13. WILLIS RIVER TRAIL

WHY GO?

Cumberland State Forest is the second largest in the state forest system, and the Willis River Trail is the longest hiker-only trail in any of Virginia’s state forests. From the flat land along the Willis River, the trail passes through oak and yellow poplar forest, under plantations of Virginia and loblolly pines, and past old farm sites. Beaver keep active in the swamps. There are also signs of turkey and fox in the sand along the river.

THE RUNDOWN

Start: Parking area at the dead end of Warner Fire Road, 0.5 mile off VA 608

Distance: 14.7 miles point to point

Hiking time: About 8 hours

Difficulty: Moderate due to length, frequent road crossings, eroded stream banks, frequent blowdowns that block the trail, and hard-to-follow stretches of trail along the Willis River

Trail surface: This route follows woodland paths, dirt forest roads, paved roads, small streams, and hilly terrain with little in the way of high peaks or deep valleys. The river flats are overgrown with grass and shrubs; the hillsides are shaded by hardwoods. Most hillcrests host plantations of loblolly and Virginia pines.

Land status: State forest

Nearest town: Cumberland Courthouse, VA

Other trail users: Hikers only

Accessibility: Facilities at Bear Creek Lake State Park, including the 0.16-mile Otter Trail

Canine compatibility: Dogs permitted

Trail contacts: Cumberland State Forest, Cumberland, (804) 492-4121, http://www.dof.virginia.gov/stateforest/list/. Forest headquarters provides maps of the Willis River Trail, plus information on other forest uses. It’s recommended you at least inform forest staff of your itinerary, if merely to alert them to the presence of cars at either end of the trail. Bear Creek Lake State Park, (804) 492-4410, http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state-parks/bear-creek-lake.

Schedule: Open daily year-round, dawn to dusk. Hunting is permitted within the forest, and foresters report heaviest use from mid-Nov through the first weekend in Jan. Wear orange blaze during hunting seasons.

Fees/permits: No fees or permits required for hiking in the state forest. Bear Creek Lake State Park charges a parking fee and camping fees. There is also a pet fee at the park.

Facilities/features: None at the state forest; camping, restrooms, swimming, and boating at Bear Creek Lake State Park

NatGeo TOPO! map: Whiteville, Gold Hill

FINDING THE TRAILHEAD

From Cumberland Courthouse, drive east on US 60 for 1.2 miles and turn left onto VA 622 (Trents Mill Road). Reach Bear Creek Market in 3.3 miles. Drive past the market and turn right onto VA 623, which turns from pavement to gravel. After 1.7 miles, turn left onto VA 624, a paved road, and drive 2.1 miles to the intersection of VA 608. Here you turn left onto VA 608 and look on the right for Warner Fire Road in 2.2 miles. Turn right onto the fire road, which is dirt, and drive 0.5 mile to a dead end. You’ll recognize the trailhead by the swinging bridge over the Willis River. GPS: N37 37.191′ / W78 12.803′. DeLorme: Virginia Atlas & Gazetteer: Page 56, D3.

Shuttle Point: From Cumberland Courthouse, drive east on US 60 for 1.2 miles and turn left onto VA 622 (Trents Mill Road). Reach Bear Creek Market in 3.3 miles and turn left onto VA 629. The southern trailhead is located at Winston Lake on VA 629, 1. 2 miles past Cumberland State Forest headquarters. (Bear Creek Market, on VA 622, or Bear Creek Lake State Park, on VA 629, offer convenient mid-trail parking.) GPS: N37 30.957′ / W78 18.064′. DeLorme: Virginia Atlas & Gazetteer: Page 56, D3.

Bailout: Bear Creek State Park makes a convenient bailout for hikers who want to trim this hike to a 10-mile point-to-point. Easiest access is from the junction of VA 622 and VA 629 (mileage cue 9.1 in Miles and Directions) or from the junction of the blue-blazed Cumberland Multi-Use Trail with the Willis River Trail (mileage cue 9.9). GPS: N37 31.915′ / W78 16.028′. DeLorme: Virginia Atlas & Gazetteer: Page 56, D3.

THE HIKE

The first thing you should know about the Willis River Trail is this: It’s never looked as good as it does today. Not in our lifetime, at least.

Sycamores, easily identified by their thick, white-splotched trunks, tower in open, grassy fields along the Willis River. On wooded slopes, oaks, yellow poplar, and beech lend old farmland a shady, deep forest feel. Along old dirt roads, pink-petal mallows peek out of roadside ditches. Taken together, it’s land changing from farm to forest, a process that’s been under way for 70 years and counting in Cumberland State Forest.

Abusive best describes how farmers once treated the soil here and elsewhere in central Virginia. By the Great Depression, the farm economy of Cumberland and neighboring counties bottomed out. A condition called plow pan typified the problem: White clay was compacted into a cement-like state that prevented plow blades from penetrating its surface. Rain couldn’t nourish plant roots. Deprived of water, crops and trees shriveled, choked, and died.

When the US government paid pennies on the dollar for this land, it resembled the dust-bowl conditions of the nation’s heartland. After Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers built roads and dams, Virginia created state forests on the land. On the sides of roads, foresters planted farm and tree demonstration plots. Sleuthing by present-day rangers has revealed square, 1-acre stands of oak, poplar, Trail sign in Cumberland State Forest and pines. The plots were used to show landowners not only what trees they could plant, but also how to manage forestland for a sustainable timber harvest. Restoration had begun.

The full benefits of 70-plus years of restoration are best appreciated on the Willis River Trail. Beavers have laid claim to land along the first 2 miles of the trail. Notice the small channels that crisscross the landscape as it slopes toward the beaver swamp on the left side of the trail. As beavers range farther afield in search of their favorite food—hardwood saplings—they build canals for safe passage. That’s one theory to explain the presence of these small drainages. A more likely explanation would be field furrows, planted and replanted so many times they’ve made indelible marks on the landscape.

Human handiwork is evident farther along the trail, where plantations of Virginia pine are visible through the forest understory of sassafras and holly. Foresters currently manage pine plots for about 35 years and then harvest. Hardwood stands, by contrast, can take 70 to 100 years to reach maturity. In the case of both types, the lumber is used in state building projects.

Less evident along the Willis River Trail are signs of the river’s busy past. At one time, flat-bottom riverboats (or bateaux) loaded with livestock and hogsheads of tobacco and/or flour congregated on this stream. The Willis River canal system, designed specifically for this shallow stream, worked most efficiently when four or five boats used a lock at once. Considered a pioneering form of navigation, the Willis River locks employed a wooden flash gate, which linked two stone jetties that stuck out into the river from either bank. Hinged at the bottom, this flash lock fell flat when opened. Boats coasted through the sluice and proceeded downstream. (Upriver navigation was a tad more difficult, relying on the brawn of bateau polers rather than gravity.) The locks made the Willis River navigable for up to 50 miles from its confluence with the James River. Gristmills and inspection warehouses occupied strategic points on the water route, often near locks. Names of local roads, such as Trents Mill, a few miles past Bear Creek Market on VA 622, reference these long-ago points of commerce.

A DICKENS MYSTERY

THIS IS THE GRAVE of a little Child whom God In his goodness called to a Bright Eternity when he was very young. Hard as It Is For Human Affection To reconcile itself To Death, In any shape (and most of all, perhaps at First In This) HIS PARENTS can even now believe That it will be a Consolation to them Throughout their lives, and when they shall have grown old and grey always to think of him as a Child IN HEAVEN “and Jesus Called a little Child unto him, and set him in the midst of them.” He was the son of ANTHONY AND M.I. THORTON Called CHARLES IRVING. He was born on the 20th day of January 1841, and he died on the 12th day of March 1842. Having lived only 13 months and 19 days.

Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and A Tale of Two Cities–all literary classics. But did you know he also wrote the tombstone epitaph above? It is located in the Thornton Family Cemetery within Cumberland State Forest.

The deceased was thirteen-month-old Charles Irving Thorton. Dickens was traveling in America at the time of the child’s death. Why Dickens wrote the memorial is a mystery. Was he inspired by the death of such a young child? Or was he smitten with the child’s mother, as Randolph W. Church speculated in a 1971 article in the Virginia Cavalcade? A less romantic and probably more likely theory suggests that Dickens’s friend Washington Irving (of “Rip Van Winkle” fame) was close to the mother, and, perhaps, Dickens wrote the epitaph in consideration of this mutual friendship.

All that’s known for certain is that the physician who attended the dying child requested that Dickens write the epitaph. Dickens mailed it back from Cincinnati, Ohio, where he was visiting. The marble headstone etched with Dickens’s words is located in the state forest on the grounds of Oak Hill, the Thorton family’s former homestead.

For all the innovation, commercial use of the river was cyclical. When the channel filled with sediment or wooden flash locks rotted, traffic declined. It revived when local businessmen saw fit to pay for improvements—or petition the state to fund repairs. Yet even when the James River and Kanawha Canal—the main east–west commercial route in central Virginia to which the Willis River linked—was abandoned for railroads in 1880, Cumberland County farmers continued using parts of the Willis River to ship goods to railroad depots. Use declined only when the land could not sustain enough crops to make farming profitable.

Which brings us full circle, to land once misused, now protected and plentiful with trees and wildlife. Your footsteps can roust a turkey, partridge, or deer from protected feeding areas managed by another state agency, the Department of Game & Inland Fisheries. You can walk through forests used by scientists and researchers as laboratories for cultivating genetically improved versions of loblolly pine, white pine, and Virginia pine. Or you can engage in amateur research: Rock Quarry Natural Area, midway along the trail, is one of four natural areas in Cumberland left untouched by forest personnel. Here, nature manages growth. To a forester, it represents chaos, where less valuable hardwoods crowd valuable red and white oak and yellow poplar. For this hiker, it holds some of the wildest, most scenic portions of the Willis River Trail. You be the judge.

MILES AND DIRECTIONS

0.0Start from a parking area at the dead end of Warner Forest Road. The white-blazed Willis River Trail heads south away from the river, entering the woods at the back of the parking area. The next 0.5 mile of trail runs up and down gentle bumps in the landscape and alongside a beaver swamp. Note: There is a scenic swing bridge that crosses the Willis River a few feet east of the parking area trailhead.

0.5The trail begins a run on level ground amid loblolly pines. (Cumberland State Forest marks the farthest west this pine will grow in Virginia.) On this level stretch, you’ll cross four drainages in succession, which makes for some wet walking in spring.

0.7Reach VA 615 and turn left, following white blazes on the right side of the road. After crossing Reynolds Creek, turn right to reenter the woods. For the next 0.3 mile, the trail alternates between wet sections in the stream bottomland and short climbs over streamside hills. Sections of trail are often very narrow and eroded. Logs may block the path.

1.7Cross Reynolds Creek. Note: Steep, eroded stream banks make this a difficult passage during periods of high water.

1.8Crest a small hill amid a plantation of Virginia pine. The climb from the river is an ideal stretch to watch the forest transition from hardwoods (hornbeam, oak, and alder) at lower elevations to pines at the top. The trail then drops to the river.

2.5After climbing over a small hill, descend to cross a small tributary of Reynolds Creek. The trail climbs again entering a pine plantation.

2.8Reach a gate and turn right onto Toll Gate Forest Road. You’ll pass a clear-cut on the right, moments before reaching VA 624.

3.5Walk straight across VA 624 and reenter the woods. The forest boundary is somewhere between the blue house on the right and the trail, so don’t stray too far. As you descend on a singletrack path, a small stream forms on the right, as the terrain on the left changes from field to wooded slope.

3.6Cross a wet ditch and climb a small hill to avoid getting your feet wet where the stream cuts close to the base of the hill.

3.9The trail turns sharply left, away from the stream. (Through the understory of sassafras and witch hazel, you’ll make out the border of a pine plantation.) The trail almost reaches the pines, then turns to run parallel to the plantation in a narrow ditch.

4.2Cross Bonbrook Creek. Look right for white blazes and follow the trail around the base of a hill as it climbs away from the creek.

4.5Stay alert as the trail passes closely to the state forest boundary. Barbed wire and yellow blazes on trees right of the trail mark this boundary. Through the woods on the right is a long white barn.

4.6Walk straight across VA 624, turn left, and walk up the right side of the road. At a gated forest road with a stone apron, turn right onto a dirt road. In 0.1 mile, turn left and enter the shelter of the woods. Avoid following the forest road straight into a field.

5.0The trail reaches the Willis River amid a field of tall grass and wildflowers. Here, the stream runs a wide, flat course. Its arrow-straight banks suggest it may have been straightened for commercial navigation. Cutting the bends out of the river allowed easier passage for bateaux, which measured 60 feet long and 8 feet wide.

5.2Walk on the muddy bottomland along the Willis River. Keep a sharp eye out for the trail as it crosses wet ditches and passes through heavy vegetation. If you lose the trail, tend to the riverbank. You’re on the mark if you see a large tree leaning out over the river.

5.4A blue stripe on a tree marks the boundary of the Rock Quarry Natural Area, one of four in Cumberland State Forest. Natural areas are left wild and untouched. The trees here are larger, more mature species than you’ll see elsewhere along the trail. The forest subcanopy is also overgrown, an appearance that results if the forest is not thinned.

6.0Enter a clearing and turn left. This old road climbs through plantations of Virginia and loblolly pines.

6.2Turn right onto Rock Quarry Fire Road. After a few paces, an old road goes left. Continue straight on Rock Quarry to where it dead-ends in a clearing. Here the trail bears left into the woods and takes a steep drop to the Willis River.

6.4Reach the Willis River. The trail rides a ledge with a steep drop off the right side down to the river flats.

6.8Descend onto the river floodplain.

7.0Without the convenience of a double blaze, the trail takes a hard left and the trail widens. This is confusing because a wide path also continues straight ahead. If you miss the left turn, you’ll know soon enough–the riverside path peters out in a blaze of vegetation.

7.3Reach Horn Quarter Creek and turn left to follow it upstream along the left bank. This is a good spot for lunch or photos or just a quick swim.

7.5Cross the stream and climb the opposite bank. The trail will soon convert to a wide dirt forest road and enter a pine plantation. Note: Where the land levels, look for signs of an old farm. There’s a crater on the left side of the trail that’s likely a collapsed well. In an overgrown field on the right side of the trail are piles of concrete blocks, indicating that a house or outbuilding once stood here. The stones are covered in vinca violets.

7.7Stay straight on the forest road trail past a clearing on the right.

8.0At a junction with a forest road, turn right (southwest). Within 0.1 mile, this road curves right. Instead, continue straight on the white-blazed trail.

8.3Cross a small stream and turn left (south) into the woods. The trail starts climbing a short easy incline.

8.7Emerge from the woods at a T intersection of VA 622 and VA 623. Walk straight across dirt VA 623 and continue walking up the left side of VA 622 in the corridor cut for the power lines.

9.1At the intersection of VA 622 and VA 629, cross the road and enter the woods opposite Bear Creek Market. A wood post with a hiker icon and trail signs marks this trailhead for the southern leg of the Willis River Trail, which is marked by white squares. Bailout: Walk 1.2 miles down paved VA 629 to the Cumberland Multi-Use Trailhead (CMT) parking lot in Bear Creek State Park.

9.9Cross the blue-blazed Cumberland Multi-Use Trail (CMT), which is a dirt forest road, and reenter the woods opposite as a singletrack footpath. Bailout: Turn right on the CMT and in 0.2 mile reach the CMT trailhead in Bear Creek State Park.

10.3After descending through a young hardwood forest, turn left on an old road now overgrown with grass and weeds. In less than 0.1 mile, turn left again at a junction marked by a wood trail post and hike uphill on a singletrack woods path.

10.5Begin a very scenic section of trail along Little Bear Creek where you ascend small hills that take you from stream level to lookouts some 50 feet above the stream. You’ll see pawpaw (aka the “false banana” tree) on this stretch of trail. Its peanut-shaped fruit is a food staple for squirrels, raccoons, and birds.

10.9Cross Little Bear Creek and climb the embankment. In 0.1 mile, cross the creek again. Begin a steep ascent.

11.2A bend in the creek carves a steep-sided natural amphitheater in the hillside and the trail traces the edge high above stream level.

11.8Cross Bear Creek Road at a parking area for the blue-blazed Cumberland Multi-Use Trail. Reenter the woods on the white-blazed Willis River Trail.

12.0Cross Bear Creek. (WPA work crews dammed the stream to create popular Bear Creek Lake, one of seven lakes built in central Virginia between 1935 and 1937 for recreational use.) The trail on the opposite side climbs a hill and becomes an old road.

12.7Turn left onto dirt Booker Forest Road.

12.9As you approach VA 628, stay alert for a double blaze on the left side of the trail that marks a left turn. Follow a power-line easement paralleling the road. In less than 0.1 mile, turn right and cut through a strip of woods that separates the easement and the road. Cross VA 628 and reenter the woods on the opposite side.

13.3The trail passes through a wet section with many springs and seeps that mark the headwaters of Winston Lake. From here the trail climbs to higher and drier hillsides and parallels the stream, which is downhill on the right.

13.9Descend and cross the stream. Follow the trail along the stream’s edge and cross it again in 0.1 mile. After the second crossing, begin your climb out of the lowlands of Winston Lake’s backwater to walk along a hillside overlooking the south side of the lake. Note: Both stream crossings are scenic stops and a great place to sit and soak in the nature around the lake’s headwaters.

14.7Hike ends as you descend a set of stone stairs and cross a wood footbridge to reach a picnic shelter and parking area for Winston Lake.

HIKE INFORMATION

LOCAL INFORMATION

Visit Farmville, (434) 392-1482, www.visitfarmville.com

LOCAL EVENTS/ATTRACTIONS

James River Bateau Festival, mid-June, James River: Lynchburg to Richmond; (434) 528-3950, www.vacanals.org. A weeklong celebration of a bygone era, with replicas of the bateaux that transported commerce up and down central Virginia rivers and canals in the 1800s traveling from Lynchburg to Richmond, powered by volunteers in period costume.