Hurricane Creek Park:

One Man’s Dream of a Perfect Place

By Daniel Byford

            On a clear day after heavy rains, Hurricane Creek Park in Vinemont is one of the best places in North Alabama to be sunning on a big rock, listening to a waterfall, and letting the natural world remind you of just how small your troubles can be. The average 9,000 visitors each year make this nature trail one of the busiest little parks in the State. The park’s builder, William E. “Buddy” Rodgers, says seventy percent of those visitors are returns. This includes me. Over the years, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been here. The first visit was more than 35 years ago when I came with a church youth group. So, in many ways, it always seems to me as though I’m going back to check out the old neighborhood.

How a dream was born

            Hurricane Creek Park was created almost single-handedly by Buddy Rodgers, who was born in Decatur on January 12, 1922. His father worked for the L&N Railroad, and Buddy grew up in Morgan County. He enlisted in the Air Force just before World War II and became a highly decorated fighter pilot (see  “Just Another Flyboy” feature below). After the war, Rodgers was stationed at Lowery AFB near Denver where he studied aerial photography. During a flight training exercise, he passed over a lovely wilderness area called Seven Falls, which he soon began to visit by car for long hikes and picnics. It was a place he never forgot.

            After decommission as a Captain in the Air Force, he returned to his native Alabama, settling at first in Hartselle. He and his cousin, Thurman Rodgers, started a bus line serving Hartselle and Decatur that averaged 17 round trips per day. But the end of the war spelled the decline of the bus circuit. Soon, returning soldiers were demanding their own wheels, and Detroit was beginning to build them, filling the pent-up demand caused by the hiatus of the war. Before long Rodgers could see the writing on the wall, so he sold the bus franchise to Decatur Transit.

            Rodgers missed flying so much that he joined the Air National Guard in 1946, commissioned as a 2^nd Lt. He then began working an aerial photography jaunt out of Birmingham. His mission was to take photos for the creation of North Alabama maps for the federal government. One day a flight took him over Lacon Mountain (part of the McKinley Mtn. Range) and there below was a strange sight. It looked like Seven Falls! For a moment he thought he was back in Colorado. He made a mental note to investigate the area as soon as he could.

            In 1948, on his first trip over a recently built leg of Highway 31 (it used to go around the mountain), Rodgers took the opportunity to explore the gorge on foot. Scrabbling down the steep embankment and expecting to find a shallow ditch of water at its foot, he was astounded by a sequestered brook – a creek really – quick, clear, and crenulated with stone. The swift water meandered through a dense cover of virgin hardwood and evergreen trees. On both sides, massive rock faces towered around the rim of the gorge, and everywhere there was a jumble of boulders, wildflowers, and shrubs.

            He kept walking until he came to a place where the gorge bottomed out (what became the picnic area). It was fairly level, and the little creek was widest at this point. Looking around he simply fell in love with the place. Right then and there, Rodgers decided to use proceeds from his bus line profits to buy the land and make a park like Seven Falls. He would eventually name the park after the creek, which he found labeled on an old soil survey map.

            Rodgers would later be told by a local geologist that the gorge was reformed (i.e., jumbled up) by one of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12. Those quakes in southern Missouri were possibly the worst the U.S. has known in modern times. The biggest shockwave caused chimneys to fall as far away as Cincinnati, 400 miles distant, and large tracts of the Mississippi River were rerouted. This shake-up is most likely the reason that early settlers in the area named the watercourse Hurricane Creek because it certainly looks like something tried to blow it away.

            After Rodgers did some checking on the land, he found that three different farmers owned parcels that he wanted. In fact, the three pieces met exactly where he planned to put his picnic area. It took some wrangling, but in 1961 he purchased a total of 120 acres, and it wasn’t long before he was hard at work making his dream come true.

Working like the devil for a little piece of heaven

            In the first year, Rodgers managed to build a primitive trail from the northern rim down to the picnic area. Railroad crossties were used for many of the stair steps. He employed an old pair of giant ice tongs to handle the crossties and a chainsaw to whack them to the appropriate length for embedding in the rocky slopes. Admission was 25 cents (It’s only $3 for adults now.).

            The next five years he “worked like the devil” to make the Park something to be proud of. Meanwhile, he got married and began to build a home on the hill beyond the southern rim of the gorge. Needless to say, he had his hands full. He had some help here and there, but Rodgers laid most every crosstie and stone step in the place. It’s an amazing feat, rather heroic in fact, to think that one man carved a park out of such rough terrain.

            Sadly, Rodgers’s marriage failed. Afterward, he devoted himself entirely to the park and for the next 40 years worked to make it a place to awe anyone who might contemplate a similar accomplishment. There’s “Satan’s Staircase,” which he tunneled through a puzzle of boulders, a swinging bridge he cabled across the creek next to the picnic area, and a mile-long hiking trail cut around the southern rim that takes your wind just walking it, never mind blazing it and maintaining it. To erect the swinging bridge, Rodgers bought 150 ft. of thick steel cable. He carried the cable into the gorge by himself, accomplishing this by dragging 8 or 10 feet of it at a time, like a giant inchworm making its way down to the picnic area. He used a come-along and chain hoist to stretch the cable over the creek, then used stout lumber for the walkway.

            Rodgers dynamited many places in order to make them passable, clearing the rubble by hand. During the early days of the construction, dynamite was easily had. In fact, the old Lacon Grocery sold it, keeping it stored in the meat case. Rodgers spent an entire summer clearing out what became “Twilite Tunnel” a bucketful at a time. He can tell you a story or two of that summer. Like finding baby bobcats laired in a dark cranny, wanting to take one home with him, then remembering that discretion was the better part of valor (and that the mama might be home soon). Rodgers spent another summer building the dam across the creek to create a waterfall at the picnic grounds. Every day he would shoulder a bag of concrete down the trail and lay stone.

            The park’s cable car system, a 1:25 scale model of the one on Lookout Mt., Tenn., was built by driving angle iron into the bedrock then fastening the rail to the irons. Rodgers dynamited the slope to make a feasible incline and laid the rail in 16 ft. sections. While driving one of the angle irons, the head of his hammer shattered and steel fragments exploded like shrapnel. One piece the size of a clipped fingernail lodged in his right eye. He now sports a glass one and tells the tale without bitterness. It’s one of life’s little ironies that this WWII vet, winner of several medals, came through the war unscathed only to lose an eye building an easy way out of the canyon.

A virtual walk in the park

            Hiking the park gets you as close to mother earth as you’ll get in this area, especially when you’re down in the belly of the gorge. The terrain can be difficult in places and is certainly not for the feeble; however, the athletic would find it a mildly strenuous cakewalk. But whether you’re a hiking enthusiast or just a couch potato trying to air out, you can bet that this place will give you a sense of renewal.

            If you take the shortest route, or “Low Trail,” it only takes a few minutes to get from the entrance down to the picnic grounds. Winding around this quick way, you soon walk over a waterfall and are facing down “Satan’s Staircase,” a path that corkscrews through a stone bottleneck. The trail is not for people with blown knees or bad backs. It does take some exertion; and there are places where you seem to be going down about a 50 degree incline. But most folks have no trouble with the Low Trail, and kids scramble down it like, well, kids.

            If you take the “High Trail,” you’ll get to enjoy a mile or so of moderately difficult walking past a natural rock bridge and plenty of overhanging rock cliffs. Whether you take the high road or the low road, you’ll be in the picnic area before you know it. Once there, you could just settle in and make a day of it. If your time is limited, you can leave the gorge directly from the pavilion. “Grandpa’s Trail” is for shorttimers and takes you quickly back to the exit. You’ll still see some nifty cliff faces and get a good workout. You can then climb the seldom-used stairs back to the welcome station; or, if you’re legs are already weary, you can hop aboard the only cable car system I know of in these parts. The two four-seat cable cars are handmade out of wood and reminiscent of a cross between Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Flintstones.

            So if you’ve only got a couple hours to spend, you can hike down to the picnic area, enjoy the waterfall, walk across the swinging bridge (where a sign reads, “Load limit two people”), and tramp out Grandpa’s Trail. I’ve done this short trip any number of times, and I’ve always arrived at my vehicle feeling like I’ve been in a time warp.

            The picnic area is a great place to spend quality time with friends or family. There’s plenty of room for more than one group and lots of places to catch some rays in the middle of the day. Kids, little and big, love the waterfall and the wading pool. The creek water is cold enough to take your breath if you’re brave enough to wade.

            All around the sides of the canyon are old-growth hardwood trees - oaks, big leaf maple, tulip poplar, and more. In the spring, wildflowers abound and birds carry on profusely (the park is on the State’s birdwatcher trail). On the bank opposite the pavilion, there’s a huge table of stone I call Lazy Rock, because atop it you can lie in the sun and feel a million miles from home. There’s the covered picnic table, which would accommodate a platoon, and a couple of smaller, free-standing tables near the water. There are, of course, garbage cans (though I pack mine out). The creek is cold enough to serve as a refrigerator. And there’s even an iron picnic grill for those industrious enough to lug some charcoal. However, there is no bathroom, so be prepared to commune with nature should she call.

            If you’ve got the time and legs for it, the real walking tour starts beyond the swinging bridge. Once you’ve clambered up the far side and regained your footing, you’re well on your way to “Twilite Tunnel.” This crevasse is a 50-60 ft. stretch of not quite pitch dark zigzagging through a gigantic slab of rock tilting vertically against its mother’s bosom. Even if you’re a bit claustrophobic like me, the tunnel doesn’t really feel closed in, and you can be through it in a few minutes. At one place it does narrow to about 18 inches, so if you’re hauling a wide load, you might want to go around (or go in and turn around when you’ve had enough). I’ve watched younguns spend an hour or more going back and forth through this tunnel. A recent rain will make this a Tide-with-bleach kind of experience.

            After the tunnel it’s on up to the rim of the canyon where the trail heads toward “Hidden Valley.” It’s a “long mile” or so of nature at its finest, with a gorgeous view of the woods and creek as you wind upward toward the top of the ridge. There are plenty of places to catch your breath along the way (Of course, most athletic hikers could jog most of this trail, but the rest of us have to stop occasionally.). One of the first places of interest is the “Bottle Neck,” where a sign reads, “If shaped like a cork, go around.” But after that it’s clear sailing around the southern rim, where long stretches of overhang jut just above the trail. During the wet seasons, rivulets and tiny waterfalls shoot down the hillsides over stony escarpments. You can, in fact, be in places around the rim where you are beneath the overhang and behind a waterfall.

            The view of the creek bed below and Hidden Valley to the south are lovely and seem untouched by human hands. There’s usually a nice breeze up on the rim, and in the spring and early summer the air is full of the smell of wildflowers and flowering trees. If by now you are huffing and puffing, there are plenty of cool, rock-shaded places to sit. One particular harbor looks carved out (by nature most likely) and could have been home to some primitive indigenous family. There are old signs of smoke, so at least someone has slept here a few times.

            The trail winds on around until you begin the descent back to the creek. You can hike a jag back to the picnic area or more directly toward the exit, crossing a footpad over the creek, which usually is never deep and always babbling. At one point on the return, you’ll come to “Kissing Rock.” Brings back some memories, that one does. And, now that I think of it, the entire place is laced with a healthy touch of the romantic. Perhaps because, at least to me, it seems something out of a storybook.

Three cheers for Buddy Rodgers

            As the 21^st century rolled in, Rodgers began thinking in earnest of retirement. In ’01, he made overtures to donate the land to the State’s Forever Wild Program, which was initiated during the term of Governor Fob James, as part of the State Lands Division (A percentage of money from oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico was set aside to preserve natural habitats.). However, not just the State was interested; Cullman Parks and Recreation also expressed a desire to obtain the park. On March 24, an agreement was reached whereby, on Rodgers’s retirement, the State would own the park and Cullman act as custodian, leasing the park for the next 30 years.

            Buddy Rodgers finally retired in 2003 and now lives in Hartselle. The State took possession and Cullman became the new caretaker. The park was promptly renamed The Willam “Buddy” Rodgers Natural Area in his honor and a monument stands near the entrance. Now, several people are involved in managing and maintaining the creation of a single dedicated and inspired individual. Several things have changed; and there’s a newer look and feel to the place. There are rock climbing activities, and you can even primitive camp in the park now, something that Rodgers didn’t allow. But overall the same high standards are being upheld.

            Buddy’s health doesn’t permit him to walk those trails anymore as he did for so many decades. But I’m sure there are times when he still dreams of Twilite Tunnel or Hidden Valley; of humping concrete sacks, or pounding angle iron, or sawing up trees. And he can rest assured that Forever Wild will forever make this place a living monument to one man’s dream of a perfect place.

For more on the park, contact info, activities, etc., visit:

http://www.cullmanrecreation.org/hurricanecreekpark.htm