I fled to the mountains, where the air is much cooler!
My RVing friend Sarah told me about this park, but she didn't mention it was 7 miles off the highway on a dirt road!
The six beehive-shaped historic charcoal ovens for which the park is known can be seen as you get near.
But this park is not just about the ovens...it has a beautiful campground and several hiking trails.
And it was cool. So I decided to stay for 3 days.
One of the trails leads from the campground to the famous ovens. I think the cement trough may have been a log flume used in getting the wood to the ovens.
View from the trail.
A shady lane...
The green area surrounds Willow Creek that runs through there.
Willow Creek
More of that trail.
Wildflowers are blooming all around, especially near the creek.
The ovens come into view.
Silver was discovered in the area in 1872 leading to several mining claims and smelters being built (furnaces for melting ores) in 1875. That created the need for charcoal. The Ward Charcoal Ovens operated from 1876 through 1879.
This map shows all the trails in the park. Thistle and I hiked all of them except the light blue one which is more for ATVs.
The ovens are 30-feet high and 27-feet in diameter at the base. The walls are 20-inches thick with 3 rows of vents near the bottom. The ovens were made from rock quarried nearby. The rock is called tertiary volcanic and quartz latte tuff.
Each oven held approximately 35 cords of wood and produced 1,750 bushels of charcoal. Wood was cut into 6 foot lengths and stacked inside the ovens vertically using the lower door.
The wood was then loaded up a ramp and through the upper door, which looks like a window. The loaded oven was ignited, and the doors sealed with a metal door. The beehive shape reflected back into the center of the oven reducing heat loss.
The ramp and platform used to reach the upper door burned to the ground in 1879.
The vents were used to adjust the air drafts to suffocate the fire just enough to produce charcoal. Burners gauged the charcoaling process by the color of the smoke.
When the charcoaling was completed, all the air vents were closed and the fire died out. When cool, the oven was emptied through the door at the bottom. The charcoal was loaded into bushel-size burlap sacks.
Peek-a-boo...the camphost paid a visit.
Our morning hike yielded a variety of wildflowers down by Willow Creek. I believe these are Asters.
Wild Irises
Most of them I don't know.
The morning sun shining through this Iris reveals the silhouette of a bug inside.
Views from the trail.
Crossing Willow Creek
Beyond the ovens down this trail are two Kilns built for making lime for mortar used in construction of the charcoal ovens.
The pile of stones is the side of one of the lime kilns. Lime mortar was used as a bonding agent between the stones at the ovens.
The process started by crushing limestone and baking it in this furnace to produce a pure form of lime. This lime was mixed with sand from crushed volcanic tuff and water to create the mortar. The two kilns were used for several years during the mid 1870s.
Master stone craftsmen from Italy used the mortar to build the charcoal ovens, as depicted in this mural I saw on a visit to Ely, 18 miles from the park. I'll do a separate blog about that day.
From the kilns we followed the Overlook Loop Trail to Rocky Point. More wildflowers.
Rocky Point is up there.
View from the trail.
View from Rocky Point.
More views.
The trunk of a pinyon pine.
My nice pull-through site. This park is a well-kept secret.
