40th Anniversary Spotlight: How the Ghost River Trail Came to Be - by Larry J. Smith

Once upon a time in 1991, two young men, Keith Kirkland and George Wenzler, decided they wanted to see what the Wolf River looked like between Yager Rd. and Bateman Rd.  

The Wolf River Conservancy had been around for a few years and had been promoting the Wolf River paddle between Bateman Rd. and Highway 57 in Moscow, to everyone’s delight. So, it was a natural thought to look upriver from Bateman. However, what lay upstream of Bateman Road had the reputation of getting people lost and not found until the next day or longer. Plato Touliatos and his wife are one notable pair once lost in the swamps upstream of Bateman, spending an uncomfortable night in the wilderness.  

Keith Kirkland and George Wenzler set out to explore this area and try to discover a water trail from the Yager Rd. bridge near LaGrange to the Bateman Rd. access. That trip didn’t go well; it got dark and they were nowhere near the end. So, they did the smart thing and found dry land to the north, then walked out at dark. The plan was to come back another day to retrieve their boats from the north side of the Wolf River. Later on, they learned they had made it about halfway through the run.

George and Keith were friends of mine, and it was not long before I heard the story of their trip. I could not wait to get back on the Wolf and try the trip again with them. Within a few weeks, we had planned another trip. It was fall and the water was low, so we figured wherever we found good water through the swamp should be a good path year-round. We loaded up our canoes with sleeping gear and food for an overnighter, if it came to that, as well as lots of surveying flagging to flag as we went and to know if we had passed that way before.  

When we got to the start of the swamp, we took a compass bearing where most of the water seemed to be flowing. It was deceptive, because it looked like a good channel straight ahead but a closer look showed that a large volume of water moved off to the left or south side of the channel.  So south is where we went!   The trend was south for a fair distance before it finally turned west. We knew it had to go west at some point, if we were going to get home that day, and once on a westward trajectory, we started to feel a lot better.  Every couple of hundred feet we would put up flagging and check our compass bearing. Slowly the swamp opened a bit and then finally became i a much more open area which we called the “lake section.”  This part of the Wolf really reminded me of the lakes at Reelfoot and Wappanocca.  

At this point, we knew we had a good trail route and felt much more at ease. Soon, we saw a floating house and some duck blinds from the Fayette County Rod and Gun Club.  Also, at this point we noticed some visible current.  The current quickly took us into a small maze of braided runs, so we just picked one and took off downstream.  Before long we came out into the large marsh area just above Bateman Bridge.  We had at last found a water trail through the wilderness between Yager and Bateman bridges!

This beloved trail is now known as the Ghost River section of the Wolf River.  Next month, find out how it got that name and how its discovery shaped the conservation mission of the Wolf River Conservancy!