Back for Photos

I was due for a run yesterday so I decided to go right back to where I had been the day before: the Upper Truck Trail, where I could get some photos of the mysterious vehicle remains. Parking at the Ochs Highway trailhead, I joined what would become a regular stream of people enjoying the beautiful winter day. I ran a couple of miles past Ruby Falls, stayed straight ahead at the swtichback and about a mile later I was at the site.

I took the liberty of moving the fender and putting it on top of one of the two sheets of metal where it seemed to fit. The result definitely looks like part of a vehicle of some kind, although the mystery continues. I noted both screws and nails along one edge of the metal sheet. What kind of vehicle is nailed together? Perhaps a trailer? I've never seen such an elaborate fender on a trailer.

The foot pedal, bolted to another sheet of metal, is another oddity. The pedal doesn't look as if it would pivot or move.

The remains of the tires are nearby. Most sources seem to agree that rubber tires do not decompose, and if that's the case these are very old. The only other item I found in the area appears to be an old paint can. Was this just a dumping site? Or was there a paint can in a work vehicle that was abandoned here? Perhaps the frame, engine, and other heavy components were salvaged for scrap. Instead of just running back to the car I decided to go a bit further on the Truck Trail, and eventually found myself at its end. On the trip out I made it to the Eagles Nest for an 11.4 mile run but had to walk the Guild Trail. I've lost some conditioning and had run too far, but at least this time I got the photos.

Old Trails, New Sights

It was Groundhog Day, so fitting (at least so far as the movie goes) that I return to my usual haunts on Lookout Mountain. I parked at the trailhead on Ochs Highway at 2:00 PM and pedaled off on the mountain bike into the 40 degree day. Past the Incline I veered right onto the Millers Trail and ended up on the Wauhatchie Pike Greenway, which seems to be in a state of neglect. I walked the bike up through the Eagles Nest to the Hardy Trail.

I stopped to look at Dogwood Spring, which was a short but maintained side trail when I moved to the mountain 25 years ago. Today it is a faint path with a couple of trees across its start, which makes it even harder to see. The spring is only 100 feet from the Hardy Trail and almost hidden from view. The water emerges from underneath a huge sandstone boulder and then immediately plunges back underground. Kent Ballew die-traced this water and I believe he told me it came out on the opposite side (eastern) side of the mountain. In the old days I theorized this was the source of Ruby Falls, but I can't remember that Kent confirmed this. I remembered a small rock bench to sit on, and a sign. The bench was gone, but I found the sign buried under some small fallen trees. In another minute I had the sign back upright in front the spring. I can't swear to it, but I remember the big rock being taller; I suspect that over the years it has slumped down as if to cover the already elusive spring.

I had intended to head up the Hardy Trail past the Cravens House to examine a large boulder than had rolled into the trail near its terminus at Scenic Highway but when I got to the switchback that would turn me in that direction I thought I would ride on a bit instead. There were mountain bike tracks and a few footprints in the snow, so I wasn't the first to have that idea. The view of the slopes above and below was amazing; with all the growth gone I could see through the trees across acres of mountainside.

 Not far after I had passed beneath Sunset Rock I noticed a small cairn at what looked like a parking spot, so I stopped to peer down the hill to see why. Just fifty feet off the trail where I passed so many times before, an old fender from an ancient vehicle was prone on the ground, and around it were rusted bits of metal, one of which had some kind of foot pedal bolted to it. In the leaves nearby I found the remains of old tires. I took many pictures using the MapMyRide app on my phone, thinking it would pin down the location for me, but this backfired as I apparently didn't tell the app to save the pictures--none were on my phone when I got home. Is this the remains of an old truck, dating even perhaps back to days of the CCC in the 1930's? The style of the bolt-on fender looked old enough. Obviously there are a lot parts missing (where is the frame, the engine?) but I tend to think a vehicle would have arrived at such a spot under its own power.

It was 4:00 PM when I reached the end of the truck trail beneath Covenant College.  My toes were very cold and this seemed odd until I took off my biking shoes and discovered that (1)  the shoe was ventilated so that cold air was coming right in and (2) my toes were quite wet.  I put sandwich bags over my toes inside the shoes to block the wind and soon they were happy again.

Around 5:00 PM I was coming down the Hardy Trail through falling snow, not far from Ruby Falls, when I spotted two people with full backpacks ahead. This proved to be Jo Swanson and Bart Houck, who are hiking to New York on the Great Eastern Trail (GET). What a treat to meet and talk with them; they in turn seemed pleased to learn they were on course for Ruby Falls. There are some GET markers here and there along the route, but not many. The pair had started hiking today at Nickajack Road and would be picked up at Ochs Highway where I was parked, or "just 15 miles today," as Jo described it. They will be the first people in the world to thru-hike the Great Eastern Trail. Their website is www.gethiking.net. Even though they obviously have a long way to go, I felt like congratulating them in advance just for going forward with such a groundbreaking plan.

Old Mysteries Still Decline to Solve Themselves

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?

When I got back to the Cravens House, I poked around the old Hardy House, which was quite amazing. The NPS has acquired this property but says they have no money to keep it up--I am afraid they may tear this beautiful home down. I hope someone or some organization in Chattanooga can rise to the challenge and restore the home. I'm sure there's nothing wrong that a couple of million can't fix. The photos are from the top of the big rock and one looking in a window at the beautiful staircase.

In the meantime, the mysteries of Lookout Mountain win another round.

Should be map of this hike at www.mapmyride.com

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!

Memory Place

It was a whithered, sinewy, very old tree, unusual because it stood naked and defiant long after most trees would have toppled, no more than forty feet high but a good two feet across, trunk and branches intact. A tremendous cedar, I wondered? But what caught my eye were the axe marks about two feet up. I was a hundred yards above the Guild Trail on the very northern nose of Lookout Mountain. Probably two dozen people a day passed nearby on the trail, but virtually no human beings ever come up the steep slope I was on. Who had started to cut down this tree, then thought better of it? How long ago?

This is the conundrum of Lookout Mountain: nearly every inch of soil has been walked upon and often manipulated by men going back over centuries, and discerning the work of neighborhood kids from civil war soldiers is not easy for the casual observer. A half mile from this very spot, archaeologists had argued whether a collection of walls and "rifle pits" were made by the Confederacy or prehistoric Indians (the last word seems to be the Confederacy).

Brady and I had parked at the rear of the upper Ruby Falls lot and started our walk at the Eagles Nest, the old quarry that had been turned from an eyesore into one of the centerpieces of Adolph Och's vision of the Hanging Gardens of Lookout only to fall back into ghostly neglect in modern times. The two concrete eagles, created by Spefano Giuliano in 1931, still stand on the upper corners of the quarry walls (although one of them is completely headless and the other is not much better off); stairs still lead up from Scenic Highway. We poked around what used to be a pool with a fountain in the center of the quarry, examined an old stone wall that probably once held back the soil for the variety of exotic plants that were brought in.



Just to the north were the ruins of a pedestal that once held a bust of Shakespeare, the first (and last, from what I can tell) of a series of statues intended to inspire visitors to this place. There is no pedestal there now, only a careless jumble of rocks. The bard departed this place long ago.

Winding up through the woods we climbed over the Hardy Trail (once of the bed of a railroad up the mountain) and into the woods on the other side. A hundred feet from the trail we found the Old Federal (aka Andrew Jackson) Road, which dates back to 1805 and may have been the first wagon trail through the Cherokee nation. In those days the Tennessee river forced travelers up onto the side of Lookout to get past Moccasin Bend on a relatively flat bench of land between bluffs and rocky slopes above and below. Two hundred years later that once major thoroughfare is just a faint impression through the woods, forgotten and reclaimed by nature. We followed the old path around the nose, over a cleared powerline, and down to the point that it crossed the old railroad bed heading steeply down the mountain.

Not long after pondering the axed tree, I saw what I thought was at least a dozen white-tail deer. It turned out to be just five, but that was enough for me. I had seen deer on the more isolated western slopes but never this far north.

We walked back on the Federal Road until it dumped us back into the Ruby Falls parking lot just a few feet from the truck.

Return to John Wilson Park

Another cold February afternoon found Brady and I back on the slopes of Lookout. We parked at the bottom of the old driveway off Cummings Highway that once led to the Adult Scenic Motel, and walked up the drive to explore some of the old home sites on the hillside sandwiched between the busy modern highway and the much older, now closed Old Wauhatchie Pike just above.

Returning to the truck, we started up the marked trail that winds up to the Wauhatchie Pike Greenway, which we found in bad need of maintenance. At one point the trail was so overgrown that I lost the way. We had walked right by this trail on the Greenway just a couple of weeks before and never seen it, and wouldn't have seen it this time if we hadn't come up it first. Of course, this is just the kind of trail that Brady and I like to hike, feeling our way along as if we are retracing the faded footsteps of history. This would be an easy trail to repair since it is so close to the road; a few hours with the clippers and shovels, some timber for steps and waterbars, and this trail would be a thing of beauty and convenience.

We noted that someone had been bulldozing back the English Ivy at the start of the Greenway to expose two drains--probably a good idea since this area had been flooded last time we visited. There is an old ivy-covered road at this point that climbs diagonally up the northern trestle on the Guild Trail. But my attention was captured by the sight of heavy equipment and piles of gravel up on the old Cravens Road, just to the south. We'd seen a lot of survey stakes up there three weeks ago, and now it looked a major construction project! Since the old Cravens Road up from Wauhatchie Pike was part of the Federal Road, dating back to 1805, I wasn't happy to see it disturbed. (After looking at my map collection last week I realized that if I ever had any doubt about whether this was the Federal (aka Jackson) Road, I was mistaken. At least three different maps showed this was definitely the route: up from Old Wauhatchie, under the northern trestle, then across the slope towards Ruby Falls.)


Up we went, toward an idling truck at the top of the hill. Inside was a friendly fellow who told us he was guarding the equipment for the pipleline company, and all the brouhaha was not construction but simply maintenance on the pipeline. They had laid gravel up the old roadbed to the trestle, and scraped clean some of the adjoining roads, but it appeared no lasting harm would be done. The man was friendly but said he was trying not to fall asleep since other guards had been robbed recently (fortunately, not at this particular location). He made sure we saw the gun on his front seat, but agreed that it was fine with him if we continued looking around the area.



So for the first time in my 22 years of tromping around Lookout I took the paved road to the left and marveled at a long stretch of concrete where something (maybe just a house with a big parking area) had been once. The entire slope of the mountain from here over to the Incline #1 above Chattam had long ago been filled with houses built on terraces. We followed the road along a stone wall visible under the browned kudzu for a hundred yards, trying to imagine it. The first big gully was a whopper, a big swag of ground cleared by the power of kudzu. There were more walls above, but the main road continued down the gully and then back up the other side (connecting with another overgrown road up from a house on Wauhatchie), eventually emerging in another kudzu-filled gully above Church Street and Chattam, the site of Incline #1. If the road Brady and I had explored above the Guild trail near the Incline two weeks ago predated the 1886 railroad bed, then this was almost surely the lower portion of that route. Parts of it still showed old pavement. I stood just below the northern end of the trestle in a spot old photographs from around the 1890s showed a house perched on the hillside; this road would have been its driveway.


Brady and I had gotten separated but both of us were carrying the one essential of modern hiking (the cell phone) so we were soon reunited back at the idling truck of the pipeline guard, who sure enough had fallen asleep. Near the intersection of Cravens and Wauhatchie Pike I noticed what looked like an old millstone that had apparently been used as a yard decoration for a house now long gone. We walked back through John Wilson Park, amazed as always at the juxtaposition of history and nature that seems so inescapable on Lookout Mountain.

More Old Roads and Memories

Brady had already put in a few miles on foot when I picked him up today, so he was pleased when I suggested we do an easy hike up the Guild Trail. It doesn't get any easier than walking up the gentle grade of an old railroad bed.

A half mile up the trail from the parking lot on Ochs Highway in St. Elmo, we came to "the big trestle," 220 feet long and 35 feet high. Lots of history here! Looking down at the gully full of brown kudzu, we could see the Chattam plant below, along with the old Zion church that's being renovated into (this is just my guess) a posh private residence. A raised hump down the gully marked the path of the original Incline railway, opened in 1887. Uphill, on the right side of the gully, was an old road that sucked Brady right off the graveled trail into the woods. According to the trusty trail guide, "this old road, probably constructed by land speculators around the turn of the century, leads about a half mile uphill to connect with Lower Cravens Terrace Road near Scenic Highway." Jeepers, the author sounded pretty sure about that theory. I think I based the idea on the fact that the road seemed to pass over the top of the broad gauge railroad (circa 1886), indicating that it was built later, but who knows at this point. In fact, I began to wonder if the road wasn't there simply to help with the construction and maintenance of the incline.

We followed the road up the hill and indeed it seemed to cross directly over the bed of the old incline, which unlike below was very distinct, a flat broad path bulldozing straight up the hill. I was photographing the incline when Brady yelled that he was on an old road leading off to the north. We followed this path to an intersection with Lower Cravens Terrace, just as the trusty trail guide had described. Maybe that guy did know what he was talking about, after all.

Brady was expressing a desire to walk on pavement, but I knew there were more old roads in the vicinity, so we continued downhill and to the north towards the bottom end of Lower Cravens Terrace. There was an old road, all right, a paved one (underneath the leaves). There's your pavement, I told Brady. Lower Cravens Terrace was in the past a rather "unique" neighborhood, and we found traces of this such as a city street lamp that had been attached to a tree instead of a pole. The road actually led downhill to the last house on Lower Cravens, lined on each side by wood waiting to be split, a hundred yards of wood, a lifetime supply for any wood stove. Just downhill from this area was our friend the Guild trail and the other trestle, not far from the Ruby Falls parking lot. This trestle is also very historical, for according to the trail guide, the remains of a road passing beneath are likely one build by Robert Cravens in the 1850's and the Old Federal Road, which dates back to 1805. We'd seen signs of surveying, mostly just flagging tape, all along the Guild Trail, but here the signs became particularly evident. Apparently the property lines correspond to some of the old roads. I found numerous stakes that read "N Row Cravens" and "S Row Jo Conn Guild" and the like.

The Cravens Road (and, I think, the Federal Road) passed underneath the trestle and then straight downhill a couple of hundred yards to Old Wauhatchie Pike, not far the barrier that marks the southern end of the Greenway. In fact, Brady and I had been down there just a couple of weeks before and had wondered about another old road, completely covered in English Ivy, that comes up to the area of that very same trestle. At one time the lower slope was a complete neighborhood covered with with homes and roads, now all covered with vines and leaves.

It wasn't until I got home and pulled out the trail guide again that I discovered that between the two trestles is another old road crossing the railbed. Says the trailbook: "Uphill, this road leads to the lower end of lower Cravens Terrace Road; below, it leads to Cravens Road off Old Wauhatchie Pike. This may be an alternate route constructed by Robert Cravens up the mountain to his home."

Sounds like Brady and I need to go back another time when we have more energy (but before the poison ivy covers the woods) and take another look!

Mountain Beautiful Loop

I didn't have my camera but Brady was looking for some exercise so we parked at the Cravens House and headed up the Cravens Trail for our regular Wednesday night hike. It was a beautiful day and it wasn't long until a huge rock uphill of the trail caught our attention, so we veered off up through the trees to climb it. Once on the summit it didn't make sense to lose all that altitude, so we continued straight up the hill to the Bluff Trail above.

Brady claimed that he had never hiked the Mountain Beautiful Trail, so off we went--right into a barricade across the start of the trail near the old Point Hotel. It seemed obvious that the trail was closed, but as an official VIP (Volunteer in the Park) who maintained this very trail 15 years ago, I figured it was my obligation to investigate...so on we hiked. The trail follows the eastern bluff below Point Park, then begins a descent to cross underneath the Incline (it would be a very intimate experience if one of the Incline cars happens to pass overhead while you are under there). Then the trail switchbacks and climbs back up to the base of the bluffs for almost another mile.

Then it happened: we came upon the reason for the trail closure. At a particularly large gully (mile 0.89 according to my trusty trail guide) we found a stacked pile of bags of cement, lumber, jackhammers, and air hoses running up the bluff. Evidently workers were clearing away all the loose rock and preparing to build what I hope is not a concrete monstrosity of a bridge. The trail was built to high standards by the CCC in the 1930s and deserves to be kept in that kind of high-quality but natural condition. That said, I was pleased to see that this trail, neglected for so long, was getting some attention at last.

Past this point I was puzzled because the trail seemed oddly disturbed and trampled. What was going on? We started to hit muddy patches, and the reason became obvious--hoofprints, postholing the trail! The contractors are using mules to ferry in the concrete and other supplies. I'll bet there hasn't been a mule on the trail since Harriet Whiteside stopped using one to pump the water up from Leonora Spring back in the 1800's. A clever strategy indeed, although someone may later have to repair the damage to the rest of the trail done by repairing that one gully. (I later learned that the purpose of the work was sewer work, not trail work, which makes more sense.)

Just before reaching the end of the trail, past Leonora and Ragon springs, I attempted to find the now quite elusive Alum spring between Scenic Highway and the bluff above. My trail guide describes a "faint trail" leading to the spring from the upper switchback but all traces of that trail were gone today. The guide says it is 100 yards to the spring but it may be further; it was getting dark so I turned back without reaching the spring.

Brady and I walked down the Hardy trail (the wide and graveled remains of the Broad Gauge railroad bed) for a mile back to the Cravens House, pleasantly tired from our small adventure.

Still Making (Slow) Progress

It seems that I can always find some excuse not to stare into the computer when I get home from work...doing laundry, sometimes even cooking dinner. But tonight I managed to consolidate some of the PHP scripts driving the site and feel like I got something useful done. I will never be a great PHP programmer, and it may well be that other techniques such as AJAX (I bought a book called "Ajax in Ten Minutes" but that is clearly fictional for me) may be the better way to go, but such is life in the technology lane.

Google has already indexed some of my pages, but I suppose it's okay to get a head start even if most of the site is still missing in action. I've decided that the mobile devices of the future will likely be of the same ilk as the iPhone, which works for me since I have an iPod Touch. The site looks pretty good there since you can zoom in and to read down just one column, yet slip around pretty easily to see the others. Check it out and let me know what you think: www.hikelookout.org.

Glen Falls Madness

It was an absolutely beautiful day, sunny and 60 degrees, as Brady and I parked along Ochs Highway at the Glen Falls Trailhead just up from Sanders Road on the west side of Lookout Mountain. I wanted to try some photography while the sun was shining on this side of the mountain (we typically hike in the afternoon when the sun is fading fast).

Before visiting Glen Falls proper I climbed down into the gully to examine the cascades below the trail, where we spent a half hour taking photos. In truth, these waterfalls are perhaps more impressive than the main falls, which is mostly hidden from view.

Brady the Mountaineer had brought along a length of his trusty Goldline rope, and in fact we used it for a safety while working around the top of Glen Falls. Looking at the pictures now, the rope makes it even more suggestive that we are in a cave, not outdoors.

We noted a lot of graffiti in the "tunnel" leading up to the top of the falls, done these days with magic markers since today's teenagers don't carry paint. Stupid, idiotic graffiti that reflected the ages of its authors! However, we did note the much older message, "All to the Legion of Honor," on the outer rock. Did a Frenchman visit this place years ago?

I had been to Glen Falls many times (including memorable adventures such as finding a blow-up doll that had been flung over the cliff, and having my rescue pager go off for a rescue at Glen Falls while I sat there at Glen Falls) but had never been to what I now call Picnic Rock, a most comfortable large plateau of a rock just above the lip of the falls on the northern side. It would have been a great place to eat lunch, had Brady or I brought along a lunch to eat.

Rather than retracing our steps back to the truck or walking the road itself, we plunged into the woods on the uphill side of the road and made our way along the steep hillside until the truck appeared below. Unfortunately there was a steep slope and/or cliff between us and the truck. I climbed down while Brady used the goldline to do a body rappel, possibly the first done on Lookout Mountain in several decades.

Once down the road in St. Elmo we headed up Old Mountain Road (which starts right there at Mojo Burrito). This is the old Whiteside Turnpike, the original toll road up the mountain. It passes three times under the modern Incline, the third time becoming just the overgrown remains of a road. Back down by Chattem, we explored up Church Street and found the former Patten Memorial AME Zion Church (1886) is apparently being renovated extensively to become a private residence--and what a place it will be, with the tower, the big glass windows, and all that history. I didn't realize it at the time, but the Incline #1 (of the very same period since it started service in 1887) came down what's now the kudzu-infested slope next door to the church. According to my own trail guide, the lower station was right there at what's now a small basketball court.

Our next stop was the Old Wauhatchie Pike Greenway. A hundred years ago the mountain above St. Elmo up to the broad gauge railroad (now the Guild Trail) was a shanty-town of small homes. You can still see traces of the old roads and driveways, one of which connects to Old Wauhatchie just around the corner from the concrete barricades. Walking down the kudzu-filled greenway (very green indeed in summer but quite brown today) it was difficult to believe this was a public road just 15 years ago, one that I drove almost daily. At Mystery Falls we met a group of cavers from Missouri who had just exited the cave (gated). I was amazed that they had been able (with permission) to drive back to the cave...which makes sense, and helps cavers change out of their muddy clothes.

Our final adventure occured at the railroad overpass on Cummings Highway at the base of the mountain at the Old Wauhatchie intersection. We pulled over and noticed a sign that read, "St. Elmo - Lookout Mountain Greenway & Trail, sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce Southside Branch." What, a greenway here? Unfortunately, it was the shortest and sorriest greenway we'd ever seen, not more than 200 feet in length and quite steep and rough! Halfway down the greenway was a tent and shanty where a homeless person was evidently living--laundry was hanging from the trees and pallets were being disassembled to build a wooden structure. On the other side, two identical signs confirmed that this was the official greenway. A great idea for sure, but somehow one that evidently never progressed past the signs. I'd be interested in learning more about this (a Google search turned up nothing).

In all, we had spent five hours on the hill!

Hiking the Point Hotel Railroad Loop

Brady and I spent four hours today making a loop on the northern end of the mountain, most of it off the maintained trails. We parked at the Cravens House and were about to start up the Incline #1 (East Cravens) trail but veered off through the backyard of the old Hardy home to see if we could find any more traces of the mysterious roadbed we'd found a couple of days earlier just above the old railroad bed. Sure enough, we followed the "flat ground" and found stacked rocks lining the downhill side indicating this was more than likely an old road. We think it's a very old one because it seems to go under the Incline #1, which was built in the late 1800's.

We charged directly uphill to the Incline #1 trail, then spent a few minutes photographing the truly massive stonework just past the "90 degree" turn in the old railway. We approached from the bottom because true to our nature we were off the official trail and following the old CCC switchback (when I reopened this trail in the early 1990s I did not follow this route because it was completely washed away at the top, instead following the bed of the incline itself for 75 yards to reach the same spot). The stonework where the trail first meets the incline is long and impressive, but the upper wall is even larger. Here the incline went across a high trestle over a gully, affording a view that must have left some memories on its passengers.

We searched for a piece of the incline cable that I had found 15 years ago (it was right there on the ground on the old railbed) but didn't find it. However, we did come across a very large bolt at the Point Hotel site that I had never noticed before.

From the hotel we continued southward down the bluff trail, which is built on the bed of a narrow gauge railroad. We could hear the a train whistle in Lookout Valley below--very appropriate. After a quarter mile the footpath drops down while the original railway continued on trestles.

Today the trestles are gone, but sewer paths suspended in the air on not-so-sturdy timbers mark the route. The old railway goes very close to the back yards of some posh bluff homes, so we tried to be inconspicuous. Behind

what my notes say are the old Nottingham place, we came to a swinging bridge over the tracks. I remembered steps coming down from above and a place for someone to wait for the train (later a trolley) but despite the fact that it was winter and bitter cold, the entire area was overgrown with greenery. Although the bridge was broken, we could still clamber to the top of the rock for a great view.

The old railroad was getting ever more overgrown and ever close to the houses, so after

photographing a set of trestle bases, we started looking for an escape route. These trestles must have been something, by the way, because the actual tracks were about twenty feet higher than the stonework--lots of timbers, just like in the movies. At any rate, the slopes were steep and we were now about a hundred feet above the Bluff trail, and the trail was living up to its name. For a time we thought we might have to traverse all the way to Sunset Rock, but eventually we found a gully we could climb down.

The sun was setting so there was no time to investigate the "mystery cave" in this area--we needed to boggie on home. At the intersection of the Cravens Trail we noted with a mix of amusement and consternation two adjacent signs that said that Sunset Rock was either one mile or half a mile away. These signs are within ten feet of one another!

Once back below the Point we followed an old trail directly down the nose of the mountain to the Cravens House. This trail is marked on a 1921 map and makes a beeline down the hill, switching back shortly to emerge at the cluster of monuments on the hill behind the Cravens House. Darkness was upon us but we had completed our loop!