The Vista: An American Hiking Society Blog

SODDY-DAISY, Tenn. — A not-so-welcoming sign greets hikers these days in Deep Creek Gorge along the state's Cumberland Trail:

"Warning Rock Harvesting Ahead. Dangerous equipment and unstable terrain. …"

The forest of hemlock and laurel vanishes just past the sign, and the trail moves onto a muddy mountainside of splintered tree parts and broken chunks of stone where ferns and moss once grew.

This is the result of the harvest of decorative rock — Tennessee's latest cash crop — and it's being done on public land. The state hasn't been able to stop it.

This piece of parkland, part of the Justin P. Wilson Cumberland Trail State Park north of Chattanooga, cost about $2.3 million in state, federal and private funds.

The mining threatens this planned ribbon of green, in the works for decades, which would allow long-distance hiking through some of the state's most scenic terrain.

But the state doesn't own the mineral rights to the land.

Rock — largely sandstone in this area — is being scraped from public and private land and trucked to Atlanta, Nashville and elsewhere to feed consumer demand for upscale rock facing for homes, fireplaces and landscaping. Several thousand tons of rock have been removed from the park, the state says.

"It's not just a few people going in with a pickup truck and picking up rocks," said Tony Hook, head of the Cumberland Trail Conference. "They've got dozers and an earth excavator and dump trucks. They are strip mining."

A piece of heavy earth-shoveling equipment sat at rest from ripping out sandstone and other rock along the trail.

A state report outlines the long-term damage possible to rare wildlife, plants, creeks and the view along the trail, but the Florida-based company doing the work disagrees.

"This is a lot more benign than logging is," said Rick Hitchcock, a Tennessee attorney who represents Lahiere-Hill LLC, which owns the mineral rights in this area.

Timbering took place on the land before the state acquired it, he said, adding that the practice is found around the area and includes building logging roads and clear-cutting trees.

Demand for stone grows

The demand for stone of all kinds as a natural-looking, long-lasting building material has grown.

The production of stone sold in slabs or chunks, called"dimension stone," has increased 30 percent in this country from 2002 to 2006, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Sandstone and limestone, which can be more than 230 million years old, are among the top sellers, with granite — often used indoors — the No. 1 seller. Much comes from established quarries, not skinning the ground.

While some rock harvesting was taking place on private land near the Cumberland Trail, park officials said they discovered the large-scale operation in the state's Deep Creek Gorge a year ago.

Since then, harvesters have cut ragged roads into the area, shaving off a sloping mountainside so there are drop-offs. A 50- to 100-yard section of the Cumberland Trail was buried under debris at one point.

The trail is the central feature of the linear state park planned to run northeast from Signal Mountain near Chattanooga to Cumberland Gap.

A 35-mile section on what will be a 300-mile trail — now half complete — lies in this 5,000-plus-acre parcel.

About $25.9 million has been spent on the state park, which has 21,979 acres so far. Much of the property was purchased from or donated by timber companies, and it's in what was at one time favored coal-mining territory, where mineral rights often changed hands.

"It's just destroying the trail, and not only the trail, but the whole ecology of that area and the watershed," said Fount Bertram with the Tennessee Trails Association.

He has helped build the trail with thousands of others, including students who come during spring break from schools around the country.

"The really scary thing is the land we've acquired from Bowater, Champion and International Paper — none of that came with mineral rights," Bertram said.

"If they can do that to Deep Creek, they can do it anyplace they want to."

Court won't intervene

The state has gone to court more than once to try to get a judge to stop the harvesting, but the court has declined. The state is appealing.

At the core of the dispute is whether the rock is covered by the mineral rights. The mining company says it is. The state says it isn't.

"The state certainly knew they were buying only the surface rights, and they were only paying for the surface rights," Hitchcock said.

Anyone who buys property can find out in the local courthouse whether they're buying the mineral rights along with the property, he said.

Stone belongs to the person holding the surface rights, said Joe Sanders, chief counsel for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, which manages the state park system.

"What does the surface owner really own if you go with the conclusion of Chancery Court?" Sanders asked. "You would own the dirt between the rocks, I guess, and the air over the site. You could mine pretty deep and still be finding rocks."

Dean Rivkin, a University of Tennessee environmental law professor, said severing mineral rights from surface rights has created friction over the years, with strip mining for coal the best example.

"The harm is real to the surface owner, and the mineral owners often do not use best practices and don't respect the property rights of the surface owners," he said.

The state eventually responded to strip mining with a law giving the landowner a say in what happens and holding strip miners responsible for damages.