Brown County’s newest state forest doesn’t have campsites, or water spigots, or even marked trails right now.
What it does have is more than 1,150 acres of space to get away from everything but butterflies, bugs, deer, and the occasional jet from Camp Atterbury running practice drills overhead.
Mountain Tea State Forest in Brown County and Ravinia State Forest in Morgan County were officially dedicated as state forests on Aug. 14 — the first new state forests in 67 years, though Mountain Tea was already a little-traveled part of Yellowwood.
State forests are named for their dominant geographical feature, said Indiana Department of Natural Resources spokesman JB Brindle. This was named “Mountain Tea” because that was already the name of the ridge that runs through this forest.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Gov. Eric Holcomb and other dignitaries celebrated a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Aug. 14 at Ravinia State Forest, near Paragon. It has 17 parking areas and more than 16 miles of trails cut through its 1,500 acres.
Mountain Tea, off Hoover Road and Pumpkin Ridge Road east of Nashville, is still more of a work in progress.
“It is truly primitive recreation,” said John Seifert, director of the division of forestry for the DNR.
The acreage has been owned by the DNR for six or seven years, but it hasn’t been used much because hardly anybody knew about it, Seifert said.
It was a part of Yellowwood State Forest, but is not connected to the popular Yellowwood tract that contains the campgrounds and Yellowwood Lake west of Nashville.
It will still be under the management of Yellowwood until it’s developed further, Seifert said.
In the fall or winter — provided that the DNR’s annual open house goes on as it normally does — the DNR will be looking for public input about what that development should be over the next few years.
“It could be a year; it could be 10 years,” he said about the timeline for adding more features, like trails.
“We’d like to actually expand that forest and create a bigger, larger footprint if we could in the future.”
More than 700 acres of Mountain Tea were formerly managed by The Nature Conservancy before the state acquired them in 2013 with the assistance of the U.S. Forest Service through the Forest Legacy Program. The other acreage was purchased from private owners in 2009, according to a press release from the governor’s office.
“It was obvious that most people didn’t know it was there, so that was the intent of actually creating a separate state forest so that people understood that it is an entity of its own and should develop and create its own opportunities,” Seifert said.
“Nobody could really find Mountain Tea unless you were living next to it or you knew a little more about state ownership,” he said. “This way, we’ll be able to develop it and create a little more of its own website and promote it independently of Yellowwood State Forest.”
It’s still not all that easy to find now, as there is no county road sign marking Pumpkin Ridge Road where you turn off Hoover Road, and there’s no sign indicating that Mountain Tea State Forest is down that way — yet.
More signs will be posted, Seifert said. “We didn’t want to put the signs up and create trail routes yet until the governor had made his announcement, so now, that stuff will all be in the works. So, there will be signs off the main road and to the county road back to the place.”
The forest property stretches between Pumpkin Ridge Road and Salt Creek Road over wooded ridges and valleys.
Currently, a “welcome” sign sits at the dead end of Pumpkin Ridge Road where the state forest property begins. A parking area there is large enough to hold about four cars.
Near that entrance, the two old roads branch off into the woods. They are not to be used by any motorized vehicles or horses, or even bicycles right now, just two-footed visitors, Seifert said.
Trails likely will be built branching off the two main roadbeds. The roads are hikable now, but visitors are likely to run into knee- to waist-high weeds in places. That’ll change when the area gets more traffic, Seifert said.
There are no signs on the roads telling visitors what is where, and in several places, the roads branch off onto other offshoots which aren’t marked on the DNR’s map of the property.
“Try not to go out there right away; give us a couple months to get things sorted out and signs put up, because right now, people might say, ‘What the heck is this place?’” Seifert said.
He added that the DNR hasn’t sought or received input yet on what the best use of the property should be, so he doesn’t want people to be disappointed if they go out to Mountain Tea expecting to see something more along the lines of an established state forest property.
This property, like other state forests in Indiana, will be “actively managed,” Seifert said. Evidence of past timber harvests can be seen in various places along the road. Resource management surveys of parts of the land from 2013 and 2014 said that timber from Mountain Tea also was harvested prior to the state acquiring it.
Both Mountain Tea and Ravinia are planting sites for the governor’s Million Trees program, an effort to plant one million trees by 2025, a press release from the governor’s office said. This year, more than 16,000 new trees were planted at Mountain Tea and 38,000 were planted at Ravinia.
Activities allowed on other state forest lands, like hunting and fishing, will be allowed in season at Mountain Tea, Seifert said.
The DNR planned to update its website with information about both new state forests within the next week or two, he said.
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Before I called John Seifert at the DNR to talk about Mountain Tea State Forest, my husband, Derek, and I spent about two hours hiking a little over 4 miles of the property, using the map that appears with this story.
If you’re trying to get there from Hoover Road, note that there is no longer a road sign that says “Pumpkin Ridge.” If you’re not familiar with where Pumpkin Ridge intersects with Hoover, use your GPS; it should be marked. (And yes, you do have some cell service out there.)
Pumpkin Ridge is narrow, gravel and pretty rutted at the beginning. It can look like you’re on someone’s driveway, but it is really a public road. You will see “no trespassing” signs on both sides of the road in several places, and an appliance and some car parts hanging in trees, but keep going straight; the state forest property is at the end of the road.
Look for the “welcome” sign, where there’s a parking area big enough for about four cars.
Once you go over the cable barrier, you’ll see an old gravel road that branches in two.
Going straight will take you along a ridge to a wide, power line right-of-way, and eventually to the southern edge of the property, according to the map.
We went right, which will lead you past a sturdy, newer-looking cabin and lean-to. Those belonged to the former property owner, who carried in his own water and a generator. Seifert said the DNR is not sure yet what to do with those structures, as running utilities could be complicated and expensive.
There are no directional markings on the roads that we could find, except for a tree at the top of a ridge where the path forked and we didn’t know which way to go. Look left and you’ll see that tree, which has elevation marked on it. Turn left there, bear right when the path forks again, and at the bottom of a steep, mossy hill is a quiet, 1.2-acre lake with a covered deck where fishing — but no swimming — is allowed.
We actually went straight past this tree the first time instead of turning left and ended up at the power line right-of-way, which is marked on the map. The map makes it look like the road ends at the lake, but that is not the case. Derek pulled up AllTrails and checked it against the DNR’s map to figure out, by elevation, which other offshoots we probably should try to find the lake, and we finally did.
Look out for tall grass, some downed limbs, and seed ticks. I must have hit a nest of them somewhere.
Unlike Yellowwood or Brown County State Park, what you’re really unlikely to see out here is any other people, which, as a person who craves space and quiet, I appreciate.
— Sara Clifford
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