Mark Twain National Forest

Type of Use: Foot

Length/Rating: 1.5-mile Loop/More Difficult

Other Recreation Activities: Trout fishing, canoeing, swimming, birdwatching, sightseeing, photography, picnicking, camping, mushroom/berry picking. Hunting is allowed in season.

Nearby Facilities: The trail is a part of Lane Spring Recreation Area, which also has Blossom Rock Trail. The area has a campground with 20 campsites and a beach.

Also nearby: Mill Creek Recreation Area, Big Piney River Accesses, Spring Creek Trout Area, Paddy Creek Wilderness, Roby Lake Recreation Area, Slabtown Recreation Area, Montauk State Park, Onondaga State Park, Huzzah State Forest, Indian Trail State Forest, Ozark National Scenic Riverways.

The trail starts across from Lane Spring picnic ground. It gradually climbs the hillside of white and black oak to the rocky cedar glade after which the trail was named. At the top you can lean against an old gnarled eastern red cedar tree and view the sky-blue Little Piney Creek and its brown sandy banks. The trail then winds down through the woods, scattered with chert rocks, to the valley bottom. Standing on the flood plain, there are sycamore, river birch, and silver maple trees—among them a couple of white pines. After one and a half miles, the trail returns along the shining creek to the parking area.

A walk at a leisurely pace on this trail takes about an hour. In spring, the woodland delights your eyes with a variety of wildflowers. You may see the white spring beauty and fawn lily here and there, along with an occasional toothwort hiding in the woods. The wine-colored wake robins shake in the breeze. Bright orange Indian paintbrush may be hanging precariously on a bluff; bird's-foot violets sometimes appear on the savanna, many all lavender, others with two out of five petals showing a dark, velvety purple.

The woodland in springtime is filled with birdsongs. The cardinals and chickadees call to each other. The spring peepers (a frog species) shriek from the swamp. Warblers dart up and down, and a redbellied woodpecker busily taps at a mighty hickory. A hen turkey may startle from her nest as you walk by. Equally amazing are the garter snakes that slide under clumps of wind-flowers. In this lush glade a mushroom hunter can find the highly prized morel.

The trail was initiated by Boy Scouts in the early 1970s, then revived by other volunteers, including Explorer Scouts, Audubon Society members, and senior citizens, in 1985. A wooden bridge, built from three simple square logs, helps hikers across an intermittent stream. Nearby stands an old ash tree with three large holes in its trunk—a home for birds and squirrels.