Trail Marker Trees

Have you ever heard of a trail-marker tree? Native American guides once bent young saplings and staked them to the ground, training them to grow in a distinctive bent shape that pointed travelers toward water, a safe river crossing, or a trail junction. Several of these living markers have been identified near Fort Mitchell, their trunks still carrying the bend their shapers gave them more than a century ago. They’re a quiet, living reminder of how the Creek Nation moved through and read this landscape long before the fort was ever built.