BACK TO THE DEAM WILDERNESS: Unexpected Light on the Charles C. Deam Wilderness, Human History

The luminescent yellow daffodil blooms scattered along the roadside were the first indications that a higher spirit was on call during a Saturday morning drive through the Charles C. Deam Wilderness.

Given the season and forecast, the mission was simple and unassuming: get out of the house and into the woods and, in the process, find out if the Road Closed Ahead sign on Tower Ridge Road just past the Blackwell Horse Camp was for real. The implications were considerable if it were.

I planned to drive as far as I could across the forested razorback that Tower Ridge is, stop by the historic Brooks Cabin, and, hopefully, maybe, capture a decent image or two in spite of the overhead gray.

I had just reached out to Teena Ligman about an upcoming hike along Terrill Ridge to discuss the area’s human history for an upcoming Limestone Post Remembering the Deam Wilderness piece. But beyond the possibility of Brooks Cabin photos, my creative expectations were rather low.

Teena had been the Forest Service Public Information Officer through much of my career writing about the Hoosier and knows the forest and its history. Plus, it’s been a long time since we talked.

The three-mile in-and-out Terrill Ridge Trail, with its old foundation, county line road, pioneer cemetery, wildlife pond, and lookout tower, provides an ideal microcosm of the area’s human history.

The day’s first Photo Stop, Brooks Cabin, is situated on the Deam’s far west boundary on Tower Ridge Road, with a fishing lake out back, and serves as the Wilderness Welcome Center.

I figure Teena and I will start our journey into the wilderness past there.

Built on the Little Blue River in Crawford County by John S. Brooks in the 1890s, the cabin was reconstructed on its current location by Forest Service employees and volunteers in 1993.

“The building is characteristic of log homes built in the eastern United States between 1850 and 1920,” the agency says.

The spirit — an earth and nature goddess from Native American culture if I had my say — dictated the next Photo Stop just down Tower Ridge, as the first daffodil patch appeared, consistent with the human history theme. Daffodils are the first of many wildflower species that indicate the locations of long-gone pioneer homesteads.

After snapping a few images in the expectedly poor light, I decided to wait until the round trip from Terrill to stop at a larger yellow flower patch just up the road.

At the final two Photo Stops, sunrays — from above — did indeed illuminate the daffodils and Brooks Cabin in rich, early spring light for an unexpectedly full Photo Album.

Back in my newspaper days, the Monroe County highway engineer told me that long-term county plans called for Tower Ridge’s eventual closing, with no timeframe attached. And, when recently asked about the road closed sign, a connected friend mentioned permanent closure.

The stone-and-dirt road bisects the Deam between the Grubb Ridges to the north and Cope Hollow to the south. It has historically served as a backcountry transportation route between northwest Jackson and Southeast Monroe Counties.

I’m not sure about today, but when it was established in 1982, the Deam was the only federally protected wilderness in the nation with a road dividing its boundaries.

Closure would add some 7.5 miles for commuters and visitors to the popular Hickory Ridge Lookout Tower at the Terrill Ridge Trailhead, via Hunter’s Creek Road. It would at least return back to nature some four miles of ridge top roadway, from Blackwell to the Grubb Ridge Trailhead.

Tower Ridge Road remains open, but I needed my early 00s CRV ridge runner to reach Terrill Ridge. It was a blast that I couldn’t have experienced in the Prius.

That the Deam is a hub for outdoor recreation activities was abundantly clear from Brooks Cabin on.

Despite the road’s AWD-only conditions, parking lots at Grubb and Terrill Ridges were brimming with vehicles. I passed a half dozen mountain bikers on Tower Ridge and a pair of 20-something folks just strolling along the road. Two sets of two backpackers each passed on the Grubb Ridge Trail just below the roadway.

At the Brooks lot on the way out, a young, out-of-state woman, seemingly traveling solo, read a book in a hammock she had strung between two pine trees.

Two of the backpackers passed just below the final Photo Stop at the still-active Todd Cemetery, where I added a new detail to a historical fact I’ve spoken publicly and privately about for decades: Southern Indiana brothers fought each other in the Civil War.

While Indiana was north of the Mason-Dixon Line and a non-slave state, its southernmost inhabitants migrated from the Upland South, and most families had dual loyalties. At the risk of hyperbole, I’ve long said every pioneer cemetery in the Indiana Uplands has CSA – Confederate States of America – headstones.

The Deam Wilderness Area’s Todd Cemetery is the final resting place for:

Private William H. Hicks
Company A
24th North Carolina Infantry
CSA
1829-1882.

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PROJECT: Back to the Charles C. Deam Wilderness: A Half Century Later

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