In case you were planning to make the Tank Hill Tract your next outdoors adventure, let me tell you about the place... It's creepy as all hell, sinister even. I'm obsessive, so I decided to go back there on a day off and bushwhack into the forest. Last time I was there, I didn't like the feel of the place, so I just snapped a pic from my car. What I found there today was almost eerie.
I'm sure the gray November light added to the creepiness factor, but this place would be unsettling on the sunniest day in July with the trees in full leaf--the trees that can still make leaves, that is. There are a lot of dead trees here, both standing and fallen. Quite a few of the trees are misshapen, too, in some bizarre ways.
The forest is mature, but the ground beneath it has been badly scarred by oil operations in the last century and maybe some strip mining. Old industrial roads crisscross the land. The presence of slagheaps surprised me because there's never been much mining up here in the northernmost reaches of Venango County. But some kind of heavy industry has left the ground here in all kinds of unnatural configurations: hillocks, pits, channels, dry ponds. It's ugly and has a damaged feel to it.
There were big rusted pipes sticking out of the ground, fallen cables, and big tripods that hunters use for field-dressing deer. I did make the acquaintance of two white-breasted nuthatches, who were walking face-first down the sides of trees--so that was nice. But all in all, this is an unhappy place. I wonder what the story is here. Some soulless exploitative extraction industry laid waste to this land and then gave it to the state, I'm guessing. Maybe don't bother with this place unless you like to scare yourself, in which case this would make a great Halloween camping trip destination.
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