The Big South Fork: A Land Of Gorges & Arches

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NPS Photo/Bill Fultz

Big South Fork: A Land of Gorges and Arches

Split Bow Arch is one of the most accessible arches in Big South Fork. To get to the bottom is a short hike of .64 miles from the Bear Creek Overlook trailhead.

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NPS Photo

Big South Fork: A Land of Gorges and Arches

Big South Fork River gorge contains a wide range of habitats.

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Arthur McDade photo

Big South Fork: A Land of Gorges and Arches

A quiet stretch of river in the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area.

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kentuckytourism.com

Big South Fork: A Land of Gorges and Arches

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You hike through a forest on a rolling plateau. It’s pleasantly cool in the summer with the tree canopy above. After a while, you scan the landscape and perceive an openness through the forest ahead—it can give a queasy feeling of an upcoming void. 

Pressing on, you break out of the dimness onto a platform called the East Rim Overlook. You’re instinctively drawn to the edge to look down and across a serpentine canyon with a muscular river running through it. You smile. This is it, you tell yourself. This is the “red-heart” of the Big South Fork country, an amazing landscape spanning the Tennessee and Kentucky border. It’s what you and thousands of others come to see and play in annually. It is indeed a sight to behold.  

The impressive Big South Fork country is situated on the sweeping Cumberland Plateau. It’s a landscape of sedimentary canyons, gorges, rivers, side streams, rock spires, and natural bridges and arches. Front and center in this impressive plateau landscape is a 125,000-acre Federal preserve called the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, a part of the National Park Service. This area may have a very long official name, but to hundreds of thousands of hikers, campers, horseback riders, mountain bikers, nature-lovers and river runners it is known simply as “The Big South Fork.” The area is a real outdoor paradise located approximately 100 miles northwest of Knoxville, Tennessee.

With a headquarters located outside of Oneida, Tennessee, the area can be accessed from several locations. Chief among these is the Leatherwood Ford Road running west from Oneida, which takes a visitor into the impressive gorge of the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River and then to the Bandy Creek developed area. Here, a staffed visitor center offers travelers a great place to start a visit. It’s open seven days a week, and detailed information can be gotten on the history, nature and recreational opportunities of the area. The center also has a well-stocked retail shop which sells maps, nature guides, history books, and guidebooks about the trails and natural arches of the area. There is also a horse stables. Rangers are available at the center to get visitors started on the right path to outdoor activities.

This Big South Fork is ancient. It’s an uplifted landscape of hundreds of feet of sandstone conglomerates, siltstones, shales and coal formed from primordial rivers, lakes, swamps and shallow seas which covered this region some 300 million years ago. The rocks here are from the Pennsylvanian Period of geologic history. The forces that shaped and carved the rocks of the Big South Fork are some of the most unrelenting on Earth. These are the true agents of change in this country, and the premier one, water erosion (sometimes raging in whitewater rapids while at other times just drip-drip-dripping off sandstone bluffs) has daily attacked the prevailing sedimentary rocks for thousands of years. And where the sedimentary rock is weak, canyons, gorges and cliffs were formed; where it is strong and resistant, rock spires, finger ridges, and graceful natural arches and bridges were created. The erosion pattern here is similar in some ways to that of the plateau and canyon country of the southwestern United States. The landscape in the area is a testament to the dominant and unrelenting forces of geology and erosion over time.

All this erosion has provided us modern-day folk with a recreational wonderland. There are miles of hiking, mountain biking, and horseback trails in the Big South Fork. Whitewater and flat-water paddling opportunities draw thousands of rafting, canoeing and kayaking enthusiasts to the area. Hunting and fishing are also allowed in the area, but always check with park rangers about seasons and licenses required, and for any other safety and weather issues during your visit. 

There are backcountry and front-country campsites here which attract thousands more to this playground. Two developed campgrounds (Bandy Creek and Blue Heron) provide plentiful sites with electrical hookups and treated water. For rugged individuals, backcountry campsites provide opportunities to really see the wild interior of the Big South Fork. For those wanting a unique overnight accommodation, there is even a rustic lodge—Charit Creek Lodge—located in the wildlands of the area.

What’s more, Pickett State Park and Pickett State Forest, both managed by the State of Tennessee, are nearby, and just over the Kentucky line is the Stearns District of the Daniel Boone National Forest, offering thousands more acres for hikers, campers, and a host of other outdoor aficionados. 

There are some pretty impressive overlooks in the Big South Fork which can be accessed along relatively short, paved paths. In addition to the East Rim Overlook, the Devils Jump and Gorge overlooks on the Kentucky side of the recreation area are readily accessible off the Mine 18 Road out of Stearns, Kentucky. For experienced hikers, the Twin Arches Loop Trail on the Tennessee side and the Blue Heron Loop Trail in Kentucky are excellent ways to start to enjoy the backcountry of the Big South Fork. That’s one of the wonders of the Big South Fork country—it’s a place where visitors can find outdoor activities suitable to their own needs and abilities.

This landscape has been used by humans from the prehistoric past to the present. Though remote, humans made a living here for thousands of years, starting with prehistoric hunters and gatherers who passed through the area, leaving behind the charcoal of their ancient firepits and arrow points in rock-shelters underneath gorge bluffs. 

As frontier settlers pushed westward in the 19th century, a new wave of residents settled and farmed along the creeks and plateau. Some of the names of these settlements in the Big South Fork country give us a clue to the demanding conditions encountered there. One area was called “No Business” by the early residents, a name suggesting the lack of economic opportunity. Another settlement was located along a creek they called Difficulty. The residents put their own mountaineer touch to the name, pronouncing it “Dif-fick-ulty.” Life could be hard here.

By the early part of the 20th century, Big South Fork country was also used hard by timber and mining companies. This is coal country, and that valuable resource was harvested widely. Thousands of board-feet of timber also were taken from these lands, not unlike the Great Smoky Mountains before the national park was established there. And just like the Smokies, railroads pushed deep into the wilderness of the Big South Fork, ultimately transporting local timber and coal to the markets of our eastern cities and towns. In fact, many of the hiking trails in the area are the remnants of old logging, mining and railroad routes. Today, the railroading and coal mining history of the area is interpreted through an open-air museum at the Blue Heron Interpretive Center near Stearns, Kentucky. Visitors can cross a tipple bridge over the river while reading fascinating information panels about the coal mining heritage of the area. In the spring, summer, and fall, the Big South Fork Scenic Railroad also makes daily excursions from Stearns to Blue Heron, a real treat for railroad fans.

When coal mining and timber harvesting diminished, local conservationists persuaded Congress to look at the Big South Fork country as a possible addition to the National Park Service. 

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Arthur McDade photo

Big South Fork: A Land of Gorges and Arches

The coal tipple and bridge at the Blue Heron Interpretive Center in Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area.

Sen. Howard Baker Jr., an avid outdoorsman and photographer who grew up nearby, was receptive to the idea of a federal natural area, but the restrictive regulations of a national park didn’t appeal to him. He and others finally proposed a “National River and Recreation Area” status for the land, which allowed more recreational uses. In 1974 the area was signed into law and became a new addition to the Park Service system.

In the initial stages of development for the area, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had the lead, since it managed the Cumberland River watershed and had development funds. The National Park Service worked in partnership with the COE.

The early stages of development were a challenge, according to Bruce Gregory, who served as a Park Service manager in those days. “Working at the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area was the toughest assignment of my entire NPS career,” Gregory said. “The Big South Fork was a new site carved out of mostly private lands, so there was no pre-existing plan or precedent to fall back on,” he added. “It required succinct management skills to get two federal agencies to produce a new national recreation area. There certainly were some contentious arguments about how to go about the mission, with strong opinions on both sides. Decisions had to be made about where to locate visitor centers, campgrounds, trails, and administration buildings, to name just a few challenges. But, ultimately, the good people in the Corps and the NPS worked together to produce a really impressive national area for the American people to use and enjoy. It’s really satisfying to me to look back and reflect on what came out of those early days in the Big South Fork,” Gregory said. 

After years of development, the Corps of Engineers and the National Park Service—along with the support of local politicians and residents—ultimately produced a wonderland of outdoor recreation and adventure for the public to experience in the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area.

If you’re looking for a wild, beautiful and refreshing place to get back to the natural world—without all the crowds and traffic of some national parks—make a trip to the land of the Big South Fork. You won’t regret it, and you’ll more than likely return often to this Land of Gorges and Arches.

Did You Know?

• Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area was formed by an act of Congress on March 7, 1974. It protects the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River and its tributaries in Tennessee and Kentucky. 
• The park has 125,000 acres and is the fifth largest unit of the National Park System in the eastern U.S. About 116,000 acres are owned by the Department of the Interior.
• Big South Fork NRRA spans parts of two states (Kentucky and Tennessee), five counties (Scott, Fentress, Pickett, McCreary, and Morgan), and is in two time zones (Eastern and Central). It’s officially headquartered in Oneida, Tennessee.
• The park welcomed about 650,000 visitors in 2017.
• Big South Fork NRRA provides habitat for more than 80 plant and animal species that are on the state and/or federal threatened or endangered list. In fact, The Nature Conservancy has designated the area as the eighth most important habitat in the world.
• Yahoo Falls, Kentucky’s tallest waterfall, can be found at Big South Fork.
• Big South Fork NRRA boasts 200 miles of horse trails, 244 miles of rivers and streams, 190 miles of hiking trails, 57 miles of mountain biking trails, and nearly 600,000 museum objects and artifacts. There are 25 historic sites on the property.

nps.gov/biso/learn/news/presskit.htm, nps.gov/biso/learn/management/statistics.htm

Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area

• nps.gov/biso/index.htm 
• 4564 Leatherwood Road, Oneida, Tennessee
• 423.569.9778 
• Big South Fork NRRA is free to enter and parking is free as well