Jami Duvall, M. A.
2015
From notes on the trail of Mary Ingles:
When Mary Ingles arrived there were at least 50 acres of swamp. "The source of Big Bone Creek is a marshy basin some fifty acres in extent, rimmed with gently-sloping hills, and freely pitted with copious springs of a water strongly sulphurous in taste, with a suggestion of salt. The odor is so powerful as to be all-pervading, a quarter of a mile away, and to be readily detected at twice that distance. This collection of springs constitutes Big Bone Lick, probably the most famous of the many similar licks in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois.
In 1900 there were still large bogs around the springs. Gum Branch flows from the north into Big Bone Creek, so there is no "cross over". Once they were anywhere on Gum Branch they would have headed north and west until they came to the river.
Gum Springs, which was among the biggest of the original springs. We can assume that Mary Ingles may have travelled anywhere in the general area in the month or so before she left the Springs, so she may have "visited" the springs at Mud Lick, which is at the junction of Big Bone and Mud Lick Creeks. So far as the trail itself I think anything in a northern direction makes more sense than to the south and west. I would assume they went north along the old Buffalo trace until they found a good place to leave that public trail and reach the river.
That area probably included all of what is now the center of the park. The camps the Indians made were probably on higher ground, perhaps in the area where the visitor's center now is. Much of the area in the summer was probably similar to terrain along Big Bone creek; almost a jungle, as described by Thwaites:
"At an ordinary stage in the Ohio, the Big Bone cannot be ascended in a skiff for more than half a mile; now, upon the backset, we are able to proceed for two miles, leaving but another two miles of walking to the Lick itself. The creek curves gracefully around the bases of the sugar-loaf hills of the interior. Under the swaying arch of willows, and of ragged, sprawling sycamores, their bark all patched with green and gray and buff and white, we have charming vistas – the quiet water, thick grown with aquatic plants; the winding banks, bearing green-dragons and many another flower loving damp shade; frequent rocky palisades, oozing with springs; and great blue herons, stretching their long necks in wonder, and then setting off with a stately flight which reminds one of the cranes on Japanese ware. Through the dense fringe of vegetation, we have occasional glimpses of the hillside farms – their sloping fields sprinkled with stones, their often barren pastures, numerous abandoned tracts overgrown with weeds, and blue-grass lush in the meadows. Along the edges of the Creek, and in little pocket bottoms, the varied vegetation has sub-tropical luxuriance, and in this now close, warm air, there is a rank smell suggestive of malaria."
Thwaites. Big Bone Lick and Rabbit Hash in 1894.
