East Texas Quarterly Magazine Summer 2014 | Page 9

The forest contains a 20 mile hiking trail, the 45 acre
Ratcliff Lake (once a log pond and a source of water
for the 4C Lumber Mill) and the 3,639 acre Big Slough
Wilderness Area. Key birds: Wood Duck, Wild Turkey,
Red-cockaded
and
Pileated
Woodpeckers,
Brown-headed Nuthatch, and Bachman’s Sparrow
are present.
Angelina National Forest and Sam Rayburn Reservoir:
Vast park-like areas of longleaf pine once grew in the
part of eastern Texas called the piney woods, but
after decades of logging very little of this natural
environment remains. The huge pines, which had
stood for centuries, were just too valuable to survive
once the American frontier moved west and timber
companies moved in. Four national forests-Sabine,
Angelina, Sam Houston, and Davy Crockett, cover
more than 660,000 acres of pine/hardwood forest
in this region today. Like many national forests,
they serve in large part as tree farms for timber and
pulpwood. Here and there, though, designated areas
are managed to protect and restore longleaf habitat
and to benefit endangered spec