In October 1996, the Daniel Boone National Forest brought a team of paleoecologists, Dr. Paul A. Delcourt and Dr. Hazel R. Delcourt of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to Cliff Palace Pond to study the history of fire and its effects on the forest. Their goal was to determine the long-term changes the forest had undergone as a result of changes in climate, forest disturbance regimes, and prehistoric human activities.

From a little over five feet of organic pond sediments, Cliff Palace Pond produced a nearly 10,000 year-long pollen record. This record clearly documents the influence prehistoric peoples had on the forest through their use of fire. The Cliff Palace Pond story challenges forever our view of the "virgin" forest primeval.

"Is that it? Is that all there is to it?" After you've traveled deep into the woods and hiked up the steep trail to Keener Point Knob, that's likely to be your first thought as you stand at the edge of Cliff Palace Pond. And yet, contained within this small pond and the nearby sandstone rockshelters is the record of nearly 10,000 years of environmental and human history.

Keener Point Knob is an isolated, flat-lying plateau remnant located in northeastern Jackson County. This part of Eastern Kentucky is a region of narrow ridges and steep cliffs. The ridges and cliffs are made of sandstone, but their lower slopes are underlain by shales and limestones. Small tributaries of Station Camp Creek, itself a tributary to the Kentucky River, flank the Knob. They flow in narrow valleys far below the ridge crest.

The tiny pond is nestled within a small depression near the Knob's western edge. It sits in a young, mainly hardwood forest and is surrounded by a mat of sphagnum moss. A sparse thicket of buttonbush shrubs grows throughout its shallow basin. It looks unkempt and wild.

They located their gardens on hillslopes and on ridgetops like Keener Point Knob for several reasons. Fires burned more intensely in these places than on the wet floodplains, thus reducing the forest leaf litter and weedy plants to a nutrient-rich ash. This resulted in soil that was loose and free of weeds; a soil that could be worked easily with a digging stick. Early frosts and shading also were not a problem for hillside gardens, as they would have been for gardens planted along creeks. South-facing hillslopes were warmer than the valley bottoms and received more sunlight for longer periods of time each day. Erosion of slopes was not a problem, because the forest soil was not intensively disturbed in these garden plots.

Fire in the hands of native peoples enhanced habitat diversity. It turned the forest into a fine-grained patchwork of vegetation. Garden patches were similar in size to forest openings created by windstorms that blew down one to several large old trees. Native people's clearing and abandonment of gardens also mimicked the natural pattern of forest regrowth in light gaps caused by tree falls. Burning patches of the understory opened up the forest and increased the rate at which forest nutrients were returned to the soil. Grasses, shrubs, and non-woody plants tended to grow more densely and vigorously in these places. This created ideal habitats for forest-edge wildlife, promoting an increase in game animals.

• A Rare and Special Place
• Cliff Palace, Slope, Bluff, and Ridge
• Pollen, Charcoal, and Points
• A Cattail Marsh in the Forest
• The Early Pond and Its People
• A Major Forest Fire
• Prehistoric Gardeners and Their Forest
• New Settlers and the Forest
• People, Today's Forest, and Fire
• Other Booklets in this Series