Hemlock Cliffs — Public Lands Institute

Mississippian328-324 Mya

~328 to 324 Mya Late Mississippian (Chesterian) Buffalo Wallow Group, mostly sandstone and shale with thin micritic limestone; the box canyon walls are sandstone, described in Forest Service and geological guide material as Tar Springs sandstone over the Glen Dean Limestone, and weather into rockshelters and overhangs.

Epoch

Late Mississippian (Chesterian)

Native lands Glossary →

Paleoindian through Late Precontact peoples who used the canyon's sandstone rockshelters, with occupation reported as early as about 10,000 years ago; Forest Service survey and testing in 1997 and 1998 recorded thirteen new rockshelters and two open sites in the Hemlock Cliffs and Mesmore Cliffs areas and tested sites 12-Cr-321 and 12-Cr-59 · Piankeshaw · Lenape (Delaware) · Shawnee (Shawanwaki) · Myaamia (Miami) · Kickapoo (Kiikaapoi); the Piankeshaw and Delaware ceded the tract between the Buffalo Trace and the Ohio by the treaties at Vincennes, August 27 1804.

Displacement & Tenure

Cession 49 (Royce Cession 7 in Indiana's sequence): Treaty of Vincennes, August 27 1804, with the Piankeshaw, alongside a companion Delaware treaty of the same date, ceding the land south of the Vincennes Tract and the Buffalo Trace between the Wabash and the Ohio. Crawford County hill farms cleared and logged through the nineteenth century were largely cut over by 1910 and eroding by the 1930s, when Indiana pressed the federal government to buy them; the Forest Service began buying from willing sellers in 1935, receiving more than 2,000 offers covering over 200,000 acres by that August, and the Hoosier National Forest was formally designated in 1951; the canyon is now a 1,860-acre special area of its Tell City Ranger District.

Shadow History

Hemlock Cliffs lies in Crawford County, which the Forest Service's own regional history, Sieber and Munson's Looking at History (1992), describes as holding to an unwritten law that Black people were not allowed in the county, even temporarily. Emma Lou Thornbrough's The Negro in Indiana (1957) records that in 1881 a contractor for the Louisville, New Albany, and St. Louis Air Line railroad, then building through the county, was warned that his crew of Black construction workers would not be allowed to work, and that county officials he asked for protection confirmed the unwritten law; the workers had to stay on railroad property. The federal census counted fewer than 15 African Americans in the county from 1820 through 1870. Accounts gathered for the Tougaloo College sundown towns database describe a warning sign at English, the county seat after 1896 and about six miles from the canyon, and at Leavenworth, still recalled by older residents in the 1960s; the county had two Black households in 2000.

Ecology

A cool box canyon under remnant eastern hemlock, with cliff communities of wintergreen, wild geranium, and French's shooting star; dry to mesic upland forest on the rim, with chinquapin oak woodland recognized by the Forest Service as Research Natural Area equivalent. Rock climbing, rappelling, and user-made trails have damaged cliff communities, and the most sensitive cliff is under a closure order.

Hydrology

Seasonal waterfalls pour over the sandstone rim into the box canyon after rain; springs, small caves, and subterranean drainage conduits issue from the Glen Dean Limestone below the sandstone.

Acreage

1,860

GPS

38.2774° N, 86.5390° W

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