A Beautiful Alabama Biodiversity Hotspot

Mary Kay and I were recently driving back from a family reunion in North Carolina towards home in Texas. I was navigating through lightly-traveled back roads to get across the South. Almost by accident, we stumbled upon Natural Bridge Park, near Natural Bridge, Alabama, a privately owned 140-acre nature preserve in western Winston County along US 278. We took a short two-mile hike in the canyon. It turned out to be one of the loveliest places we had seen in our travels through ten southern states.

The rugged canyon at Natural Bridge harbors some fabulous rock formations, cliffs, and shelter caves, the most iconic being the namesake feature, the "longest natural bridge east of the Mississippi". It is truly spectacular.

The canyon is clothed with old-growth beech-magnolia-oak-pine-hemlock forest and harbors many regional rarities. The proprietors, Donnie and Naomi Lowman, are very interested in documenting the biodiversity in the park and recently (5-7 April 2024) hosted an iNat bioblitz at the site. My contribution on our short visit in early July offers only a very small set of observations but those included a number of new-to-me plant species. I can see from the array of species documented thus far on iNaturalist that there is a great deal more to discover at this site. I highly recommend a stopover at this site for anyone traveling through the region. Admission is $10/adult. Here are links to more information about the site:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Bridge_Park
https://www.northalabama.org/listing/natural-bridge-park/269/

Posted on July 4, 2024 03:47 PM by