I went out yesterday to see if I could solve the mystery of the old tracks found the previous week by Whipoorbill and myself and photographed a couple days later and posted by Guy here.As previously stated there are a set of perfectly good what i presume to be truck tracks going through a savannah and into the woods and completely disappearing.These tracks in the meadow have several trees growing between them that are probably 10 to 15 years old.When the tracks hit the woods they vanish,no ruts no nothing.Well with my interest piked i came home and went on historicalaerials.com and found that thos tracks i found continued as a faint trail/road eastward for a half mile and joined Hawkin Lowland Road,the same road the came off of to the west.This trail greatly shortens a long sag in the main road and it is in and out of savannahs and woods.The road first appears ever so faintly in the 1970 aerial but gets easier to see in 63 and really jumps out at you in 56,of course anyone who has used this site will know the 31 aerials are basically useless so we'll have to go with 56 as the earlies date this road was in use and was probably out of use well before 70 if indeed it was used more then once.
Looking at the attached photo you'll notice that the greeniosh blue regular line is the road i plotted using the aerials,in other words where the road should be.The thin red line bracketing a portion of this road brackets the portion of visible tracks in the mud where we first found them though indeed we had crossed them a half hour before to the east and i had only noticed one rut thinking it was an old mootrcycle trail or fire ditch,more on this rut later.
now the wiggly line that goes back and forth across the supposed road is my actual gps track,I have no idea why it turns different colors when thrown on my mapping program so don't ask
You'll notice how i went back and forth trying to pick up ruts or other evidence of and old road.I had made it a point to look for the small clearing show circled in yellow in hopes it might be a clearing created by an old abandoned jaloppy laying in the woods.Not so,it is a small 6 ft diameter clearin with lichen in it and thats all,quite a neat place to throw up a tent.you would never be found,trust meYou'll then notice when I hit the next savanner that I went back and forth trying to pick up a track,no luck here,this area appears to be weeter in season then the area west of here.The grasses appear to be more water grasses,Bob would know the name but I know they favor wetter areas and there was more open mud so I assume the softer wetter nature with less roots probably let the tracks dissolve here.The next patch of woods I could also find nothing but upon entering the next savanner east of here bracketed in red I picked up the same rut we had crossed early the first time out there only over against the western edge of the open area coming out of the woods two clear parallel ruts are visible then the southern rut disappears in a small patch of trees and then reappears in the small area circled in orange I call the Bonsai farm for the small twisted pines growing hereThese ruts are not as plain as those over where we began and until further inspection only the northern rut is obvious and there are tress growing between them maybe 10 years old or better.The woods themselves have trees that appear between 30 and 40.Now proceeding east this is where I first actually found evidence of the road in the woods.The area circled in blue I followed one rut that i would have taken as an old deer trail though obviously not used because i had to barrel through the highbush blueberry to follow it.I could occasionally just make out what appeared to be a parallel rut north of mine but my rut I followed for probably 100 yards and it went straight as an arrow so probably was not a deer trail.It is possible there could be an old truck i missed in the middle sections but I doubt it.I think this fellow made it out to roll another day.
This is my highly speculative theory as to what happened.I believe the savanners to be fire caused.In the remote past a wildfire in a dry season probably burnt not only the woods but the humus and duff right down to mineral soil and being this was at the water table and probably a moist woodland to begin with it filled with water and became savanner that is now trying to fill in with woods but probably gets set back by fire every so often.You can see in the aerials the shapes of the wooded islands and savanner has remained the same for the past 55 years at least.I am taking a guess here but from the aerials the woods look smoother back then and think there may have been another fire say in the 40's,back when four wheel drive came into being but was only used in work trucks,fire trucks and such.Recreational four wheel didn't come into being till the late 60's i believe.I believe that the savanner was obviously wet when this truck drove through.maybe not flooded but the mus was at least gooey and filled with wild Broom sedge as it is now which makes a very packed root mass and helps hold ruts a long time indeed apparently.Okay we have freshly burnt woods possibly still smoldering when a forest service fire truck( the old kind with narrow tires like the waltons truck)comes strolling from either the east or west down Hawkinsd Lowland road and looks across an open blackened wasteland like we're all so familiar with and he knows the woods well and decides he can do a cut across and make sure all the hot spots are out or contained.The woods are wide open and the ground is black with ash.As he rides along he leaves a track of whitish sand as his tires dig through the black ash and then he comes to a savanner,yeah it looks a little muddy but hey! he's got four wheel drive and it's just muddy not flooded so he goes on across.He crosses three sections of savannah and several bleckened patches of forest and then hits the other section of hawkin lowland Road which may have actually been visible from all the way across this section if it was levelled enough.The tracks he left were picked up in 56 by an airplane taking pictures.Another planed passed over seven years later and took another pic and the track was fainter because of regrowing vegetation,yet another seven years later and the trace is almost obliterated.Now not only is it not visible from the ground but other then in the svanner you'd walk right over it and never know.No ruts were left except in the mud because it wasn't travelled enough.the ruts in the mud were made in densely packed sedge roots that hod the shape of the tracks through repeated soakings and dryings and freezings.The tracks would have passed fro deer trails that are all over the Savanner and are trenches also but deer don't make two perfectly parallel tracks five feet apart.What amazed me was not the tracks in the Savanner but how they pulled up to the woodline and vanished.No turn around,no veer off,nothing in the woods to suggest a road had ever been there.
Does anyone have any info on a fire in this area say 40's or early 50's?
Al
Looking at the attached photo you'll notice that the greeniosh blue regular line is the road i plotted using the aerials,in other words where the road should be.The thin red line bracketing a portion of this road brackets the portion of visible tracks in the mud where we first found them though indeed we had crossed them a half hour before to the east and i had only noticed one rut thinking it was an old mootrcycle trail or fire ditch,more on this rut later.
now the wiggly line that goes back and forth across the supposed road is my actual gps track,I have no idea why it turns different colors when thrown on my mapping program so don't ask
You'll notice how i went back and forth trying to pick up ruts or other evidence of and old road.I had made it a point to look for the small clearing show circled in yellow in hopes it might be a clearing created by an old abandoned jaloppy laying in the woods.Not so,it is a small 6 ft diameter clearin with lichen in it and thats all,quite a neat place to throw up a tent.you would never be found,trust meYou'll then notice when I hit the next savanner that I went back and forth trying to pick up a track,no luck here,this area appears to be weeter in season then the area west of here.The grasses appear to be more water grasses,Bob would know the name but I know they favor wetter areas and there was more open mud so I assume the softer wetter nature with less roots probably let the tracks dissolve here.The next patch of woods I could also find nothing but upon entering the next savanner east of here bracketed in red I picked up the same rut we had crossed early the first time out there only over against the western edge of the open area coming out of the woods two clear parallel ruts are visible then the southern rut disappears in a small patch of trees and then reappears in the small area circled in orange I call the Bonsai farm for the small twisted pines growing hereThese ruts are not as plain as those over where we began and until further inspection only the northern rut is obvious and there are tress growing between them maybe 10 years old or better.The woods themselves have trees that appear between 30 and 40.Now proceeding east this is where I first actually found evidence of the road in the woods.The area circled in blue I followed one rut that i would have taken as an old deer trail though obviously not used because i had to barrel through the highbush blueberry to follow it.I could occasionally just make out what appeared to be a parallel rut north of mine but my rut I followed for probably 100 yards and it went straight as an arrow so probably was not a deer trail.It is possible there could be an old truck i missed in the middle sections but I doubt it.I think this fellow made it out to roll another day.This is my highly speculative theory as to what happened.I believe the savanners to be fire caused.In the remote past a wildfire in a dry season probably burnt not only the woods but the humus and duff right down to mineral soil and being this was at the water table and probably a moist woodland to begin with it filled with water and became savanner that is now trying to fill in with woods but probably gets set back by fire every so often.You can see in the aerials the shapes of the wooded islands and savanner has remained the same for the past 55 years at least.I am taking a guess here but from the aerials the woods look smoother back then and think there may have been another fire say in the 40's,back when four wheel drive came into being but was only used in work trucks,fire trucks and such.Recreational four wheel didn't come into being till the late 60's i believe.I believe that the savanner was obviously wet when this truck drove through.maybe not flooded but the mus was at least gooey and filled with wild Broom sedge as it is now which makes a very packed root mass and helps hold ruts a long time indeed apparently.Okay we have freshly burnt woods possibly still smoldering when a forest service fire truck( the old kind with narrow tires like the waltons truck)comes strolling from either the east or west down Hawkinsd Lowland road and looks across an open blackened wasteland like we're all so familiar with and he knows the woods well and decides he can do a cut across and make sure all the hot spots are out or contained.The woods are wide open and the ground is black with ash.As he rides along he leaves a track of whitish sand as his tires dig through the black ash and then he comes to a savanner,yeah it looks a little muddy but hey! he's got four wheel drive and it's just muddy not flooded so he goes on across.He crosses three sections of savannah and several bleckened patches of forest and then hits the other section of hawkin lowland Road which may have actually been visible from all the way across this section if it was levelled enough.The tracks he left were picked up in 56 by an airplane taking pictures.Another planed passed over seven years later and took another pic and the track was fainter because of regrowing vegetation,yet another seven years later and the trace is almost obliterated.Now not only is it not visible from the ground but other then in the svanner you'd walk right over it and never know.No ruts were left except in the mud because it wasn't travelled enough.the ruts in the mud were made in densely packed sedge roots that hod the shape of the tracks through repeated soakings and dryings and freezings.The tracks would have passed fro deer trails that are all over the Savanner and are trenches also but deer don't make two perfectly parallel tracks five feet apart.What amazed me was not the tracks in the Savanner but how they pulled up to the woodline and vanished.No turn around,no veer off,nothing in the woods to suggest a road had ever been there.
Does anyone have any info on a fire in this area say 40's or early 50's?
Al
