A homemade sign along the highway near the top of John’s Mountain in Walker County, Georgia says, “don’t pick up dogs.” This always puzzled me because there are no houses within miles of the sign. Then, a couple of weeks ago, we took an unplanned side trip to Keown Falls located in the John’s Mountain Wildlife Management Area, and I saw 2 mutts alongside the road leading to the falls trail. It occurred to me that people living in and around this wildlife management area (itself within the Chattahoochee National Forest) let their hunting dogs run loose in the woods. These mongrels were several miles from any houses, and these habitations resemble 19th century cabins. One of these dogs eagerly began following after our car. (It looked like a grey hound but was obviously not purebred, the other looked like an odd mix of cocker spaniel and dachshund.) The dogs that run loose in the wildlife management area are likely friendly to humans and easily adopted by strangers. The sign is probably a request for strangers not to take their dogs. Forest officials don’t want people’s hunting dogs running loose in wildlife management areas, and it might explain why Keown Falls Trail is strangely devoid of wild animals. I saw some squirrels on the road but didn’t see any deer or rabbits. The trail winds through an open woodland, and I could see for a considerable distance. The dogs likely keep deer on the run.
My daughter requested a nature hike on the way home from visiting relatives, so I did not bring my own camera and have to use other people’s photos for this blog entry. I had 5 hours of driving ahead of me including a stretch through Atlanta. I’m a grouchy old man who hates driving. Despite my foul mood, I found Keown Falls Trail to be unlike any natural area I had ever seen. It is an open woodland with a floor covered in saplings, ferns, and many different kinds of herbaceous plants I could not identify (and without a camera to photo them, I couldn’t study the pictures to figure them out). There is little grass and no shrubs. According to The Natural Communities of Georgia, Keown Falls Trail “starts in a mesic forest that grades into a dry calcareous forest with oaks, hickories, beech, sourwood, and tulip tree and becomes more mesic in the northern part of the loop. The trail begins climbing the slope and loses its calcareous nature as it passes through a dry oak-pine-hickory natural community that contains a small, embedded stand of pines with a luxurious understory.” There is a seep above the falls with 5 species of ferns. This is what I saw: an open woodland (not a forest) dominated by mountain chestnut oak and hickory (including shagbark). Maple, beech, sweetgum, and shortleaf pine also occur. The falls are unimpressive, but the open woodland is nice and unique. This woodland looks under browsed, probably because hunting dogs and natural predators keep the deer from staying on the range for long. Or perhaps, local hunters are taking more than their bag limit. It also looks as if the landscape has been kept open by prescribed fire. It appears as if a controlled burn may have been conducted here maybe 5-10 years ago, but information about this is not available on the internet. The open nature, lack of shrubs, and abundance of ferns is evidence of fire.
Map of Keown Falls Trail in John’s Mountain Wildlife Management Area.
Photo someone took of the woods alongside Keown Falls Trail.
Keown Falls is not impressive, but the botany in the woodlands alongside the trail is unique and interesting. The area immediately around the falls is considered an acidic cliff community.
A study examined and dated all the burn scars found in 30 dead and living shortleaf pines in John’s Mountain Wildlife Management Area. The vertical lines indicate years when there was a fire. Chart from the below referenced paper.
Burn scars and annual rings allow scientists to determine when there were fires in the past here.
Scientists studied the frequency of fire on the Cumberland Plateau by using fire scars on dead and living shortleaf pine trees in John’s Mountain Wildlife Management Area and other sites in Tennessee and Kentucky. Shortleaf pines have thick bark and can survive light fires deliberately set by humans or accidentally by lightning. Indians set fire to the woods to improve habitat for game animals, to make it easier to hunt, to improve visibility and help prevent being ambushed by other hostile natives, and to reduce the population of stinging insects and ticks. At John’s Mountain scientists found 131 burn scars on 30 dead and living shortleaf pines that dated from 1664-2017. Burn intervals ranged from 1-26 years. Fires occurred on average every 4-5 years when Indians lived here but decreased in frequency when Indians became depopulated due to diseases brought by Europeans. After first European settlement burn frequency averaged every 2-3 years, but then fires were suppressed, though there was a major fire in 1934 during a drought.
Refererence:
Edwards, L.; J. Ambrose, L, Kirkman
The Natural Communities of Georgia
The University of Georgia Press 2013
Stambaugh, M.; J. Marschall, E. Abadir
“Revealing Historical Fire Regimes of the Cumberland Plateau, USA, through Remnant Fire Scarred Shortleaf Pines (Pinus echinata milli)
Fire Ecology 16 (24) 2020
https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s42408-020-00084-y
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