Appalachian Discovery - Trail Maps - Buzzardroost Trail and Wilderness Trail

Buzzardroost Trail

This three-mile hike to Buzzardroost Rock and back begins at the Buzzardroost sign below the parking lot.

Opened to the public in 1967, Buzzardroost Rock honors Christian and Emma Goetz. Like Lynx Prairie and The Wilderness Preserve, Buzzardroost is a National Natural Landmark.

The abundant grass along the stairs adjacent to the highway is big bluestem. Among the bluestem look for hoary puccoon in spring, and whorled rosinweed and shale barren aster in summer. This small prairie marks the western edge of a once-great prairie that flourished around the town of Lynx. This small town to the east of where you’re standing lies in a limestone-rich area whose shallow soils may have persisted with prairie plants even when the old-growth eastern forests dominated. Be careful crossing the highway!

#3 Welcome to the “geologic basement” of the preserve. The Brassfield Limestone bedrock that lines the bottom of Easter Run is the oldest Silurian Age rock represented at The Edge of Appalachia Preserve. Resistant to weathering, this rock forms small falls on the lower slopes of Adams County. An example of this can be seen just downstream along on the trail. Look for ebony jewelwing damselflies on the streamside vegetation in summer.

#4 You now head upslope through one of Adams County’s distinctive Crab Orchard Shale barrens. These slopes, once covered with towering sugar maples and tulip trees, were cleared for farming in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Clearing left these slopes devoid of fertile topsoil, allowing prairie plants to colonize the exposed, clay- heavy Crab Orchard Shale. The shale is highly erodable and low in fertility--only the heartiest of plants can endure its extremes. Look for grooved flax, little bluestem grass, shale barren aster, orange coneflower, and three-awned grass in summer, and into late fall look for the purple flowers of stiff gentian.

#5 Pause in the red cedar dotted opening before your climb. In winter, look back over your shoulder for a view of the Devil’s Tea Cup. This Peebles Dolomite spire with a bowl-shaped top marked the early east-west wagon route that is now State Route 125. In summer, look around your feet for tall coreopsis, partridge pea and gray goldenrod. Watch the sky for black and turkey vultures and the occasional red-tailed hawk. Prairie warblers are ubiquitous in spring, when white-eyed vireos are present as well.

#6 You now enter an area dominated by eastern red cedar and Virginia pine, both pioneering species. These trees will be your companions off and on for the next half-mile or so. You’ll find showy flower displays in short supply. Instead look for the common sanicle, Virginia creeper, lopseed, white snakeroot, and spice-bush. Sharp-eyed botanists will find the tiny flowers of honewort in early summer. Poison ivy is common, so stay on the trail!

#7 Pause at the remarkable monolith at trail’s edge. Long ago, this massive chunk of Peebles Dolomite broke loose from the cliffs above and rolled approximately 100 yards to its present location among the bladdernut shrubs. Look for bulblet fern, columbine, and wild hydrangea clinging to every crevice. Millipedes, camel crickets, bristletails, and mice use the rock cavities for refuge. Above you the limestone- loving blue ash clings to the rock’s soil-free side. Listen for the songs of the red-eyed vireo, ovenbird, and Acadian flycatcher in spring. Kentucky warblers call from the logged area behind the rock, but will leave when the forest eventually matures.

#8 You now enter a rock garden with smaller cousins of the stone you just left. The forest is significantly more mature, with sugar maple as the dominant tree. The rocks are surrounded by paw paw shrubs and capped with floral bouquets: rue anemone, columbine, wild ginger, and sicklepod in spring, and zigzag goldenrod in late summer. Early spring mornings here are delightful. Spring migrants such as magnolia and Blackburnian warblers and American redstarts pass through, while breeding birds like wood thrushes and ovenbirds stay to raise young. All these birds compete for your attention against the emerald light and the cathedral-like quality of this forest.

#9 You now begin an ascent in a series of steps and switchbacks. In spring the forest floor is alive with bellworts, wild ginger, mayapple, Solomon’s plume, and snakeroot. As the season progresses, note the twining heart-shaped leaves of wild yam. Pileated woodpeckers can be found year-round and, in summer, the whistles of eastern peewees will taunt you as your breathing accelerates on the way up the steep trail. In fall, you may witness a flock of noisy common grackles descend on the chinquapin oaks to feed on the acorns, dropping shells and caps of the half-inch round acorns. In winter, look back and out into the valley—a small glimpse of the spectacular view that awaits you.

Sign Post. Turn right.

#10 Pause at the trail signpost to catch your breath. The Ohio Black Shale below your feet marks the beginning of the acid-loving Appalachian Oak Woodland. Hickories, several oak species, and sour gum abound. The needle-sharp green spines of the greenbrier, a vine more affectionately known as “shin ripper,” adorns the trail’s edge, along with sapling sassafras trees. Look for the deeply-furrowed bark of the chestnut oak, an indicator of Ohio Black Shale soils. Downy woodpeckers, nuthatches, vireos and both tanager species travel these ridges. The most common flower is dittany; look for its small purple flowers in late summer.

#11 Pause at the cliff’s edge on this lofty ridge and enjoy your first significant view of the Ohio Brush Creek Valley. Don’t forget to look down at your feet as well. In late summer you can find mountain rice grass, rare in Ohio, which grows at the cliff’s edge along with meadow rue and witch hazel. In spring listen for the melodic song of the hooded warbler.

#12 A footbridge over a chasm welcomes you to Buzzardroost Rock. Turkey vultures often soar around the grassy lookout and perch on the railing. In the broad valley 400 feet below, Ohio Brush Creek flows in a southerly direction. Summer-blooming prairie plants such as whorled milkweed and scaly blazing star adorn the rock. Grasses dominate: look for prairie dropseed, side oats gramma and little bluestem. The Great Plains Muhlenbergia is the most notable grass, recorded in few other Ohio locations. In summer, white flowers of Texas sandwort grace the rock’s margin along with the rare dwarf hackberry. The Preserve works daily to ensure that the prairie plants, expansive forested views, and the tree-lined Ohio Brush Creek remain for future generations to enjoy. Turn around and retrace your steps back to the parking lot.

Wilderness Trail Map

For a Printable PDF of the map, click here

Click here For a Printable PDF of Wilderness Trail Text

This loop trail of two and a half miles begins at a small opening in the fence just south of the parking lot. Follow yellow paint blazes on trees.

Wilderness Preserve sign post

#1 The Wilderness Preserve honors Charlie Eulett. Charlie, an Adams County teacher, shared his love of prairies and woodlands with local residents and advocated the protection of these areas--a progressive idea in the 1960s and 1970s.

#2 Downslope from the trail flows Saw Mill Branch; aptly named, as the young mixed woodland here followed cutting by a small timber mill that operated nearby during the 1970s. Compare the forest on your right with that above Saw Mill Branch on your left. The dry, south-facing forest above consists of chestnut oak, black gum and tulip tree with an understory of seedlings. Below, the forest just above the Branch faces north, and remains moist, shaded and more open, dotted with beech, sugar maple and tulip tree.

#3 As you leave Saw Mill Branch and head west you pass above the northwest- flowing Cliff Run. Take note of the interesting evergreen stand here. This tree, the white cedar, characterizes the globally rare White Cedar Bluff Woodland plant community. The largest individuals stand near the cliff’s edge below, growing in downed timber estimated at 500 years of age. These cliff-dwelling sentinels have survived for centuries, seeding areas upslope with “dog hair” thickets of young trees. Compare the smooth, flattened leaves of the white cedar with the prickly foliage of its cousin the red cedar. Please stay on the trail to avoid unnecessary impact on this very rare forest.

#4 Walk carefully where the trail skirts the cliff’s edge, however beautiful and distracting the views of the forest below. The land below has slipped, creating a boulder-strewn, bowl-shaped depression, strewn with large-flowered trillium and hepatica in spring. Warblers of many species are easily viewed in season from your treetop vantage. The line of cliffs above the trail is Peebles Dolomite indented with the fossil remains of stony sponges and early corals. Small-flowered sunflower is common in late summer at the trail’s edge.

#5 This section of the trail was a historic wagon route in the early 1900s, when the forest would have been recently cleared but had grown back with remarkable vigor. Look for two shrubs that dominate this section of the trail, spice-bush and paw paw. Search the spice-bush in late spring and summer for folded leaves containing caterpillars of a butterfly, the spice-bush swallowtail. The paw paw also hosts butterfly larvae, those of the zebra swallowtail. Both shrubs have distinctive odors when bruised: one smells fruity and the other smells like green peppers. Watch for the sharp right-hand turn in the trail, marked with a double yellow paint blazes.

#6 You now walk along the base of the dolomite cliffs above--don’t forget to look up! Here the trail marks the contact point between dolomite and Crab Orchard Shale bedrock. At this seam, water percolating through the dolomite above is squeezed out in numerous springs as it reaches the impermeable clay soils. Tall boneset, cowbane and eastern box turtles mark these springs in late summer. Mud on your shoes is a good indicator of clayey soils any time of year.

#7 This section of the trail is good for spring wildflower viewing. Flowers abound on the forest floor and on small fern-draped boulders. Wild ginger forms low mats and is accompanied by stunning taller displays of twinleaf. Wild geranium and green violet, an unusual member of the violet family, accent the displays in early to late spring. The sharp-eyed winter hiker may locate the rock near the cliff’s top whose shape has earned it the name of “the pistol grip”.

#8 After crossing the bridge you enter a magnificent white oak forest on Crab Orchard Shale crossed by seasonal streams. Follow the trail downhill to Bread Pan Run for views of the Ohio Brush Creek Valley. Just beyond the distant tree line, preserve staff have planted half a mile of stream frontage with trees to protect this high- quality watercourse.

#9 The trail leaves Bread Pan Run and ascends through a young forest dominated by eastern red cedar, Virginia pine, and tulip tree. These trees and the forest’s scrubby nature reflect the land’s past use for pasture and row crops. A species of woodland grass, bearded short-husk, grows at trail’s edge.

#10 You now enter a spectacular forest of sugar maple and Chinquapin oak, scattered with enormous blocks of dolomite that have tumbled from the cliffs above. These boulders are festooned with wild hydrangea, wild ginger and columbine in spring, and zigzag goldenrod and jumpseed in late summer. Walking fern can be found year round, some with offshoots growing from fronds’ ends. This tactic of cloning itself has given the fern its name and allows it to colonize its vertical habitat. Scarlet tanagers and migrating warblers abound in spring. Turkey vultures nest in the many shallow overhangs in the cliff above. When disturbed they may fly quietly from the nest, or may remain at the nest and engage in projectile vomiting. The latter habit keeps human visitation near the nests to a minimum.

#11 Anywhere along this stretch of trail you may find the supple-branched shrub leatherwood and its neighbor the bladdernut. In spring, yellow lady’s slippers steal the show, along with jack-in-the-pulpit, black snakeroot and bellwort. Don’t forget to look up at the serpentine line of cliffs beside the trail. Red efts, the larval land stage of the red-spotted newt, also use the trail in spring and fall.

#12 Stay alert at the wooden bridge, as minks, raccoons, and opossums often leave scat piles here. Mink scat is thin and tapered and sometimes contains hair, whereas the others are short and rounded and usually contain seeds.

#13 At two small footbridges you come to an example of stream piracy. The two streams running under these bridges used to be one, a watercourse flowing to the east. That stream’s drainage pattern was changed and its flow reversed, creating two streams that subsequently created Bread Pan Gorge downstream of the bridges. This gorge is deep, providing habitat for Louisiana waterthrushes and excellent spring wildflower displays.

#14 You now enter Shivener Prairie, formerly Floyd Shivener’s corn patch. This area has been colonized by prairie species typical of Adams County. In spring the flower display is subtle, with golden alexander, rue anemone, and Seneca snakeroot. The real show comes in summer, with purple blazing star, tall coreopsis, western sunflower, flowering spurge and obedient plant. One of the rarest plants here is the diminutive limestone adder’s-tongue fern. Look for its small frond in early summer along the trail’s edge. The baby-blue flowers of the shale-barren aster appear in early fall along with the creamy white flowers of the Great Plains ladies’ tresses. Continue on the trail through the woods to the old Shivener house site. Follow the lane up the slope to the parking lot.