Kisatchie National Forest

Louisiana logged itself nearly bare in the early twentieth century. Mill towns chewed through longleaf pine forest at a pace that left hillsides skeletal, creeks choked with slash, the ground too poor to farm. In 1930, the federal government drew a line around 604,000 acres of cutover land across seven parishes and called it Kisatchie — the state's only national forest. The name comes from the Kichai, a tribe of the Caddo Confederacy. What the Civilian Conservation Corps replanted in the 1930s has had ninety years to knit itself back together. More than half the acreage now holds longleaf pine and flatwoods, ecosystems nearly extinct across the South. The forest protects hillside seepage bogs, calcareous prairie fragments — the Kieffer prairie's 769 acres are part of the fewer than one thousand acres of that habitat type left in Louisiana — and sandstone bluffs. Biologists count 155 bird species, 48 mammal species, 56 reptile and 30 amphibian species. The red-cockaded woodpecker nests here. The Louisiana black bear moves through. Pale pitcher plants wait in the bogs. The Wild Azalea Trail runs 26.2 miles through the forest, the longest continuous hiking trail in the state. Kisatchie Bayou cuts clear water over rock, forming Kisatchie Falls — one of the few waterfalls in Louisiana and the only Class II rapids. Wolf Rock Cave, a 70-foot above-ground overhang beside Bundick Creek, is the only known cave in the state. The 8,700-acre Kisatchie Hills Wilderness is federally designated roadless ground, one of three such areas in Louisiana. Hit the Wild Azalea Trail in March for peak bloom. Bring a paper map; cell service is spotty. The forest has more than 40 developed recreation sites and over 100 miles of trail for hiking, biking, and horseback riding. What you're walking through isn't original — it's what grew back after the cut. That's the story.