Tight Hollow, A Small Kentucky Treasure

Tight Hollow, A Small Kentucky Treasure Branley Allan Branson The mountain gorge area of Eastern Kentucky is a treasureland of preColumbian geological and biological diversity. Taken in combination, the hundreds of narrow valleys and stream gorges cut through ancient sandstones support nearly every plant community known to thrive in the so-called mixed forests of the southeastern United States north of the Appalachians. Thus Eastern Kentucky is a biological crossroads in the truest sense of the word, a transition area between the eastern woodlands , the lush southern forests, the northern evergreens, and the drier trans-Mississippian cross-timbers to the west. Plants and animals of Branley Allan Branson is a professor in the department of Biological Sciences at Eastern Kentucky University. Though widely published, this is hisfirst appearance in Appalachian Heritage. 33 boreal extraction tower above or crawl below ones from the Deep South. Many rare species find the northern limits of their distribution here. Over thirty-five species of ferns and dozens of mosses carpet the forest floor. Giant hemlocks grow contentedly next to three kinds of deciduous magnolias, and both groups shade a half-dozen rare orchids. The gorges, too, are home to at least six endangered species of small stream fishes. The wild turkey makes its home in mature stands of timber, and the beaver—once nearly extinct in Kentucky—has been able to persist. And a human way of life, continuously in existence since the pioneer days of the 1700s, holds on tenaciously. Going beyond the precarious position of any individual species in the whole plateau region is the threatened existence of the gorges and ridges themselves. These ecological microcosms are, perhaps, the most significant phenomena in the eastern United States still without protection, and, in an untampered state, they have been vanishing with alarming rapidity. The persistent flow of charming little brooks and the dense growths of rhododendron, mountain laurel and American holly are ended by the whine of chainsaws and the thunder of spoil banks sliding down the mountains. Gray and red foxes crossing freshly cut haul roads are jeopardized by thirty-ton trucks. A box canyon, habitat for primal plant associations, is dammed and becomes another impoundment. Ancient Indian trails beneath towering white pines and tulip trees are bulldozed into roadways for the opening of yet another highway or strip mine in this energy-glutting society we have allowed to grow up around us. From an original continuous expanse of over five million unexploited gorge-and-ridge lands before the onslaught of development which began in the early 1930s and vastly accelerated after World War II, these unique habitats have nearly been extinguished. In many places the gorges are being destroyed by silt from mines and are being replaced by monotonous reclaimed areas that have to be enormously fertilized before they can support even the exotic plant species now being utilized to cover the rapine carried out under the guise of fighting an energy crisis. One small area, however, known locally and on topographic maps as "Tight Hollow," has, because of its extreme inaccessibility and overall rugged nature, escaped the plunder, at least for the present. Despite the fact that Tight Hollow lies in the Daniel Boone National Forest, the efforts to achieve well-deserved protection have mostly been a study in frustration. Few areas are more deserving of designation as a national landmark. Tight Hollow is not a large area, by any standards, but it is unique in that it preserves a segment of Kentucky that is little changed 34 from the days when Daniel Boone first breached Cumberland Gap and brought in the first representatives of the Transylvania Land Company. Other than a few abortive attempts at silver mining back in the mid1800s and a little logging activity near the lower end, man's impact upon the area has been negligible. Giant trees lie crisscrossed on the forest floor where they fell dead of natural old age, and their living counterparts tower majestically from the canyon, boxed in by 200- to 300-foot cliffs. In many places the rhododendron growths—"hells" in local jargon—are so dense that only small reptiles and rodents can penetrate them. In some places, the moss...