kayaking on the creek and decided to take another look.

Although it can't been seen from the creek, the roadbed is obvious, cut deeply into the earth as old roads tend to be. From the creek it bears away to the southwest, headed for a gap between the hills. It might be an interesting walk someday to follow the road and see where it leads--although I already know from Google satellite images that just beyond the hills are a massive railyard, Highway 11, and the Interstate.

I walked uphill and slightly upstream of the roadbed near the creek and quickly came upon some kind of old foundation that included stones, bricks, the remains of two iron bands of some sort. There are some flat sheets of iron, not much bigger than license plates, on the ground nearby. About 100 feet away, I found a sunken area that included a nice section to stone wall.

Time to Get Hiking!

The leaves are off the trees, the serpents are deep in their dens, and best of all, the poison ivy is mostly gone (although you still need to watch out for the woody stalks and vines with hair on them). It's time to hike! I haven't accomplished much hiking lately beyond one trip with John Wilson's newly chartered Lookout Hiking Club. Here's a great account of that adventure written by Jen Jeffrey: http://www.chattanoogan.com/2012/11/11/238349/Jen-Jeffrey-Lookout-Below.aspx

Russ Manning Cleared of Geologic Crimes!

After accusing author Russ Manning of being confused about the Skyuka Arch yesterday, I confirmed that I was a little confused myself. It wasn't the Manning book I read twenty years ago, it was Natural Bridges of Tennessee, a 1979 bulletin of the Tennessee Division of Geology by James Corgan and John Parks. I remembered I had found the book in question at UTC's library and thought I might take another look at it.

Then another thought hit me like a wall of limestone going sixty miles an hour: I didn't need to go to the library! I had photocopied the pages of the bulletin all those years ago and stashed them away in my trailbook files.

The bulletin contains a description with measurements and even a photo of the Skyuka Arch. Yes, it is the same one Brady and I revisted yesterday. And yes, the two state geologists, of all people, are evidently the source of the confusion about the type of rock and its original elevation. "The rock that forms the bridge is obviously sandstone," they write. They go on postulate that "apparently this arch acquired its distinctive shape elsewhere and tumbled into place as a large boulder that rolled down the mountain."

My apologies to Russ Manning! Russ, you may have committed some minor plagiarism (and who doesn't, these days?), but you're not to blame for turning Monteagle limestone into Pennsylvanian sandstone.

Ah, Geology! Ah, humanity!

The Skyuka Arch

Almost twenty years ago, I read about a small but mythical arch on the side of Lookout Mountain. Russ Manning, in his 1992 book The Historic Cumberland Plateau: An Explorer's Guide, described it as "unique, possibly the only such arch in the world." Following Mr. Manning's description, Terry Hamrick and I located the tiny arch and I took a photograph.

Now, decades later, I had forgotten exactly where the arch might be but I did remember this about it: aside from the location, almost everything else Russ Manning had said about the Skyuka Arch was wrong!

I wanted to take another look just be sure that Russ Manning, who I don't know personally but would normally consider a reliable source, wasn't completely off his rocker when it came to arches on Lookout Mountain. So today Brady and I parked the truck at the Skyuka trailhead at the Highway 318/Alford Hill intersection. Walking up the highway a short distance to a wooden barrier that read "no parking" (still exactly as described by Manning), we could see it from the road. The Skyuka Arch beckoned! As arches goes, this one was just an infant: about five feet tall, two feet tall, and two feet long. As Manning says, the arch is really nothing more than a short section of solution passage exposed to the elements.

Beyond that it gets weird. "The arch-shaped rock is sandstone," Manning writes, "while the surrounding rock is siltstone. The most likely explanation is that the arch originated atop the mountain, perhaps as the opening to a cave or spring, but then fell, coming to rest in its present location, forming an arch."

Whoops! I'm no geologist but I do know that the arch and most of the rocks in immediate area are all part of the same outcropping of limestone, not sandstone nor siltstone, and that particular bit of rock is completely at home at its current elevation. There are plenty of sandstone boulders in the area that came from the top of the mountain, but the Skyuka Arch is not among them.

That said, I salute Mr. Manning for bringing the world's attention to a small rock feature that otherwise would probably have gone unnoticed. The Skyuka Trailhead is actually quite a fascinating place, arch and all. The trailhead marks the point at which the Old Federal Road starts up the mountain. The area has huge boulders, massive sinkholes, English Ivy growing on a Kudzu scale, red barrels, mysterious holes, and even a secret hideout under a large rock that Brady and I discovered only this evening.

A secret hideout, you ask? Where? We could see it from the Arch, and that, my friend, is just another reason to visit that most infamous of the arches of Lookout Mountain.

Skyuka Spring

Yesterday I escaped from the holidays for a couple of hours to visit Reflection Riding, the Lower Truck Trail, and Skyuka Spring. I had hiked to the spring with Mark Wolinsky two or three years ago via the Skyuka Trail, but had not been on the Lower Truck Road for a decade or more. Long ago our gang of mountain bikers would ride that road (one of the very few trails in the park that are open to bicycles) regularly. I had measured distances for the trail guide, driven trucks out to the spring with Dennis Curry on various occasions, been shown old homesites and mysterious walls that have faded into the fog of my memory as they have back into the woods that now surround them.

There was still some snow on the ground from the White Christmas of 2010 as I rode past the gazebo and pond that mark the southern boundary of Reflection Riding. The sky was blue and the creek was a deep green. And as always the spring was flowing, gurgling, gently gushing. Legend has it had gold was buried here somewhere, and that made me want to ask Dennis if anyone had ever tried to dive the tiny space beneath the rocks. There is a hole in the rocks above but no air was moving through even on this winter day, an almost certain sign that solid dirt and rock plugs any passage.

I walked uphill on the Skyuka Trail to examine an old stone wall and to look for the foundations of a house that once stood here. Two decades ago William Raul gave me the name of someone I could call who he said had delivered groceries here as a boy...but of course I never got around to calling, and now it is certainly too late. Alas, no air coming through that passage now, but even still I probably find out names, dates, perhaps even maps if I knew who to ask and where to look. But for now there were just rocks and some bits of metal marking what was once a house, questions waiting to be answered.

I got back and my bike and pedaled a mile or so to the top of the hill where I stopped because I thought it looked like a proper spot for a homesite. Sure enough there just a few yards in the woods was a line of stones, clearly manmade. Later, reading my own hiking guide, I would find this very spot mentioned as an old homesite, meaning that as so often happens lately that I was merely rediscovering things I once had known, but today I found a little more that I hadn't seen previously. Uphill from the rocks was a enclosed stone corral roughly three feet high, possibly a "cold house" or some sort of storage, but what? Built for what purpose, and how long ago?

After I rode back out to the truck parked at the Reflection Riding Gates I went for a run on the property, hoping to prove that I could still hoof it around the loop as fast as I had in my prime. No such luck!

P.S. (if there is such a thing in a blog)

I had carried a camera and later produced this video of my ride on a new "Hike Lookout" Channel on YouTube.

Riding the Truck Trail

Last Wednesday Brady and I parked at the bottom of the Guild Trail on Ochs Highway and pedaled off up the trail on our truly ancient mountain bikes. There are almost always vehicles in this parking lot and by the time we were leaving, it was just about full. Everybody was out enjoying an absolute perfect November day with blue skies, colorful leaves, and temps in the low 70's.

Back in the old days we would park every Wednesday at the upper Ruby Falls lot near the Eagles Nest and ride the truck trail. Terry Hamrick, Mark Wolinsky, Otis Farmer, and later Jerry Patten and I would race back the 5 miles or so to the end of the truck road, then pedal out. Decades later, Brady and I had the same plan, but being older and wiser we were starting even further down the mountain to make the trip more challenging.

we needn't have bothered. The roadbed is much rougher than it used to be, the hills somehow steeper. I was on Annie's old mountain bike, and every bump threatened to bring me to a complete stop. Still, Brady and I set a new record of 1:46 round trip (a record mostly because we'd never done this particular route before). It was dark by the time we got back to the truck, so good thing we weren't even slower. Still, there were people out biking, walking, and running the trail even in the darkness. It's fantastic to live in such an active outdoor town, a place where treasures such as Lookout Mountain have been preserved and protected for the use of all.

Cummings Bottom

Brady had texted that he wanted to visit the Natural Bridge so after picking him up I headed for Lookout. Actually, he had meant the natural bridge in Prentice Cooper, but didn't protest too much so on we went.

On the way up Scenic Highway I couldn't resist pulling over at the curve near the Sky Harbor Inn for a quick look at the old roadbed just downhill of the guardrail. According to the timeline I made back in the early 1990s when I knew this kind of stuff, Kelly's Ferry Road (later known as Old Wauhatchie Pike) was "apparently" built in the 1820's over the north shoulder of the mountain. This is the road that is visible in the huge James Walker painting "The Battle of Lookout Mountain" that hangs in the Point Park visitor center. For about a hundred years, until the "new" Wauhatchie Pike (now Cummings Highway) was built in 1912, this was a main route into Chattanooga from the west. The eastern section of road past Sky Harbor is preserved as a greenway (and in fact was still open as a public road when I moved to Chattanooga in 1988) but the section on the northwest side is all but forgotten. Today the old road is simply a surprisingly wide and level swatch of ground in the woods that makes a gracious curve and descends to Cummings Highway at the old Lookout Mountain Tourist Lodge. At that point the modern Cummings Highway obliterates the roadbed.

Curious, we climbed back up to the truck and drove down to check out the old quarry on Cummings Highway. Surprisingly, we did not climb down into the hole itself, something I've never done. There was some trash, but not as much as I expected. It seems that the old quarry, like the old road, is largely forgotten.

Onward, to the Natural Bridge! But first we drove through some of the spacious trailer park across the highway from the Tourist Lodge. it's not a fancy place by any means, but as trailer parks go it is almost scenic, perched on the lower slopes as it is. Noting a favorable position of the sun, we decided to drive over and have a look at Cummings Bottom, where I hoped to climb the hills and get a view that would match that of the Walker painting, and maybe even a photograph or two. The first gate was open, so we drove into the New York monument adjacent to the Interstate and parked. A Park Service sign said "authorized vehicles only," so after examining the monument we continued on foot. The first surprise was an old homesite not far down the gravel path. I am always fascinated by these places. Who lived there? How long ago? Why did they leave? I found some small pieces of broken china near a hole that had been carefully covered up. What was down in that hole? I didn't have a light and so may never know.

We hiked the wide green path of a powerline up the hillside and found a second, abandoned and stripped New York monument. The metal plaques explaining the monuments purpose had been removed (stolen, we guessed). There was no real trail leading to the monument; it simply sat there, lonely and stoic (as monuments tend to be) at the edge of the woods and the power line atop a deserted hill.

Back at the truck, we decided that we really needed to visit the graveyard at the end of the gravel road. I had walked to this site a few years ago, but we were tired and running low on time. Fortunately, Brady had a legal theory which stated that access to graveyards must be provided by law and thus we were authorized to drive the road if the graveyard was our destination. In we went, driving about a half mile through a short tunnel beneath the railroad, past Lookout Creek, arriving at the graveyard only to see we were not alone: three or more wild turkeys were visiting as well.

It was about 6:00 PM by the time we headed back up Lookout for the Natural Bridge, which is on top of the mountain near the "triangle intersection." The parking lot, which had been tiny years ago, was now quite large, and what had been an indistinct path through the woods was now a marked thoroughfare. Indeed, citizens had cleared the entire area (the Natural Bridge Park seems to be about five acres or so) or all underbrush so it was all open space. Walking paths, bridges across the stream, and picnic tables were strategically placed. In a way, it was a shame to have lost some of the mystery of the place by making all the surrounding homes so visible, but on the plus side I could see a lot more of the natural features, too. And yes, the bridge was still there, another stoic monument to be photographed and studied.

It was getting late and we were both tired now. I had thought the Natural Bridge would be a quick and easy thing for us old geezers to tackle, but perhaps we are even older and more feeble than I knew.

Photos to come!