Audio
Loop Road Audio Tour Stop 2
Transcript
Park Natural History/Picnic Area
On entering the picnic area, please note that the tour road and picnic area are closed each day to vehicular traffic at 4:30 p.m., and the entire park closed to vehicular traffic at 5:00 p. m. Please note also that the picnic area road is one-way.
Cowpens National Battlefield encompasses over 800 acres of mixed forestland and grassland habitat. The entire park is managed to enhance its historic qualities and to protect its natural resources. Programs include on-going removal of non-native species such as privet, kudzu, and English Ivy that would displace native species. Programs are in place to encouragement oaks, hickories, and other trees present in 1781. Specially-trained park service crews conduct controlled burns periodically to reduce build-up of forest litter such as leaves and dead limbs with the goal of preventing catastrophic wildfires.
A two mile nature trail begins in the picnic area and winds along ‘Zekial Creek before it reenters the picnic area at another point. Look for the sign for Nature trail Parking to begin the hike. Hardwoods such as oaks and hickories dominate the forest along the creek, and rare plants grow in places. If you decide to walk, please stay on the trail and allow enough time to complete your walk. You may want to take water and also use insect repellant in warm seasons.
As you walk, you can imagine what this area was like in 1781. Old-growth trees grew to great dimensions and heights, their huge canopies towering above. Forests were often composed of widely-spaced trees, giving the landscape a park-like appearance. Huge oaks, hickories, pines dominated the forest and field landscape at Cow pens. Also part of the forest composition was the once-abundant American Chestnut, which has virtually disappeared, falling victim to a blight in the earlier part of the 20th century. It is a myth, however, to believe all eastern American appeared so park-like; the land was sometimes a patchwork quilt of various landscape compositions—storms, differences in soil composition, wildfires, and native use of fire for hunting purposes accounted for fields and forest in various stages of growth.
In addition to forests, imagine also interspersed grasslands, which provided habitat for ground-nesting birds such as quail, field sparrows, and meadowlarks and a diversity of grasses, wildflowers, insects, and small mammals. The fact that such grasslands are disappearing across the region, make those at Cowpens ever more important.
Native river cane, forming extensive canebrakes, grew in wetland areas and provided food and habitat for wildlife and also building materials for Native Americans. European, however prized canebrakes for the rich soil they grew in. They grazed cattle in the canebrakes and eventually overgrazed and plowed many to oblivion. Butter from cows grazed in the canebrakes was said to be some of the best. Native cane remains in the park along streams and in wetland areas, but it is not nearly abundant and tall as it would have been in 1781.
Description
This is an audio tour of the auto loop road, narrated by Edwin C. Bearss. Length 4:50 4.43 MB
Date Created
08/02/2011
Copyright and Usage Info