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View from Knobby Rock, Blanton Forest         Photograph by Robert M. Davis          

  © Copyright 2007 Robert M. Davis

A Visit to Blanton Forest

             Blanton Forest in southeastern Kentucky is the site of some 2350 acres of old-growth forest of varied types.  The Blanton Forest State Nature Preserve, which includes the old growth, now covers 3098 acres on Pine Mountain.  Approximately 4.5 acres of trail are open to the public.  The major portion of the trail is a pair of loops, one above and leading out of the other, on the south slope of the mountain.  Knobby Rock, a sandstone outcrop, is near the top of the lower loop.  On the upper loop are a jumble of sandstone boulders known as the Maze of boulders and a rockshelter known as Sand Cave .           

            October 15 with a small group of conservationists, led by forest steward Merril Flanary, I hiked the lower loop, through a hemlock-beech forest, mixed mesophytic forest, and oak-hickory forest.  The woods were extremely dry, as Kentucky, along with the South-East, experienced a drought this summer.  The leaves of the rhododendrons, which grew thickly near the base of the mountain, drooped; and, higher up, on an open slope, many leaves on the shrubbery were brown and crisp. The preserve’s brochure states that “in the height of summer and into the typically dry fall, the streams continue to flow.”  This year the streams stopped.  The only water we saw on our hike was a couple of muddy puddles in the bed of Watts Creek, in which local dogs who followed us up the mountain, tried to refresh themselves. We asked Merril what happens to the federally threatened Blackside dace in the creek when the water dries up.  She thinks that they go to a reservoir below the forest.

            Fortunately Kentucky has since had rain, as much as five and a half inches in the week following our hike.  However, more than ten inches of above-normal rainfall are needed to end the “extreme” drought in southeastern Kentucky .  Water is likely to become a problem in future years at many old-growth sites across the East.

            The preserve is open from sunrise to sunset.  It is on Kentucky 840, off US 119, east of Pineville.  Cars can be parked in the parking lot for Camp Blanton at the base of Pine Mountain .

                                                                                                                                     --Mary Byrd Davis, posted October 26, 2007

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