Alan Seeger Natural Area is located in

Huntingdon County Huntingdon is a market town in the Huntingdonshire district of Cambridgeshire, England. The town was given its town charter by King John in 1205. It was the county town of the historic county of Huntingdonshire. Oliver Cromwell was born there ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, United States, approximately nine miles south of Boalsburg, within

Rothrock State Forest Rothrock State Forest is a List of Pennsylvania state forests, Pennsylvania state forest in Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry District #5. The main offices are located in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, Huntingdon in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, Hun ...

in the

Appalachian Mountains The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, are a mountain range in eastern to northeastern North America. The term "Appalachian" refers to several different regions associated with the mountain range, and its surrounding terrain ...

. It is traversed by the long-distance

Standing Stone Trail The Standing Stone Trail is an linear hiking trail in south-central Pennsylvania, leading from Cowans Gap State Park in Fulton County, north to Detweiler Run Natural Area in Huntingdon County. Most of the trail follows rocky ridgetops in the ...

, and includes other short trails. The natural area is known for

old growth An old-growth forest or primary forest is a forest that has developed over a long period of time without disturbance. Due to this, old-growth forests exhibit unique ecological features. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Natio ...

trees and extensive copses of giant

rhododendron ''Rhododendron'' (; : ''rhododendra'') is a very large genus of about 1,024 species of woody plants in the Ericaceae, heath family (Ericaceae). They can be either evergreen or deciduous. Most species are native to eastern Asia and the Himalayan ...

Description

Alan Seeger Natural Area was founded in 1921. It was named after

Alan Seeger Alan Seeger (22 June 1888 – 4 July 1916) was an American war poet who fought and died in World War I during the Battle of the Somme, serving in the French Foreign Legion. Seeger was the brother of Elizabeth Seeger, a children's author and educ ...

, a noteworthy American poet who died in action while serving with the

French Foreign Legion The French Foreign Legion (, also known simply as , "the Legion") is a corps of the French Army created to allow List of militaries that recruit foreigners, foreign nationals into French service. The Legion was founded in 1831 and today consis ...

during

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

in 1916. The name was bestowed as a tribute by Colonel Henry Shoemaker, an early Pennsylvania forestry commissioner, though Seeger is not known to have ever visited the region. A loop trail of about three-quarters of a mile in length visits most of the natural area, with several footbridges over upper tributaries of Standing Stone Creek. The eastern half of this trail is also a segment of the 84-mile

. The natural area features extensive copses of giant

. The eastern portion of the natural area features several groves of large

hemlock and

white pine ''Pinus'', the pines, is a genus of approximately 111 extant tree and shrub species. The genus is currently split into two subgenera: subgenus ''Pinus'' (hard pines), and subgenus ''Strobus'' (soft pines). Each of the subgenera have been further ...

trees of a stature once seen throughout Pennsylvania. Some specimens here are more than 500 years old. These old trees may have survived the Pennsylvania logging era in the late 1800s due to an undefined boundary; two adjoining logging firms would not dare to accidentally fell each other's trees near the boundary between their holdings, thus creating a no-man's land where the trees survived.Thwaites, p. 72-73 It is also possible that one or both companies went out of business before these groves of trees were felled, given known logging company practices of the time.Fergus, p. 67 Regardless, the natural area now hosts one of the few remaining groves of old-growth trees in Pennsylvania.

References

{{Protected Areas of Pennsylvania Old-growth forests Protected areas of Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania

Description

See also

References