We really have overlooked Indian Rockhouse, I don’t know why. Maybe because Buffalo Point where Indian
Rockhouse is located is the biggest most developed place on the
river. Buffalo Point pre-dates Buffalo National River by over 30 years, was created as Buffalo State
Park back in 1938 by the state of Arkansas, the National Forest
Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps. It's a great place, with a ranger station, multiple camping areas, rental cabins and even a restaurant. There are miles of hiking trails, including the Indian Rockhouse Trail.
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small sinkhole
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We decide to check it out
thinking since it’s the off-season at
campgrounds and canoeing destinations, maybe we won’t encounter
too many others out on the trails.
Also, today's the day after Thanksgiving, everyone should be shopping (Black Friday) or laying around the house with the lingering effects
of tryptophan. Anyway,
here we are at the
parking area, which is pretty full,
we manage to squeeze in. |
Sinkhole Icebox
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Crossing the paved road to the signed trailhead we see right away that
there are people everywhere. Indian
Rockhouse Trail starts off down the hill on an old road and
leaves the road
just before crossing the creek. Downstream we go, soon we’re passed by a guy
with his dog, we tend to hike slow so
this will become a common trend today. Right away just off the trail on our right is a small sinkhole, then downhill a little farther a much bigger one left of the trail.
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nice trail
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This is the ‘Sinkhole Icebox’ which is
reputedly a popular hangout in the heat of summer. While checking it out a small family of three
slips past us, some will pass
us, others will be passed by us, some will even become acquaintances as we pass each other multiple times. We’ll encounter large groups,
some from out-of-state, some church groups, old folks and young kids of all
shapes and sizes. Anyway, you get the
idea, I’ll stop with the minute by minute ‘people encounter’ updates,
suffice it to say,
‘we are not alone’. |
Rockhouse Falls (not much water but lots of people)
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Downhill from Sinkhole Icebox about 200 yards are some rock stairs then a trail intersection, the short rocky spur takes us out to the top of a bluff with a great view of a nice 30-foot
waterfall, I have heard this referred to as ‘Rockhouse Falls’. I'll bet it's beautiful
with more waterflow, up here at the top is a great place to view it. Back to Indian
Rockhouse Trail we continue down more rock steps to the
bottom of the small drainage, the trail turns left back upstream to the base of Rockhouse Falls which today is almost dry. |
Rockhouse Falls
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We leave the falls heading north along the
base of the broken bluffline, then downhill and a sharp turn left brings us to
the entrance to a zinc mine in the side of the hill. The story goes this was an exploratory shaft that never produced
any profitable ore
and
was quickly
abandoned. We don't go in,
although we would have liked to check it out, the long line waiting to get
in convince us to skip it.
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hole in the roof of the 'smaller' shelter
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Downhill further we soon come to Panther Creek, the trail turns left (upstream) at the creek. A
long the edge of the bank, this quarter mile or so must be interesting when the water’s high, or at least very ‘wet’. When the trail goes to the left leaving the creek bank we see a
nice shelter cave a short way off the trail on our left, the way in to check it
out is littered with huge rocks, a large group that was behind us asks ‘Is this
the Indian Rockhouse?’, I answer ‘no’ they keep going.
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plenty of signage along the trails
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This is a very nice place, compared
to most of the shelter caves we see while hiking I would call this a big shelter. Not having seen the Indian Rockhouse yet I
assume this is ‘small’ in comparison, but I’m still impressed, it even has a
large hole in the roof at its right side.
After some picture taking and a short break it’s back to the
Rockhouse Trail, we continue northwest soon coming to an intersection after
a small creek crossing. |
approaching Indian Rockhouse
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Left is a short
connector trail to the Return Trail, we stay on Rockhouse Trail
and cross Panther Creek now on the old road again, there is even some asphalt pavement. Continuing upstream above the bank of Panther Creek for about 0.3
miles then back to the west side and another
intersection. Left is the
Return Trail, continuing north uphill on Rockhouse Trail we're still on the old road. The
trail tops out on a low ridge before dropping to a curve left and a faint trail off to the right up a
small creek.
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the 'skylight' in Indian Rockhouse
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Straight ahead in front of us is Indian Rockhouse, we
cross Panther Creek,
quite small and dry, then up the rocky dusty trail
into the massive 270-foot-wide
entrance of this gigantic shelter. In all the Ozarks this is the second largest
shelter cave, only Cob Cave at Lost Valley is bigger, to me Indian
Rockhouse feels bigger.
The main room is about 100 feet deep and the
ceiling is 50 feet high, just like the smaller shelter earlier Indian Rockhouse has a big hole in the roof; ‘the
skylight’. |
flowstone in Indian Rockhouse
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There is no sense of
‘claustrophobia’ in this cavernous shelter, it’s so big that even with the
40-50 other people in here, it still feels ‘empty’. We go down to a creek which flows out of a low cave then along the west side before disappearing
underground near the front. Above this creek
back in the northwest corner of the main room is another cave with passages back into the depths.
I explore first straight back maybe 80 feet to a left turn that takes me another 70 feet to a room with smaller hand-holes going who knows where, here my flashlight goes dim and
I turn back.
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at the cave in the back of Indian Rockhouse
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Before leaving Indian
Rockhouse we meet a man from Marshall who tells us a story about three teenage
boys who drowned in the underground creek while exploring the low cave at the
back of the shelter years ago; they were in there ‘on
a dare’ with very little caving experience, a moral for this story, always be careful out there, not
just in caves, be cautious and don’t get into a
situation beyond your abilities. Indian Rockhouse is awesome, we could spend
hours here, we leave the east side
under the skylight for another day. |
Sculptured Rock
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We head back on Indian Rockhouse Trail, the way
we came to the intersection just before crossing Panther Creek with the Return
Trail. Staying straight on Return
Trail and south on the west side of the creek soon crossing a
small ravine on a wooden bridge and where the trail gets close to Panther Creek, we stop to investigate an area known as ‘Sculptured Bedrock’. Much of Panther Creek flows over solid
bedrock, in places the moving water over has
eroded the stone ‘smooth’ and has ‘sculpted’ interesting dips, holes and
pools along the stream course, it’s all very interesting and pretty too.
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on top the 'alcove' at Pebble Spring
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Less than 100 yards
further is Pebble Spring, in an interesting ‘little alcove’ where there's a short bluff
about 40 feet tall but only 80 feet long. The little cove appears to have been
created by the spring itself, there is
some gravel spread all over the creek here and I assume this is why it’s called
‘Pebble Spring’. The spring is quite
lush with lots of moss but not much water, at least not today. We climb out of the little cove and continue
on the trail around the top of the alcove.
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Natural Bathtub
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About 0.2 miles further is the short connector trail
to the Rockhouse Trail just 50 feet away. Here we turn to the west and up a side
drainage flowing down into Panther Creek. Right away on the left maybe 25 feet off the trail is the ‘Natural Bathtub’ another place where the forces of erosion have done their work creating a big bathtub in the solid bedrock, there are other similar ‘jacuzzi’ up and down Panther Creek but few on this small side stream.
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waterslide near Natural Bathtub
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We now head upstream and uphill to the southwest on the feeder steam
soon crossing the creek and up some rock steps, then after the trail swings to
the south the slope really starts to climb.
A steep climb out of the side drainage brings us onto another old road
and off the trail to our left (north) 50 yards is the old ‘CCC Quarry’.
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yup, that's the trail, see the hiker near the top?
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The quarry is where the stone used for cabins, culverts, bridge abutments, picnic shelters and more came from. It was quite an operation, the CCC put hundreds of local men to work here during the great depression, Buffalo Point remains a testament to their hard work. Leaving the quarry the trail follows the old road on a gentler grade uphill, just over a quarter mile we reach the top. Here the trail parallels the main road into Buffalo Point for about 200 yards to the Indian Rockhouse Trailhead, and across the road is the parking lot.
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the stone quarry
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And what a great hike,
with lots of natural wonders all along the trail and the majestic Indian
Rockhouse the highlight at the end, this is definitely a ‘must see’ that we will
surely come to again in the future (see: 170 Indian Rockhouse Trail).
Though we won’t be coming back on a Friday or the weekend and definitely
not on any holiday weekends. Today we
hiked 3.6 miles with an altitude gain of 516 feet.
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a light in the abyss
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Indian Rockhouse: Statistics Chart 78 At the intersection
of Hwy.14/268 about 1.7 miles north of the Highway 14 bridge over the Buffalo
River turn east on Highway 268 (Buffalo Point Road) and go about 2.5 miles to
the Indian Rockhouse Trailhead and parking area.
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| base map before fair use alterations is property of USGS Topo--licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 U.S. License |
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