Just a Quiet Place in the Woods: History, Archaeology and the Appalachian National Scenic Trail

 

Artifact

Sitting on my desk as I write this is a small fragment of broken pottery.

Mochaware Sherd

It is 3.5cm (about an inch) long 2.5cm (about ¾ inch) wide and .30cm thick (less than ¼ inch). In the language of the archaeologist, it is a body sherd, that is it’s from the middle of a modest-sized vessel, not from the rim (a rim sherd) or the base (a basal sherd). It has glazed decoration on the exterior surface of dark, concentric, coffee-colored rings on a tan background, the inside is glazed with that same tan color. The exposed interior of the sherd or paste is buff colored.  The decoration, and the location where this sherd came from, make it fairly easy to identify. It’s a variety of banded slipware sometimes called Mocha-ware. It’s reliably dated to the first third or so of the 19^th century. It may have been manufactured in Great Britain, but it’s more likely that it was made in Central Maryland or Virginia, possibly in the Great Valley only a few miles from where it was found in Maryland, in the middle of the treadway of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail (AT).

It comes to be sitting on my desk because a hiker friend of mine spotted it in the footpath and was worried that another passerby might step on it and crush it, or just slip it in their pocket. My friend dutifully collected it, and pulling out her smartphone, dropped a pin on GoogleMaps to locate precisely where it came from. She presented it to me the next day since she knew I was a professional archaeologist, working these days for the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and at the time for the National Park Service (NPS). She figured I would know the best way to care for it and might be able to tell her a little bit about it. When I looked at it, and at the mapped location, I smiled broadly and was able to give her some instant, surprising, and fortuitous feedback.

I first gently informed her that she was, technically speaking, now a low-level felon. Historic objects on federal land are protected by the Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) and removing them from federal property is punishable by a fine or even imprisonment. In most US states there are similar protective state laws and statutes that apply to state-owned public land. While I was sure to inform the staff at the Appalachian Trail Office of NPS of the discovery, given my friend’s motivation and her prompt action to turn it over to someone who would know how best to care for it, dire consequences are unlikely.  I did, however, explain that in the future it probably would be a better idea to simply hide the object out of sight nearby and provide a photo and location to whoever the appropriate land management authority was. (Note: the NPS has excellent on-line guidance on what you should do if you find an artifact on federal land.)

I was also able to provide her with a further, even more shocking piece of information. I told her who, precisely, the original owner was.

Appalachian Trail

In 2002, while working on a small project for NPS, I was able to relocate and document the former homestead of a man named Daniel Wise. Mr. Wise and his family owned a tract of land that straddled the Washington and Frederick County line atop the Maryland South Mountain crest, at a place called Fox Gap.  That tract is now part of the AT corridor, but in 1862 it was part of the Wise family’s tiny subsistence farm. A relatively minor but utterly vicious battle of the American Civil War took place at Wise’s Farm on September 14^th, 1862, just three days before the massive and fateful engagement at Antietam, a few miles west of Fox Gap. The project I directed in 2002 relocated the foundation and cellar hole of Wise’s log house about 25 feet away from where my hiker friend found her piece of Mocha-ware. A quick glance at the artifact catalog for that project revealed that we had found several sherds of the same ceramic type, possibly even from the same vessel, in the Wise house cellar. The artifact she had collected undoubtedly belonged to the family of Daniel Wise.

The Wise Farm was fairly small and situated on barely arable and thin soil atop the mountain. Like many of the German/Scots Irish families farming the Appalachian uplands, the Wise’s were relatively poor people. The little sherd is actually a reflection of that poverty.  It’s date of manufacture is probably about 20 years or so prior to Wise’s occupation at Fox Gap. Poor folks can’t afford the newest and most fashionable ceramics. They tend to curate, mend, and use their possessions for a long time because replacing things takes resources they don’t have.

My hiker friend and I were now both connected by a small pottery fragment to a 19^th century Central Maryland farmer whose quiet life on South Mountain had been dramatically interrupted by the sweep of history.  As it happens, Mr Wise’s farm is just one of thousands of places along the AT that connects all of us with our predecessors.

A Corridor of Time

Historic Cemetery, AT in PA

The 2,200 or so miles of the AT hugs the crest of the Appalachian range through 14 states from Georgia to Maine. Generally, the protected corridor of the footpath itself is roughly 1,000 feet wide, though there are many segments that are much wider and some that are narrower. Within this narrow corridor is substantial evidence of our species’ interactions with the high elevation ecosystems of Appalachia. The specific manifestations of this evidence range from the invisible to the imposing. In most places in the Appalachians, the forest is itself an artifact of human land use, with species and ecotypes present that would not be there but for our intervention. There are Native American campsites, flint quarries, trails, and sacred places secreted in the woods that date back millennia. There are foundations, old road traces, walls, structures, and other kinds of features that document post-colonial land use practices from travel and trade, to farming, to extractive industries, to religious and military uses.

Because the AT corridor is situated mostly at high elevation, its suite of ecosystems and natural resources was recognized over a decade ago as regionally unique and idiosyncratic within a monitoring and research initiative called the AppalachianTrail Mega-Transect.  The initiative recognized the value of these preserved and protected natural communities within a region that is undergoing a great deal of development pressure and change induced by climate change.

18th Century Charcoal Hearth, AT PA

Those principles and values are just as true for the historic resources of the AT corridor.  They document a unique and high-elevation record of land use history that traverses nearly the entire length of the Appalachians and spans a period from the arrival of our species on the continent to the historic establishment of the first National Scenic Trail. Like the natural communities of the corridor, they are threatened and isolated by encroaching development and by the ravages of climate change. In many cases, these historic places are not completely inventoried or mapped. Documenting and understanding this history is important if it’s to be safeguarded for future generations. Beyond simple preservation of this legacy, the land use history of the AT corridor includes the records of Native American and Post-Colonial forest management practices, resource extraction, farming traditions, cultural practices and relationships, and transportation corridors that may inform many of our current efforts to document and deal with many modern challenges. Truly game-changing and important historical and archaeological research remains to be done within the AT corridor.  

The AT also has perhaps the most unique management partnership of all the American National Parks. The National Park Service’s Appalachian Trail Park Office (APPA) maintains overall responsibility for federal undertakings on NPS lands and provides direct federal support that is channeled to specific projects and programs. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) functions as an umbrella organization for volunteer maintaining clubs, as an intermediary between the clubs, APPA, and other land management agencies and organizations with oversight of corridor lands (for example the US Forest Service, other National Park units like Great Smoky Mountains, state agencies like PA DCNR, etc.), as a facilitating organization for trail maintenance, construction, and improvements, and for corridor land and resource protection initiatives. A network of 30 volunteer maintaining clubs and club chapters have day-to-day responsibility for the maintenance of the AT, and they provide assistance to both ATC and APPA staff in the discharge of important management and resource protection initiatives.  Those affiliated clubs represent a volunteer base estimated at 6,000 strong: the largest volunteer support community advocating and working for a single park unit in the entire NPS.  Without a doubt, much of the future of the AT corridor’s past likely lies with that army of volunteers.

Currently, the staff at APPA is considering the development of a volunteer historic resource stewardship initiative. Modeled on volunteer monitoring programs already in place for natural resources and for the corridor property boundaries, and on similar programs at many other agencies, states, and NPS units, the initiative would focus on training volunteers to recognize, monitor, and record places, features, and structures of cultural and historic significance within the AT corridor and help begin the process of what one day might lead to a comprehensive inventory. Certainly, this won’t be a simple task. It would be a brand-new initiative added to the already imposing workload of managing a 2000-mile-long trail. It will require gathering information from other similar programs at other agencies and park units. Coordination with Federally Recognized Native American Tribes and other descendant communities will have to happen. Consultation with the affiliated clubs and ATC will be needed. APPA will have to take a look at already existing initiatives like the Appalachian Mountain Club Berkshire Chapter’s homegrown efforts at historic site monitoring in western Massachusetts. New training will have to be developed and ways to manage and analyze the incoming data will have to be implemented and integrated into resource management planning. With so many other pressing and critical issues affecting the AT, you have to wonder if the effort is worthwhile.

Why This Matters

As I box up the Mochaware sherd for its journey to a federal curation facility, I reflect on what I learned all those years ago at the Wise Cabin Site in Fox Gap. We were there primarily to document the location of the cabin and to recover information and artifacts from the Battle of South Mountain, and we certainly did both of those things. But we also made a less obvious discovery that I think transcended those project goals.

Wise Farm 1880's

In the pre-dawn darkness of September 14^th, 1862, a Sergeant from a North Carolina infantry regiment knocked on the door of Daniel Wise’s cabin and warned the family that they were in imminent danger. Daniel gathered his family and a few possessions, and they walked down what’s now called Reno Monument Road westward for a couple miles and took refuge in a little church near the small town of Bolivar. From their refuge at the church, the Wise family heard the whole thing. The roar of artillery, the crack of small arms, and the shouts and shrieks of men and horses echoed down the hollows of the South Mountain. When they ventured back two days later, they found that a battle involving several thousand men had been fought on their property. There were still Union burial details working when they got there. Their corn crop and all their animals were gone. So were their outbuildings. What had been their cornfield was now a cemetery containing hundreds of shallow internments. Their little house, still standing, was shot up, lacked windows and doors, and had been used as a field hospital. Their well was fouled with human remains. It was September, and winter was coming.

 We found ample evidence of the battle’s aftermath during the 2002 project, but the bulk of what we found had nothing whatever to do with the eight or so hours of desperate combat at Wise Farm. Most of the artifacts and features we encountered documented something far more remarkable.

The Wise’s, having no real alternative, cleaned everything up, and farmed there for 19 more years.

They were likely helped through that lean winter and with some of the heavier work by some of their kin and neighbors on nearby farms, but they rose from the ashes and endured. The prosaic suite of day-to-day objects and artifacts they left behind during their long residence on the mountaintop, objects like this small pottery fragment, all bear witness to a story of persistence, resilience, innovation, endurance, and pride that can be hard to imagine. Wise farm is a monument to the human spirit, and a lesson that teaches all of us about our own capacity to face and recover from overwhelming challenges. It’s a lesson we’ll need to remember as we face the dangers of changing climate, poor land use planning, political volatility, and strife. The Wise’s reach out to us across the centuries to reassure us that if they could endure and overcome, then so can we.

To learn those lessons, we have to identify, protect and understand these quiet remnants of our collective past hidden in the Appalachian Forest. The effort is well worth it. Places like Fox Gap are invaluable. They aren’t just windows into our collective past, they’re also mirrors.

If you’re interested…

If you have any reactions to this essay you’d like to share, suggestions for the good folks at APPA, and/or information about AT-related historic sites and features, you can send them along to me at joebear81@comcast.net and I’ll share them with my friends and colleagues at NPS and ATC.  Also, if you’d like to be part of a volunteer initiative to help identify and monitor historic places along the AT, send along your contact information to the same email address.