Cornplanter State Forest has several smallish tracts in Northwest Pennsylvania. This is the biggest tract along Jamison Run Road, near Tionesta. You can see that there used to be a farmhouse here by the way these old evergreens line the lane. There are old foundations in among the trees.
I hiked here over Memorial Day weekend, and there were bugs aplenty. A big band of car-campers had a few vehicles parked beside the road, guarded by angry dogs. I camped in the woods here years ago when the camping spot I was planning to use was unavailable. The barred owls serenaded me all night, and it was lovely—even if the woods are unspectacular. The presence of barred owls in the forest here helped influence my decision to buy property in these parts.
It seems a little wrong to take this land away from Chief Cornplanter and his people and then name it after him. The forests here are full of the rusting detritus of the long-ago oil boom. There are some active wells here still, too. They make an eerie creaking noise sometimes when you think you and the birds have the woodlands to yourself.
Taking a closer look at the old oil pump…
On the map, I saw a trackless segment of the Cornplanter Forest that stuck like a peninsula out into the Allegheny National Forest. It intrigued me, so I bushwhacked a bit, but mostly stuck to old forest roads that don’t appear on the map. They were very, very muddy, and the bugs were nearly unbearable. Also, someone did a lot of timber harvesting in this part of the forest, and so it’s mostly just tree carnage, not much to see. However, I did arrive at the ANF, where the border between state ands and federal lands is clearly delineated. God help us, our federal lands are in trouble with Trump in office.
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