Part of the fun of seeing the National Natural Landmarks and hiking the National Recreation Trails is locating them. The NNLs are sometimes in the middle of the woods and require detective work to find. Many of the NRTs were designated decades ago and are sometimes no longer maintained, or the trailhead got moved, or the whole thing was rerouted or merged into a different trail.
The Green Ash-Overcup Oak-Sweetgum Natural Areas (NNL) are contained within three different parts of Delta National Forest in the middle of the Mississippi Delta. In the summer, most of this forest becomes swamp. The campgrounds are submerged and people use a boat on the hiking trails. In the winter, one can drive on most of the forest roads and camp out.
I found the exact location of all three tree groves, which contain “rare pristine tracts of bottomland hardwood trees” (National Park Service), via a Forest Service research map. I was only able to drive out to one of them however, as the area around the other two was flooded with the access road blocked off and closed. This photo, taken January 22, shows the Green Ash area.
Burnside State Park Nature Trail (NRT) a few miles northeast of Philadelphia, MS. Incidentally, this is the area where Civil Rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were killed in 1964. Their burned-out car was found a few miles away. That has nothing to do with this trail, but everywhere I go in Mississippi, there is history.
Burnside State Park is small and, according to what I can find online, no longer considered a state park. The gate was open, so I was able to drive in and look around for the Nature Trail, which was designated as an NRT in 1978 so I wasn’t sure what I would find. I found the trail at the back of the old campground. Nice bridges (one needs repair), a clear path through the woods, and a small swampy area. I was hoping some frozen logs I saw were alligators, but nope.
Kitty Dill Memorial Parkway is a newer (2008) NRT and runs through the small town of West Point, MS. Nicely maintained, easy to find. Hiked today, January 26. There is a Confederate statue by the middle section of the trail.
