HIKING VIRGINIA

Mountain Fork and Little Stony Creek thread the mountains of Wise and Scott Counties in wild and unpredictable fashion. Sticking with them faithfully is the 15-mile Chief Benge Scout Trail, a trek that links the cool waters of High Knob Lake with 30-foot falls, rapids, and small pools on the Little Stony. The trail follows old railroad grades at river level but makes several steep climbs up the ridges that make southwest Virginia such a rugged, wonderful place to hike. There is real variety of plants along this trail, from big-leaf magnolia to the huckleberries on the dry ridges. Bring a fishing pole and test stream waters or the wide Bark Camp Lake. With reliable water sources and only a few steep climbs, this hike is a highlight of any southwest trip.

THE RUNDOWN

Start: Parking lot for High Knob Lake in High Knob National Recreation Area (NRA)

Distance: 15.3 miles point to point

Hiking time: About 8 hours

Difficulty: Moderate due to the length and a number of unaided stream crossings

Trail surface: A combination of dirt footpaths, grassy forest roads, and gravel forest roads leads along streams and fern glades, through hardwood forests to two lakes and a craggy river gorge with three tall waterfalls.

Land status: National forest

Nearest town: Norton, VA

Other trail users: Hikers only

Accessibility: The Lakeshore Trail at Bark Camp Lake is paved.

Canine compatibility: Dogs permitted

Trail contact: Clinch Ranger District, Norton; (276) 679-8370, www.fs.usda.gov/gwj

Schedule: Open year-round. Hunting is permitted on national forest land. Deer-hunting season in Wise and Scott Counties runs Oct through Jan. The national forest limits hiking groups to 10 people.

Fees/permits: High Knob Recreation Area day-use and camping fees; Bark Camp Lake Recreation Area day-use and camping fees.

Facilities/features: There are restrooms, picnic areas and camping at High Knob Recreation Area, open May 15-Sept. 15, at the beginning of the hike. Bark Camp Lake, about midway on the trail, has camping, restrooms, and a lake. Hanging Rock at the eastern terminus of the trail has restrooms, water, and a picnic area.

NatGeo TOPO! map: Wise, Fort Blackmore, Coeburn, Dungannon, Norton, East Stone Gap

NatGeo Trails Illustrated map: Clinch Ranger District

To High Knob, start of Chief Benge Scout Trail: From Big Stone Gap, take VA 23/Alt US 58 East to exit 1. At a stop sign, turn right on 619 (good signage for High Knob). It’s a curvy, uphill, hairpin road. At 1.9 miles, pass the Flag Rock Recreation Area. At 3.1 miles, enter the national forest (signed). At 3.8 miles, turn left on FR 238. At 4.2 miles, make a sharp, hairpin right to go up to High Knob. A sign says gate is closed 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. (straight would take you to the camping area). Go 0.1 mile to the parking area and sign for trails. Before you head out, walk up the stairs a few hundred feet to the panoramic view from High Knob. GPS: N36 53.621’ / W82 37.710’.

To Bark Camp Lake (the midway point, if want to break hike into 2 days): From Alt 58 in Tacoma, take VA 706 south (Stone Mountain Road) and cross a railroad track almost immediately. There is a sign for Bark Camp Lake. At 7.5 miles is a national forest sign. At 8.2 miles, turn left on FR 699 (Pine Camp Road). At 8.5 miles, turn right on VA 822 (good signage). At 10.2 miles, turn right into Bark Camp Lake Recreation Area. Pay Station is at 11 miles. GPS: N36 52.017’ / W82 31.446’.

To Hanging Rock (end of Chief Benge/Little Stony Falls hike): From Coeburn, take VA 72 south 8.8 miles and turn right into Hanging Rock National Recreation Area. GPS: N36 51.681’ / W82 26.769’. DeLorme: Virginia Atlas & Gazetteer: Page 20, A3-A4.

Mountain Fork creek swallows the sunlight with each step along the Chief Benge Scout Trail, as hills on either side steepen and the valley narrows. Thick patches of laurel, small trees, and an earthy smell fill the valley. Downed trees force water into narrow channels that spill over small rock ledges. Rushing water is always audible, even when the stream itself is obscured by vine and shrub entanglements. Soon trail and stream meet, cross, meet again, and cross again—before the wide, flat trail narrows and climbs the left hillside.

At this point, where mountain laurel gives way to oak and maple, we part ways with Mountain Fork—and the spirit who’s been stalking silently behind since High Knob Lake. The ghost of Chief Bob Benge won’t be following us up Bark Camp Branch; instead, he’ll steer right along Big Stony Creek. Painted in warrior colors and traveling by night, he’ll head south to the Livingston Farm on the North Fork Holston. He’ll return this way, with prisoners and booty, evading militia by traveling obscure mountain passes. Eleven miles north of here, in a gap overlooking the city of Norton, he’ll die as he did in 1794, of a bullet to the head.

Chief Benge entered southwest Virginia in April 1777 leading a band of Cherokee and Shawnee, marking the start of an 18-year reign of terror. A man who had, in his youth, lived with his Native American mother and English stepfather at Dorton’s Fort on the Copper River, would kill between forty to fifty settlers as retribution for their encroachment on Native American land. Hunting parties fell prey to his ambushes. Farmers looked up from work to find him standing over them. Women peered from their homes, saw nothing . . . looked again . . . and saw Benge. Like a ghost, he materialized, murdered, plundered, and moved on.

What caused a man with an English father, trader John Benge, and Cherokee mother, Elizabeth Watts Dorton, to strike out so?

Benge came of age in the 1770s, a tense time in the colonies. City folk on the Eastern Seaboard were ruffled by such concepts as taxation without representation. In southwest Virginia, a more tangible threat occupied settlers. Local Native American tribes were lashing out against settlers’ land gains down the Clinch, Powell, and Holston Valleys. When the American Revolution broke out in 1776, British-instigated Cherokee and Shawnee war parties returned to southwest Virginia for revenge. Virginia’s Holston Militia retaliated by burning Cherokee towns in Tennessee. Bob Benge, who had run away from Dorton’s Fort as a teenager to live out his days as a Cherokee, lost his home twice in these raids. Neighbors from his childhood years helped pillage his village.

With his red head and fair complexion, Benge could pass as a settler. He spoke flawless English and knew the mountains of the Clinch, Holston, and Powell Valleys like few others. His discovery of a pass between Stone and Powell Mountains enabled him to move in and out of the region undetected.

The morning of April 6, 1794, found Benge at the Livingston family home near Mendota on the North Fork Holston River. A daughter of Elizabeth Livingston later described the scene:

One bright morning after the sun had risen and the men had gone to the clearings and the women were busy at their wheels and looms, all joyous and jovial amid the fragrance of wild flowers and the music of songbirds, and not dreaming of coming danger, Benge and his painted warriors stealthily approached and surrounded the cabins.

In short order, Benge’s band killed a woman and three children, burned the house, and carried off eight prisoners, including the wife of Henry Livingston, Susannah.

Runners carried the alarm northeast to Castlewood (then Castle’s Wood) and northwest to Yoakum’s Station near present-day Dryden. Militias moved to predetermined mountain passes Benge might use. A small group started out after Benge and tracked him down the North Fork Holston River to Hilton, across Clinch Mountain at Hamilton Gap, and north to the Clinch River. Yet as hours slipped past, the Cherokee’s trail grew faint.

At the Clinch River just south of present-day Dungannon, Benge’s raiding party made a fateful misstep—literally. Author Lawrence Fleenor recounts in his book Benge! how a wet moccasin print on a dry stone tipped pursuers to his route. Benge moved downstream to the confluence of Big Stony Creek near Fort Blackmore, turned upstream, and followed Big Stony up Powell Mountain, his pursuers closing ground.

In late afternoon, the sun slips behind Powell Mountain, shrouding one entire side of the Mountain Fork stream valley in dusk. The opposite bank remains bathed in warm light, although the hiker still feels vulnerable to ever-encroaching shadows. At this point, Chief Benge Scout Trail climbs up the left hill, first gradually, then at a steeper grade. Mountain Fork is 200 feet below you. Sunlight bathes a large fern glade on the valley floor. It’s tempting to imagine Benge walking here on April 7, 1794. He would have kept one prisoner, Susannah Livingston, wife of Henry Livingston, out in front. The remaining prisoners would have been behind him. In single file, the party would have passed out of the light into the shadows of the stream valley, picking their way upstream to High Knob and spending the night at Camp Rock.

Benge did spend his last night alive at Camp Rock, but best evidence shows he followed a more direct route up Powell Mountain, one roughly approximated by VA 619. He was headed for a gap in the mountains overlooking a town called Prince’s Flats (present-day Norton). At this pass, now called Benge’s Gap, the party turned west and entered Hoot Owl Hollow.

Benge’s pursuers set an ambush in Little Stony Gap, a deep mountain pass flanked by steep ridges and a valley floor covered with large rocks. Militiamen watched as Benge hustled his prisoners up the trail. One man took aim, but noise in lifting his rifle alerted Benge to danger. The Cherokee ran and, as he fled, stepped in a hole. The bullet intended to hit him square in the back lodged in his head.

Benge’s death is a watershed event in southwest Virginia; raids on settlers ceased with his passing. The Cherokee, already pushed far beyond their homelands, never threatened the region again in any material way.

The Chief Benge’s Scout Trail touches only briefly on its namesake. Still, the warrior lingers with you on a 15-mile trek to the falls at Little Stony. The trail is a fitting tribute to a Native American whose hidden paths along dark mountain stream valleys enabled him to make a statement, however destructive, against the expansion of white settlers into Cherokee land.

MILES AND DIRECTIONS

0.0Start at the High Knob Lake parking area. Walk 0.2 mile downhill, turn left in front of a shower house, and cross a small bridge spanning Mountain Fork (on USGS topo quadrant Wise, this stream is labeled Stony Creek but has been renamed). Note: There is a water spigot near the shower house. Stock up on water here. The trail follows streams almost its entire route, but this is the only treated water source for 9.5 miles.

0.5Cross a concrete dam at the top of High Knob Lake and turn right on Chief Benge Trail, a wide, flat dirt trail along the left bank of Mountain Fork. Through this ever-deepening stream valley, you’ll hop the rough-and-tumble creek five times in the next 2 miles.

1.9Pass a nice campground amid hemlocks on the right side of the trail.

2.4Cross FR 704 and drop down the opposite bank. The trail keeps its wide, flat course while Mountain Fork runs through some wild stretches, obscured by rhododendron, other times nearly dammed by tree debris.

3.5Climb out of the stream valley up the left slope and wrap around a small hill. (Mountain Fork takes a much longer route around the base of this hill.) The climb, at first gradual, steepens considerably as a drainage forms downslope on the right.

4.2Cross Bark Camp Branch and climb out of this stream gully to a large field within 0.5 mile.

4.6Pass by a natural gas well and enter a young hardwood forest. The trail, ascending on a gentle slope, is wide, grassy, and dry.

5.2Turn left onto a gravel road (FR 2570). Within twenty paces, turn right and hike along a wide grassy road.

5.8The trail reverts to a singletrack woods path as it descends off a small hill, crossing by the headwaters of Little Stony Creek.

6.1Cross VA 706 and descend on another grassy woods road. Between here and Little Stony Creek, two trails branch right off this road. Stay left each time.

6.9Cross Little Stony Creek and hike along the left stream bank. After a short distance, the trail climbs the hill on your left to meet a forest road.

7.3Cross a gravel road (FR 2560) and reenter woods directly opposite on a narrow woods path. Ferns line the trail and there are several large specimens of big-leaf magnolias. From here, the trail drops back to Little Stony Creek and you’ll follow the right stream bank for a short distance, then hop it to follow the left streamside.

8.4Reach the Lakeshore Loop Trail encircling Bark Camp Lake. Signs show the Chief Benge Trail turns right and traces the backside of the lake. Turn left for a nice respite at Bark Camp Lake Recreation Area.

9.5After wrapping in and out of the lake’s marshy fingers, enter the picnic area. (There are bathrooms, a water spigot, and picnic tables.) Reconnect with the Chief Benge Trail by following the Lakeshore Loop Trail to a dam on the lower end of Bark Camp Lake. Cross the concrete portion of the dam, then immediately turn left and follow the right stream bank of Little Stony Creek. This is a difficult stretch of trail, obscured by tall shrubs and poorly marked. Cues for the turnoff include several rusted metal posts and a rotted stump slashed with double yellow blazes found on the earthen embankment just after the concrete portion of the dam.

9.7Reach FR 822, a gravel road. Turn right and walk along the road for less than 0.1 mile. A sign on the left side reads “Falls of Little Stony, 4.9 Miles.” Turn left and drop back into woods. The river is on your left side. Seven stream crossings follow in quick succession.

10.4After the ninth stream crossing, look for a nice campsite on the right side of the trail. Ahead, the trail skips across Little Stony eight more times.

12.2Look right immediately after crossing Little Stony Creek. There is a campsite under hemlocks on a small bluff at a bend in the river. Large stream boulders are ideal for lounging.

12.5Reach FR 701. Follow the gravel road right, enter a vehicle turnaround, and look for the trailhead for Little Stony National Recreation Trail at a signboard at the back of the parking lot.

12.7Cross over the top of a spectacular 25-foot waterfall. Two other falls (10 feet and 30 feet) follow in quick succession. After this, the trail drops to stream level and passes through hemlock and cove forests.

15.3Reach Hanging Rock Picnic Area and the southern terminus of the Chief Benge and Little Stony Trails.

Carter Family Memorial Music Center, weekly live music shows, 3449 A. P. Carter Hwy.; Hiltons; (276) 594-0676; www.carterfamilyfold.org

Country Cabin II, 6034 Kent Junction Rd., Norton; (276) 679-3541; www.appalachiantraditionsinc.com Live old time and bluegrass every Sat night.

35. CHIEF BENGE SCOUT TRAIL