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 Rough and Ready Forest State Park Wheelchair Accessible Trail, Cave Junction, Oregon |
| Return to Siskiyou Mountains | |
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Rough and Ready Forest State Park Wheelchair Accessible Trail, Cave Junction, Oregon |
| Return to Siskiyou Mountains | |
Rough and Ready Forest State Park, Oregon
Directions From Cave Junction, follow Highway 199 south for about five miles. The road will go past a lumber mill where it widens into a four lane highway. The turnoff into the parking area is on the right just before the bridge where the road narrows to a two lane highway. The drive into the parking area is just after mile marker 34. Driving from O'Brien (from the south), the parking area for Rough and Ready Forest State Park will be on the left after crossing the Rough and Ready Creek Bridge. There is no turning lane so turn on your left turn signal and start slowing down while you are on the bridge to slow traffic behind you. Once you have crossed the bridge, the road becomes a four lane so faster moving traffic can pass you as you make your turn.
Trails
Wildflowers The best time to see wildflowers at the Rough and Ready Botanical Area is in early May through early June. Wildflower programs and classes are offered in the spring by local community groups such as the Siskiyou Field Institute, Garden Club, and Native Plant Society.
History Rough and Ready Forest State Park was established in 1937 as a result of the efforts of the local garden club. They became aware of the botanical significance of this unique landscape as a result of their own self education program. They began their efforts to establish a park during the Great Depression when "you couldn't rub two dimes together" in this community. Jobs were as scarce as money and the need for protecting the site became more urgent as entrepreneurs looking for ways to make money began digging up rare plants to be sold as botanical novelties. They raised their own money and sent delegates to the Oregon capitol to push for the creation of a state park. In 1937, their dream was realized with the establishment of the 90 acre Rough and Ready Forest State Park. Read the story about the Illinois Valley Garden Club and their involvement in establishing this park.
Why Rough and Ready Forest is unique
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The Rough and Ready Botanical Area
has inspired nick-names such as the Red Rock Rain Forest and Gobi
Desert, each name describing the barren landscape in a place that
gets about 60 inches of rain every year. Here, amid forest lands of dense
pine and fir forest, is a place with a plant community you would expect to
find in the high desert of eastern Oregon. It takes about 20 minutes for the
round trip hike to the end of the wheelchair accessible trail and return.
The
map shows the parking area for the Rough and Ready Forest State Park in
yellow. The yellow dashed line is the wheelchair accessible trail. The red
line shows a longer hike that goes to Seats Dam, a small dam to divert water
for the lumber mill water ditch. This is a route that follows old roads and
the round trip is about three miles of fairly level walking. The picture
above shows people walking on the trail to Seats Dam. 
Rough and Ready
Forest is situated on an unusual geologic landscape called an alluvial fan
and this creates a combination of challenges for
plant growth. The deep gravel deposits that make up the alluvial fan do not retain rain water so the
ground quickly drains creating an artificial arid environment. In addition
to this, the Rough and Ready Creek watershed is entirely contained within
one of the largest exposures of mantle rock in North America so the rocks
that make up the alluvial fan are almost entirely made up of mantle rock.
Mantle rocks do not contain many
essential plant nutrients and the soil from the break-down of these rocks
tends to be poorly suited for supporting plant growth. Mantle rock also has
large quantities of chrome and nickel, which may be toxic to some plants.
The combination of arid conditions, poor soils and toxic metals result in a
the evolution of a community of plants that are best suited for survival
under these extreme conditions. Many of the trees growing
here tend to be dwarf versions of trees that would otherwise grow to 100-200
feet if soil and water were not constraining factors. This unique
environment is what makes Rough and Ready Forest State Park an unusual and
one-of-a-kind place to visit as you travel on the Redwood Highway of Oregon
and California. 
An alluvial fan is created when
fast moving water in a narrow canyon suddenly slows down when it reaches the
mouth of the canyon and is able to spread out in different directions. When
water slows down, the rocks that were carried by fast moving water are
deposited, usually in a fan-shaped arrangement around the mouth of the
canyon. The rocks that make up the state park came from Rough and Ready
Canyon in the mountains about two miles from Highway 199. The lower part of
the canyon is shown in the picture to the right. 
The
illustration shows the shape and age of deposits that make up the Rough and
Ready Creek alluvial fan (flood plain). The age of Holocene rocks are about
2,000 years and the oldest deposits are about 10,000 years old. The Llano de Oro deposit
is in the area of Waldo about three miles southwest of Rough and Ready Creek and
is the site of some of the largest placer mining operations in Oregon
history. The source of
rock that make up the Llano de Oro deposit came from the Siskiyou Wilderness
to the south. The rocks that make up
the Rough and Ready Creek alluvial fan came from the mountains near the
Kalmiopsis Wilderness to the west. 
The
illustration above is superimposed on a satellite image to help you
visualize where this alluvial fan is located in relation to other landmarks
in the area. Highway 199 enters this deposit from the north at West Side
Road and, from the south, at the bridge over the West Fork of the Illinois River. The state park is situated on
the youngest section of the fan. Highway 199 passes through
all three age groups with the best examples of the
Holocene seen near the south end of the airport runway. 
The
uplift of mantle rocks in this region began about 150 million years ago and during that time
most of the mantle rock was altered into a type of rock called serpentine. The picture
to the right shows mantle rocks from Rough and Ready Creek that exhibit various
degrees of serpentinization. The black and green rocks on the right are the
most heavily serpentinized. The rocks are arranged in a clockwise fashion
down and around toward the left with each rock having less and less stages
of serpentinization. The brown rocks on the left appear to have the least alteration. The orange and red rocks at the top and center show how iron in
the rock can rust and stain these rocks. This rusting is what gives the
exposures of
mantle rock in the surrounding mountains a reddish tint. Mantle rock is called peridiotite.
There are three basic types of peridiotite; harzburgite, dunnite, wehrlite.
The most common type of peridiotite in the Rough and Ready
Creek watershed is harzburgite (saxonite).