Devil’s Den (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 29 June 2023

West Fork, AR

93º (feels like 102º), forecast for hottest day of the year so far, afternoon temps around 100º, bright sun all day

Devil’s Den State Park may be one of the three best known parks in the state (along with Pinnacle Mountain and Petit Jean). It is renowned for its caves and its trails.

Once upon a time as a wee graduate student attending the nearby University of Arkansas Fayetteville, I hiked Devil’s Den Trail and made a brief appearance as a caver, a very brief appearance. Before my recent visit as a more confident hiker, I already knew that most of the caves were now closed in an attempt to stem the spread of white-nose syndrome in the local bat populations. Sadly, I learned that, in fact, all of the caves are now closed to the public. This lead to information that I know will make it into my poem about this visit: two endangered bat species live in the park, Ozark big-eared and Indiana bats, and Ozark big-eared bats only live in northwest Arkansas, northeast Oklahoma, and a bit of southwest Missouri. A remote cave in Devil’s Den hosts their largest surviving colony. I wish I could post a picture of one of these super cute little flyers, but alas. Also, FYI: “The maximum fine for harming endangered bats is $100,000.”

Like several of the parks I already visited, the 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps played a huge role in helping to establish this rugged park. One of my favorite artifacts on display in the Visitor Center was this laminated edition of the 1936 camp newspaper, Voice of Satan. The Corps started work on Devil’s Den in 1933 and three years later, there were enough men earning a paycheck to send home to family to constitute a small town barracked amid the upland forest of the Ozarks. Ninety years after they labored, it remains easy to see the physical remains of their efforts. You can see the strike marks of their axes and chisels in the rocks that form the dam on Lee Creek, creating Lake Devil (the original major attraction of the park for visitors). Given my fascination with this history, I made sure I had time for the CCC Interpretive Trail, one of the least used trails at the park. Along the trail are remnants of rock foundations, a hand-built rock culvert and the ghostly, shadowed walls of a root cellar (I didn’t go in there). Walking the trail gave me a sense of the size of the camp, and in the heat, sweating and yet protected by sunscreen, bug spray, and good hiking gear, I thought of those men who dressed out in uniforms in the heat or the cold and got down to the work of making a beautiful but rugged space more accessible to the general public.

As an amateur (very amateur) hiker, my proudest accomplishment so far in all my travels may be completing Devil’s Den Trail. The trail guide calls it a “moderate” trail and lists the elevation change as 100 feet. What it doesn’t say is that the elevation change doesn’t just happen once. I hiked up; I hiked down; I hiked around and around and up and down. It was fabulous, but super challenging. More than ever, I was grateful I’d had the foresight to buy my Black Diamond Trail Back trekking poles (in my signature dark crimson, of course). While hiking the trail, I gained a new understanding of something I’d read in the Visitor Center. The caves here are unique in the US. Yup, in all the US! “According to geologists, 10,000 to 70,000 years ago Lee Creek removed enough material to cause a corner of the mountainside to break off, slide and crack, creating several interconnected crevices.” They have great names like the 50-foot deep Big-eared Crevice (where those big-eared bats I mentioned above hibernate in the largest numbers), Imp’s Leap (named by men from the CCC), and Dead Horse Crevice (sadly, self-explanatory). All along my hike, I saw small, unnamed crevices and found myself gazing down into the slices of rock, wanting to know what it would feel like to be down at the bottom staring up.

I ended my day at Devil’s Den on a bit of a disappointment. The heat got the better of me when I tried to hike Lee Creek Trail. There’s little tree cover, but there are supposed to be some great fossil viewing opportunities on the creek bed. I will definitely be returning to scope those out, and I also want to hike the short Woody Plant Trail in the spring. While I’ll go back for these experiences, the poem right now is shaping up to be bat-centric, alongside the extreme beauty of the rocky, sandstone outcroppings and shady upland forest. Central questions swirl around the influence of human hands on the natural world.

Next up, Prairie Grove Battlefield.