“You never know what you're going to uncover as you walk through, and the questions about its history always spark great conversation.”

Our host, Marci Mowery, sits down with Karli Naugle, who is the district forester of Buchanan State Forest, recently named the Pennsylvania Parks and Forest Foundation's Forest of the Year. She offers an insider's tour of a forest that has, until now, largely kept its charms to itself.

Karli's path to forestry began at home. Growing up beside Buchanan, she walked the back forty with her grandfather, who worked for PennDOT and advised her early that a state job was a life well spent. She eventually landed exactly that; though he passed just before she received the district forester title, a promotion she wished she could have shared with him.

Spread across three counties (Franklin, Fulton, and Bedford), Buchanan is a patchwork of ridgetop forests, each with its own character.

The Big Mountain Overlook commands views stretching from Maryland to Perry County. The Chaneysville area holds rare hard pine stands. The Silent Hill tract quietly accumulates some of the region's best snowfall and harbors a history that surprises most visitors: a CCC camp that later served as a prisoner-of-war facility, its story preserved in a downloadable history hike guide.

Karli’s team maintains around 206 miles of trails and approximately 62 primitive campsites. Volunteers have transformed old firebreak paths into proper switchback trails. Plans are underway for a dark-sky stargazing site, accessible hunting areas, and a wheelchair-friendly route to the Big Mountain Overlook.

Key Topics:

• What Makes Buchanan Unique (02:20)
• Named Forest of the Year (07:11)
• Challenges: Invasive Species and Wildfire (09:51)
• Balancing Conservation with Public Use (11:08)
• Planning a Visit: Tips for First-Timers (23:25)
• Cultural Resources and History Hikes (31:27)

Resources:

• Buchanan State Forest: https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dcnr/recreation/where-to-go/state-forests/find-a-forest/buchanan
• Bureau of Geologic Survey: https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dcnr/programs-and-services/about/bureaus-and-offices/geological-survey
• Buchanan State Forests Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BuchananStateForest
• Fulton Fall Folk Festival: https://fultoncountypa.com/fulton-fall-folk-festival/
• Standing Stone Trail: https://www.standingstonetrail.org/
• PA Healthy Lands Week: https://pahealthylandsweek.org/

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The Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation inspires stewardship of YOUR state parks and forests through volunteerism, education, recreation, and philanthropy.

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(auto-translated)

That's why you're the forest of the year. You have ideas and you're implementing them. Oh, that's

great. I think our new mission is really honed into focusing where we're headed. Our new mission is to conserve, steward and enhance Pennsylvania's trees, forest, native wild plants, and to connect with the communities we serve. And so I think that creating those spaces for connections is where, where we're going to be focusing a lot of our efforts.

Imagine a place where stress fades, fresh air fills your lungs, and adventure awaits around every corner

you

welcome to think outside. The podcast that inspires you to explore, connect and embrace the outdoors. Welcome to think outside with the Pennsylvania parks and Forest Foundation. I'm your host. Marcie Mowry, today we're joined by Carly noggle district forester of Buchanan State Forest recently named our forest of the year. Carly leads the stewardship of this diverse and scenic landscape, balancing conservation, recreation and sustainable forest management. We're excited to talk to her about what makes Buchanan special, the work behind this recognition and what the future holds for Buchanan State Forest. Carly, welcome.

Hi, thanks.

What first drew you to a career in forestry?

Oh, that one's really easy. I grew up right next to Buchanan state forest, and my grandfather worked for PennDOT, and he always told me, girly, you got to work for the state when you grow up. This would be a great job. And so we'd spend time walking around the back 40, learning all the trees that were that were out on the landscape, and meeting the folks painting what is now our boundary line at state forest land. And really kind of inspired me to go into that environmental career when I went to school so and then I kind of lucked into forestry and was able to get a job with the state. So wonderful.

What a nice memory with your grandfather as well. Yeah, did he? Was he alive when you became a forester,

when I came a forester, yes, and when I was a named assistant, but he passed away just right before I got the district forester job. So yeah, I was just like a super proud moment that I wish I could have shared with

them. Yes, I would imagine so. For those who might not be familiar with Buchanan State Forest, what makes it unique within the Pennsylvania forestry system?

Wow, that's a really good one. I think that Buchanan is kind of unique in several ways. For one, we're kind of spread out across bridgetops along three different counties. We cover Western Franklin Fulton and Bedford County. So we have like, just different chunks of land across that landscape and like, so basically the ridge top. So we kind of get really different forest types across each one, and really different recreational opportunities across each one as well. Our cheneysville area has some really cool, hard pine stands that really are unique to the state forest landscape as a whole, and kind of our unique little niche that we have.

And what area would the Cheney?

Oh, Cheney's our southern Bedford County area, okay,

within those different forested landscapes, what type of activities might somebody find that? You say it's very different in each landscape?

Yeah, obviously we have our typical hunting and hiking over all of them, but we have the mid state trail running through our Bedford landscape, which obviously is part of the state forest network, trail network, so it's a connector through, kind of like the Appalachian Trail is from a show mid state runs through part of it. And then our around our Allen's Valley area, which is around towns gap State Park, is where most folks know about that. We have both Tuscarora and standing stone trails that run through there. So those are really kind of different. And then our sideling Hill area has, which is right outside of breeze wood has some really good horseback riding trails, not specifically horseback, but that's what a lot of people use them for. We've got the some partners there that have the top Trail, which is the old abandoned Turnpike. So that's there and has it's a partnership that we kind of support as what we have adjacent land, so that's kind of a neat spot. And then we have both ATV and snowmobile trails in that area as well. So okay,

and the top trail for our listeners, that's the one that you can access from. It's the sideling Hill,

correct,

rest stop on the turnpike.

That's, yeah, that's correct. And that the signage, they're still being developed, and they're, you know, still working on a lot of their stuff, but they got a lot of grants recently from our partner agencies with Conservation Recreation, and there's going to be a lot of work happening there, and those connections are just going to continue to grow over the next several years. Yeah,

I think it's pretty exciting to be able

to see.

Jump on the turnpike and maybe take a nice hike.

Yeah, it'll be really nice whenever they are able to not have that tolling thing, you know, when they go to the non toll booth system that they're working towards, and it'll be a lot easier to just pop off and hit their trail, our trails and and I think it's going to continue to provide those connections.

Yeah, nice. You talked a little bit about the different trails the landscapes. Is there any particular feature that you think every visitor should experience?

It's a real popular one, and I think everybody should probably go there. We have a big mountain overlook, which is, it's a beautiful one in in the Allens Valley area. So that's like the mountain that's between Chambersburg and McConnell's Burg. So if you go up there to our tower road and follow it clear to the end, there's a little loop, and you can pull over and there's some rocks that look out over the whole eastern side Cumberland Valley. So you can see, on a clear day, clear down to Maryland and clear up into Perry County. And it's really beautiful.

I feel like that might be the picture that's in the Pennsylvania State Park and State Forest passport, yeah, because it's very unique geologically as well.

It is, yeah, it is actually, think, the highest geological Relief Area the change in Pennsylvania. It's in the Geologic Survey book somewhere that we had, we had picked that out at one point in time. I think we've been highlighting it for years. That's

kind of what I remember when I visited that day many, many years ago, and it was sitting on it yeah, Jim had shared with Yes, absolutely, yeah,

yeah. It's really great spot for me. It was one of those ones that when I was growing up in because I lived in Chambersburg when I was growing up, and it was one of those places I would always grow up, because there's great blueberry fields around there. So I would go up and we'd, you know, look over the rocks and out to the valley and pick blueberries and sit there and eat.

That sounds pretty good to me, yeah, you know. And it's interesting, because I think there are a lot of people that are attracted to geology, and knowing that there are these unique geologic features in the landscape that are available for people to see and can access easily. Yeah, you

can definitely visualize some things there.

Yes, what does it mean for to you and to your team that Buchanan State Forest is named the forest of the year?

Yeah, we were pretty excited. It's, it's been a bit of a shock to us. We were, we're not one of the most highly recognized state forest you know, we're kind of, I say we're a hidden gem because we don't get the visitation that some of our neighbors do, like Roth rock in the show. But we've been pretty excited that, you know, it will kind of get us some more recognition. We know that we've had a lot of work going on recently with some of our our volunteer group that's actually working on becoming a pff chapter, French group, chapter, and so that we're hoping to kind of bring some eyes to some of the things that we've been doing, like that bike, bike trail, multi use trail system that they've been developing in our bear valley area, right outside of Chambersburg. And to, you know, some of the other things that we've been doing, we're working on some accessible, hunting and viewing areas that have been kind of like a passion project of my assistant district forester, Brian Wilford. He planned it a long time ago. And, you know, state government sometimes things take a while to get to fruition, but we've been kind of chunking it away, and we got super close, and should have that completely finished by the end of the year, and and so we're pretty excited about being able to showcase that and bringing recognition to all the work that that my staff does. Amazingly, they do all the work, so, you know, just to be recognized for that hard work, and, you know, all the road systems and the trail systems and all the effort that goes into our day to day to make it accessible for everybody else. Yeah, well,

we appreciate that the work that you and your staff are doing, and for the accessible hunting, the accessible overlook, where would that be located?

So the accessible hunting is, is a really small tract. It's called our town Hill area, but it is just south of Breezewood. I think it's been it's called Welsh road, and it's been on our maps for a long time, but we do plan on making a pamphlet and kind of highlighting that, and I would look for that to show up probably on our website later this fall, okay? And the Overlook. The overlook is the tower road, one that we were talking about there before, so it's accessible now, but we're going to continue to make some improvements there. We're going to probably get, I think, trail system aggregate, if we're able to out of our next fiscal year budget to kind of really lay that in so you can really get even a wheelchair out to the overlook, because it's just such a gem that we want to share.

Phil, thank you for doing that. What are some of the biggest challenges you face in managing a State Forest today?

Oh, my goodness, I think that almost anybody in this southern part of the state has to say invasive species first, because they're just so much. The workload that we do and everything before we can break ground on any anything we have to treat invasive so they don't spread further. Every timber harvest that we have takes planning, because you have to treat all that stuff ahead of time it. It takes such a mental load and a physical time sink into that to really manage that. And other than that, I mean, I know there's lots of challenges, but those are the ones. That's the ones that really keep me up at night. Like, how do we manage that?

Keep it at bay Absolutely. And we were just talking, you know, before we started that, we're in wildfire season as we're recording it, and your staff was out looking for a lightning strike today. Yeah. So we always encourage listeners to be very cognizant of the rules banning campfires and state forests March 1 through May 25 people often think of wildfires as being a fall event, but So be cognizant. Make sure you understand what the campfire rules are in the particular district the particular time of year, because a lot of fires in Pennsylvania are human induced. So don't be that person.

Be a good Smokey Bear friend. How do you balance, you know, your conservation efforts with public use and recreation? Well, I think again, Buchanan is uniquely situated because Fulton County is so rural. We don't have our populaces are kind of at our far edges, so we're not getting heavily hit at this point. So we've been able to slowly build capacity for the increased recreation over time, which has really helped us to manage that load. You know, we've been able to put money into our campsites and put money into our trails and make sure that the sales that we lay out take into account, you know, those features that we really want to highlight and that we're not blowing things away with our other management activities and communicating, obviously, is a huge way that we can help balance that, and I think that they baked into our activity process, that we communicate with our neighbors and with our partners, that these are our plans, and that's how we're going to do that. And then also this year, we're going to start hosting an open house in October, which is really kind of exciting. It's the first time we've we've done something like that in a while, since we had our public meetings for our state forest resource management plan, and just to try and kind of kick that off a little bit more, to help that communication and let folks know what we're doing, why we're doing it. And I think that, like a lot of people, want to tell them why, the whys behind things really matter.

Yes, and communication is so important

Absolutely, will

people be able to watch your website to find out when that

yes, it's going to be October 16. So I do know that the date is October 16 is going to be in conjunction with the Fulton fall folks festival that they have in the county, and it brings a whole bunch of people to Fulton County, which is, like I said, doesn't get a lot of traffic, and so we decided to try and host it at that time to get them

that's wonderful. I applaud you for being proactive and having conversations, because so often we wait until something happens, yeah, and we try to explain ourselves, as opposed to having the conversation so people not only understand, but can be a champion for you as well. That's yeah, that is the hope and yeah, just to start that conversation more and have people be able to access us more, we're there. We just don't always get the visitors. You had mentioned that you're starting a Friends of bear valley. You had a friends group that worked predominantly on equestrian trails in the sideling Hill. So how do local communities and volunteers play? What role do they play in this your work and the success of the work that you do?

Obviously, volunteers like magnify the work that we do greatly. We are still building a volunteer system like our bear valley group has been growing by leaps and bounds. And it's it's lovely to have that energy and just extra ideas. You know, we kind of get tunnel vision on some of the things that we do, and to have folks bring in fresh new ideas, fresh new hands, to do some of the work. They've done some amazing work with trail work, moving rocks and and things that have created access where we didn't have access before, and if we had to do it ourselves, would never, never have happened like you can walk up little mountain, which is, you know, super steep now, because they were able to build a rock work serpentine switchback trail system up there. And standing stone trail has also has a volunteer group, obviously, that works on them, and they have done some of that switch back work as well. So Buchan has a lot of trails that originally were like fire breaks, and so they're straight up and down the mountain, and it's not super user friendly. And so we use volunteer work a lot to create those connections and loops and kind of fix and rehab that into something that's actually more. Usable. So how many miles of trails Do you have? Any Buchanan? It's like 206, right now plus, you know, plus or minus as we, you know, rehab and add, I know that Chad, with our bear valley group, is actually proposed a few more. So we will kind of grow and shrink as as needed. So some of those are probably come and go, but we average over 200 okay, and that includes your, your motorized, your non motorized, your equestrian, correct?

Yeah, we have a traffic only, your mountain biking.

Yeah, that is the whole shebang. Okay, yeah. And,

you know, I was talking earlier with somebody about scenic driving is very popular as a recreation forum in Pennsylvania. So how many miles of scenic driving trails Do you have?

That's a really good question. I don't know the mileage right off the top of my head, but I know that we have some really good ones. Our blankley road is a wonderful area for scenic driving, and there's several VISTAs along there that you can stop that is in our cheneysville area outside of Bedford. Martin Hill is, is where that one is our broad mountain area is our bear valley. It kind of runs the whole length of the ridge there. And it is like beautiful in the fall again, it's, there's some wonderful overlooks out from there. I think those are our key ones we have because our pieces are so broken up. Kind of the main roads that run to the ridge top summit road is also decent. There's not as many VISTAs along there as or along some of the other ones. But it's still, if you hit our helipad landing area, it looks out over all of Fulton County, and it's really, really pretty as well. So that

sounds lovely. Yeah. And are people able to do any stargazing?

Oh, my goodness, yeah. And actually, we're going to be working on, hopefully developing a site or trainingsville area. The Martin Hill area is it's not like cherry springs dark sky, but for the southern part of Pennsylvania, and I don't remember what they're called whenever it's like, really dark blue up in Cherry springs, and we're just a little bit lighter. So it's one of the best viewing areas in all of the southern part of Pennsylvania, and even down into Virginia, West Virginia. So we're hoping to develop an actual site where people can bring in some telescopes and things to just make sure that the the area is clear. One of my Rangers has a real passion for astronomy, and so he's been working with a local group to kind of get some guidance on what we should do. And so hopefully that'll be coming here in the near future as well.

Yeah,

and that's exciting, because you could get to that. I mean,

yeah,

weather's clear. You could jump in your car, if you live locally, and yeah, there, you know, in a short period of time,

yeah. And we don't think it'll pull anything away from Cherry springs, because that is such a wonderful place. I've been up there several times to see it, and it's just beautiful and dark, and we don't really have that. So if we can just find that little niche of our own down here, I think it would really help make that viewing experience more accessible.

Yeah, and it almost complements cherry space, yeah, because it allows people to hone their skills. It allows them to get excited about it and maybe realize they want to put the time into being up to Cherry

space. Yeah, absolutely,

yeah. What are your priorities or goals for Buchanan state forest in the coming years?

I've got so many my staff just loves me. I'm full of ideas.

That's why you're the forest of the year. You have ideas and you're implementing them.

Oh, that's great. I think our new mission is really honed into focusing where we're headed. Our new mission is to conserve, steward and enhance Pennsylvania's trees, forest, native wild plants, and to connect with the communities we serve. And so I think that creating those spaces for connections is where, where we're going to be focusing a lot of our efforts. But Be it creating accessibility sites or creating accessible people, making sure that you know, they can reach out to our rangers, to our recreation foresters, creating accessible communication pathways. I don't know. We just recently got a Facebook page, so we're trying to build community there as well. And so I think accessing community is a real goal. And of all types, you know, our hunting community, our recreation communities, our mushroom hunters. There's so many mushroom hunters out right now. It's, it's amazing to see the different people that we serve in our roles for Pennsylvania. So those are some of my my big goals is creating those connections as we as we move forward. Well,

we'll be sure to link your not just your website, but your your Facebook page.

Okay,

that's

awesome. In the show notes, when you were saying about all the different communities, you also have some areas that are very good for wildflowers.

Yeah,

correct? Yes, we do, yeah. And we've put some native wildflowers in a planting around our office. We've been trying to develop a brochure around those for a while now we've been working with. A local scouts organization to try and make it a project for one of them, but we haven't quite brought that over the finish line yet. But like our office brings people in every year to see those native plants around there, and we also have them spread kind of strategically across the state forest. Our signing Hill picnic area has a wild flyer, or, I don't know, so kind of, it's not really a trail. It's just kind of a path through the through the picnic area that that's been planted, and we just try and put natives in everywhere we can. Wonderful, wonderful. And you mentioned your your resource center, there is a an option there for people to come visit and learn a little bit more about forestry history. Can you talk about what people might see if they stuck to the resource center and the visitor center part of that? Yeah, sure. And as always, we continue to grow this. But it was a we have a resource management center. Has a lobby in the front that has some educational materials in it. It tells a story about food chains. So it's really kind of cool. You can kind of walk through, and there's some hands on things. They can flip open and look and see what bugs do. And we've got a number of mounts that kind of show the species that are in our area and that really create that food chain. And then we're working, again with the scout group, hopefully to develop a trail that works around and identifies all the flower species and tree species and kind of builds on that also does have a TSA trail around the office. So even if you have some mobility challenges, you're still able to kind of get out and see that. So that's kind of cool. Excellent.

We applaud you on your accessibility that is so important. Yeah, I wanted to circle back you had mentioned earlier about your campsites.

Yeah. So how many campsites do you have in your forest? And roughly, yeah, not completely. And you have both car roadside camping as well as do you have camping available for your long distance trails. So our long distance trails have through hiking campsites. You know, they just hike on their way through, and that doesn't require a permit. But we have permitted sites that are both right along the road and some that you hike into as well. So we have a mix of them. There is a total of, I think it's 6062, we have a few that we're having issues with it we're going to probably close, and then a few more that we're going to open. So it's kind of an evolving number, but I think there are 62 currently for for reservation on the reserve America website, and they're scattered across all of our divisions. So each of them have about 20 ish at each of the divisions. So it's kind of good to have them spread across the landscape. We really feel like that kind of is our niche to that dispersed recreation. And the thing to remember about forestry camp sites is, or they're primitive camp sites. You know, we have, we have some picnic tables and fire rings, but there is no comfort facilities or water or those type of things. So you have to be kind of self sufficient. So we really get a hearty brand of folks that come in and do camping on state forest land. So come prepared. It is a it's the type of camping I grew up with. And I really, I'm passionate about some of the spots that we have that are really super nice and quiet. I mean, it's a real nature immersion. Yeah, it's so quiet. Yeah, it's sometimes hard to find those quiet spaces. What would you want someone to know if they've never been to the Buchanan state forest before? What would help them to plan their trip and have a positive experience? Yeah, for we obviously like to have new visitors, and it kind of really depends on where you're you're entering the state forest. I think that one of the both advantages and disadvantages to Buchanan is that we are so spread out. You know, it takes, like, an hour and a half hour, 45 minutes to get from one side to the other. So it's kind of nice to visit us multiple times, so that you can kind of really explore each each chunk that we have, each track that we have when you start here at the bear valley side on the Chambersburg end of things, you know, we're super accessible. It's about the same distance from Chambersburg to go to bear valley as it is to go to Michaud and and like so many people, go to Michelle, and it's like, come visit bear valley because it's, you know, it's beautiful, it's quiet. Obviously, if we tell people to come, it might not be as quiet as that. But, you know, we're building infrastructure there that we want people to come see. That's where that that bear valley finds, group is is developing, and they've put so much work and effort in there to creating loops and trails. Yeah. I mean, we're really close for Chambersburg folks to come to. So I would love to see more folks use that area. And it's kind of just a small chunk nestled right outside of letter Kenny. So it's got its own special features. It's always colder there in the summer, so it's a wonderful place, the bear valley picnic area, I. Actually circling back to that special moments. Like, my family grew up on the Gilbert road, which leads back to bear valley picnic area, and it was where I spent like, half my summer, because there's also a creek that run through it, and so we would just go up over the mountain and spend half the day playing in the creek and and eating at the picnic area. Because that's what you know, families like to do is eat so

and having it be cooler. And I'm authority thinking like it was 80 some degrees today. It's nice to know where those cooler cool spots are. This is April. What's it going to be like in August? I

know. Yeah, so, yeah. So that's coming in from, from the east. That's where you would hit first. And then, of course, our area surrounding Cowens gap is our Allen's Valley tract. And it's just got, it's got Tuscarora running the one side and standing stone running the other. And there's just so many good loops there. And then you can get right down into McConnell's Burg. And there's a good number of smaller eateries that have started to come up down there that are really easily accessible off of Route 30. And then, of course, you get counts gap, which has a lovely lake, so you can go hike and get a get all sweaty, and then go take a nice dip in their lake. So it's a unique little area. And there are, there actually is a good equestrian trail there too that leads that connects the park to our knobsville track, which is just over the back side of the park and leads right into our Resource Management Center. So we worked with the park together to kind of bring that to fruition. I don't know, probably a decade ago we were able to get that on the ground, and that's just a lovely spot that not a lot of people know about. Yeah, I wasn't aware of that one. Yeah, so that it was, I don't think it gets used as much as it could. We do have a couple rides every year that come there and use it, but it's a lovely path up and over the mountain that doesn't get used a whole lot and and that connection is great. Our sailing Hill track is really kind of spread out, and it is close to that turnpike plaza where they have their trail connections, and then it'll be close to the top trail to have their trail connections. You can easily stay in breeze wood there. There's some hotels and some eateries in breeze wood as well. But there's, it's the one place we don't have, like, a big through trail system, but we have a lot of our own local trails, which are really kind of nice when you want that quiet. And it is a really, I think, unique, unique landscape there, because it does have the ridge, but it also has some of those bottoms that you kind of get to walk down into, and again, cooler in the summer, when you want some of that cooler areas. So and then our, our sideline county ATV trail is in the wells tannery area, which is right outside of breeze wood there in that sidely Hill tract as well. So that's kind of cool one that has snowmobile trails when we get snow that run through it. Signing Hill is one of our best mountains for snow, so we have put a lot of effort into that particular snowmobile trail, but each of the divisions has one, but that one is one that I don't know why sign like Hill has its own weather, but it does seem to hold snow better than some of the others. And if you're coming in from Bedford County to our cheneysville area, our Martin Hill is some really interesting things. It's got a saltpeter cave in it. It's got a sweet root natural area in it. It's obviously got the mid state trail that runs through it. There are connection. There's not as many facilities nearby, because we're kind of down in that South southern corner of Bedford County. But it is definitely got a lot of wild character. Martin Hill wild area is actually part of it, too. So yeah, there's definitely a lot of quiet, if you're looking for solitude. The other we have that two picnic areas down that way. One's off of the route 326, which is our sweet root picnic area, and then our blankly pic leaking area is tucked up in the Martin Hill, kind of back in near one of the our old CCC camps, which we didn't even mention. We have three CCC camps. That was my next question throughout the state forest, each one of our divisions had one. So we have one at the bear valley picnic area is actually developed by the CCC, and has a cabin there that we recently did some restoration work one to kind of preserve it. I think we think it was the officers cabin, so that got a lot of work, and it's very nice. And you can tell, like, a lot of the trails were, were CCC era, and have been, you know, maintained since then, and we still have a lot of the pavilions and things. And then siling Hill has the Oregon camp right off of Oregon road, and has those connections right up to the top trail. And there's really great history hike. We have a pamphlet that's it's at the site, obviously, but it's also on our website. If you want to download it ahead of time and kind of do your research, you can really do a nice little history hike there. That kind of gives the whole connection of, of how, how the CCC camp, again, POW camp and, and then connections to the to the old turnpike and, and some railroad logging connections as well. So. Yeah, it's really one of our history highlights. And then the the other CCC camp is down in that Bedford area, and it was one of the only there was actually, it's kind of a two camp system, but it was one of the African American camps as well. So that was really kind of cool. We're still trying to dig into more, but Jody Skipper from Roth rock actually sent me a picture not that long ago that one of the local history societies have found that actually kind of provided one of our only pictures of of that site. So it's pretty awesome. So developing that history is

yes, is

that's

good, and it's very important. And I think it was at that camp that, well, I think there was a CCC era chimney and picnic. Yeah,

you guys helped, yes,

because we think that history is so important. And I hadn't realized that one of the CCC camps in Buchanan was also then a POW camp.

Yeah,

you always think of the campus show, but I didn't know about this one,

yeah, the southern Hill one that they we have some really cool pictures that were taken after that. You know, some German writing and some things like that. That kind of developed that, that history of that area, out a little bit further. It was just one of those strange things that you never think about, and

makes

me think of where, what other look.

Where are they? Where? Yeah, yes.

And I'm glad you brought up the history aspect, because I think it's really important to not just celebrate the history, but you know, the people have a strong interest in history. Absolutely. I'm pointing them to those options, because we oftentimes think of our parks and forests as being just natural resources, and we forget that they're also repositories for cultural resources too. Yeah,

yeah, for sure. And I think that that is, like, one of our most requested hikes. We've done it on a first day hike before. We've done it for a number of groups over the years, and it just, it's, you never know what you're going to uncover as you walk through that. And the people questions about history always spark great conversation. So

I love it. I'm gonna have to watch your website and see that when you're having another one, I want to come join. If you could only recommend one hidden gem

spot in

Buchanan, and you may have already mentioned it, because you did mention a couple mention a couple of things that were your favorites. What would that be? What would that hidden gem be?

So just outside of bear valley picnic area, there is a little teen, tiny waterfall that we have a nice trail to, and they just actually fixed up the parking. It's a super short walk, less than a quarter mile back, and it's just a it's a lovely place to sit and kind of just enjoy and be. Yeah, you can hear that even in the summer, when the water's low, it's like a nice trickle, and in the spring, it's a full rush. And it can definitely, you know, it's, I'm not, I'm not trying to oversell this. It's a small waterfall, but it's a good drop into into the little creek. So it's one of my favorite little spots. Yes,

I'm gonna have to check that out too.

That one is not on our map, but it is signed because it's such a short thing. You can't, you know, couldn't put it on a map, but, yeah, you should be able to find it if you head to the picnic area.

So you know, as we're coming to a close, is there anything that else that you would like to share that I may not have thought to ask you.

Wow, that's a good question. No,

okay, now

I just want to I guess I can say that, like Buchanan has some really great staff, and we have put a lot of work and effort into into making the forest roads travelable, like we can get people to almost every spot on state forest land that obviously is behind the gate. So all of our roads are well maintained. We really take pride into making sure that people can get to our our sites, and all of our trails are, you know, routinely touched. And so our staff really takes a lot of pride and effort into into making sure our forest can be accessed, and we like to keep it that way. So I love that. And I will add that we're working with your staff for your areas in Bedford County as part of healthy lands week, where

we're gonna have some volunteer

opportunities, some great projects coming up.

Yes, yeah. So really excited to be able to partner with you and bring in some volunteers and maybe introduce some new people to what Buchanan State Forest has to offer. We love that. So thank you, Carly and again. Congratulations to you and to all of your staff for the amazing work that you're doing, and we look forward to celebrating with you in just a couple of weeks. Yeah, thank you so much. We are. We are so pleased. Thank you. Thank you for listening to think outside, where every episode invites you to discover new places, build confidence and find inspiration in nature. Love the show. So subscribe for more inspiration, share with a fellow Explorer, and let's keep thinking outside together. For more resources and inspiration, visit think outside podcast.org