Kalmia latifolia, or Mountain Laurel, is the state flower of Pennsylvania. The buds are bright red to deep pink, and the blooms expand through a boxy hexagonal shape, until they open as bright white flowers with a varying pink tinge. A branch with buds will have 20-50 stems, each with a small flower. Mountain Laurel does especially well in areas with acidic soil, so they have spread over all of South Mountain.
Areas where recent fire has removed some canopy are excellent places to look for new growth, and once the mountain laurel has had time to recover, it will make good use of all that sunlight from the open canopy. Big Pond Road is a state forest road that was subjected to a prescribed burn a few years ago, along with some more recent logging, and the mountain laurel along both sides is thriving. Let’s go for a ride, and learn about the state flower of Pennsylvania.
We’ll start in Shippensburg, may as well fill up at Sheetz before our trip up the mountain. From Sheetz, head NE on King St and stay to the right to keep on Walnut Bottom Rd/Rt 174. Travel about 5.5 miles out of town, across 81, past JLG and through Lees Crossroads. Make a right on Rehobeth Rd just after a small cemetery, and you’ll cross train tracks. After a one-lane bridge, keep to the right onto Furnace Hollow Rd. You’ll pass some houses and fields, you need to make a left onto Hogshead Rd – a barely marked dirt road just after a big fancy house.
Make a left here onto Hogshead Rd. This is the Big Pond area, at the bottom of Hairy Springs hollow. There are the remnants of a charcoal blast furnace here, similar to the furnaces at Pine Grove Furnace and Caledonia State Parks.
If you poke around the woods a bit, you can find a big pile of rocks that used to be the furnace, as well as an old head race along the stream. A rock wall parallel to the stream shows where the race ran to power the blower for the blast furnace. This was called Big Pond Furnace. We’ll come back to this area at the end of our tour. All the roads from here on out are gravel. They’re not jeep trails, but they are full of potholes, so watch your wheels.
When you turn onto Hogshead Rd, you’ll immediately wind around a private home. It seems like the road was built around the house, or perhaps to avoid the old furnace. Keep driving up the dirt road, around the house. You’ll start to see an increase in the Mountain Laurel as you follow the road right to head up the mountain. Not everything up here is state forest land, so stay on the main road to avoid trespassing.
After passing a recent timber cut, Buzzard Rocks Vista will be on your right. This flat parking area offers views of the Hairy Springs and Big Pond hollows, as well as the ridge line followed by Ridge Rd. Depending on the day and time, the views here can be breathtaking. If the weather agrees, you may be able to see across the Cumberland Valley to North Mountain.
If you’re going to venture out into the rocks, be aware of two specific dangers. I’ve seen plenty of snakes here, sunning themselves in the morning and especially after a storm clears. There are rattlesnakes in the area, and they are protected on South Mountain.
There are also hundreds (thousands?) of broken beer bottles and other trash in the rocks. I wear gloves if I’m jumping around here, as I’d hate to catch my fall with handfuls of glass. Definitely no sandals.
Leaving Buzzard Rocks, continue along Hogshead Rd and you’ll pass through another big timber cut, where both sides of the road are full of mountain laurel. The timber cutting here over the last few years has been hard to watch, but it sure has opened up the canopy, and allowed for spacious views of the landscape that used to be forest. I try to remind myself that fire would naturally do this every few decades, and no timber means no housing. It’s still hard to watch.
As you approach Ridge Rd, the road flattens out at the edge of the timber cut. You’ll come to an off-angle intersection with Ridge and Woodrow Roads. Make a sharp right turn on Ridge and head uphill. The Appalachian Trail travels parallel to the ridge on your left, and 3-mile trail runs parallel to the road on the right. You’ll pass a section of oaks and maples killed by the Gypsy Moth, as well as a section of forest recently burned intentionally by DCNR. There is mountain laurel throughout, along with oak, pine, sassafras and other heath forest species.
Ridge Rd doesn’t cross the AT here, but it is pretty close by. You’ll pass some recently-mulched areas to the left where there ground has been scraped down to sand. The AT runs along the other side of the this area, and through the Dead Woman’s Hollow parking lot on the left. A few hundred yards past that turn off, you’ll make a right turn on Big Pond Road and head downhill.
The hillsides here are open from recent logging, and much like along Hogshead the entire mid-story is covered in Mountain Laurel. Keeping a slow pace at the top of the road here will make sure you don’t miss any. There’s a DCNR campsite here called Hairy Springs, site 008. This is a very nice site, with room for 4+ tents, a nice flat cooking/work area, and parking along the road for 2-3 vehicles. There is a short hike in from the road. You can check booking and reserve the site here.
Timber cuts along both sides of Big Pond have opened up the forest canopy and allowed the Mountain Laurel here to thrive. A stop anywhere along Big Pond will have you surrounded by individual plants up to 12’ tall, as well as smaller plants along the road or where they have been cut back. I tried to capture the scale of the bloom this year, but you really have to see it for yourself.
Mountain Laurel has a peculiar system for dispersing pollen, it uses its stamens as catapults to cover landing insects in pollen from all angles. This mechanism is not well understood by science – I read a few papers from scientists trying to determine exactly how it keeps the stamens retracted without inhibiting the growth of the flower.
However it manages it, Mountain Laurel flowers are singular in the plant kingdom, and multitudinous on the mountain. Their pentagonal boxy shape, tiny stamen catapults, and color changes throughout their lifecycle mean there is always something new to appreciate.
The Big Pond area between Hairy Springs and Tobacco Patch Mountain is the best Mountain Laurel I’ve found this year. Anywhere you can see in the understory is dotted with bunches of white flowers, covering the mountainside in every direction. No wonder it’s the state flower of Pennsylvania.
After you pass Tobacco Patch Mountain Haul Rd on the left, you’ll descend past Reds Trail and Pole Bridge Trail. The creek will run alongside the road now, and a few potholed bridges will cross back and forth. While the creek runs along the right of the road, look for a strange stone feature.
This is the head race of the old Big Pond Furnace. Water was diverted from here along a ditch, to power the blower for the furnace.
Big Pond Furnace was a charcoal blast furnace in operation starting in 1836. It made cookware, boiler plates, and other iron goods until it was destroyed by fire in 1880.
The furnace was restored by the CCC in the 1930s, but has since been left to deteriorate. In 2011 the furnace collapsed, and around 2020 the last bridge on Big Pond Rd was closed.
Since the bridge is closed and covered with boulders, you’ll need to make a left onto Hudleber Ln, and head towards the sand plant. On the right, you’ll pass the remains of the holding pond from which the hollow takes its name. The road continues on to a tee at Sand Bank Road. Make a left here, then a right on Strohm Rd, and you’ll be back in Lees Crossroads in no time. Left on 174 to head back to Ship.
Thanks for coming!
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