Teena Ligman, public affairs specialist with the Hoosier National Forest, stands in the depression that may be one of the locations that bison once crossed the French LIck Creek just south of French Lick not far from the road known as Buffalo Trace Loop. Staff photo by Carol Kugler
Before people dominated Indiana’s landscape, bison moved through the state, migrating to and from the Great Plains. Often those bison trails were used by traveling Indians and settlers coming into the state. They later formed some of the roads that people still use.
A group of interested Hoosiers has begun searching for the remnants of Indiana’s oldest trail, known as the Buffalo Trace. It was the main trail worn into the land by herds of bison as well as other animals. The Trace — another word for trail — came up through Kentucky, crossed Indiana and passed into Illinois and was used by bison herds that at times numbered in the thousands.
Recently, 22 people — county surveyors, former surveyors, archeologists, research scientists, U.S. Forest Service workers and others — spent a day in French Lick talking about the Buffalo Trace and walking along a creek in an area south of the town where the Trace may have been. The group shared information they have discovered about the Buffalo Trace, showing maps from the early 1800s that had a road that followed the old bison trail across southern Indiana, with smaller trails that led to the salt licks and springs that were near where French Lick now stands.
The group first met in December after Angie Doyle, heritage program manager and tribal liaison with the Hoosier National Forest, wrote an article that appeared in The Times-Mail. After the article was published, she was inundated with phone calls and emails from people who were interested or who knew where a segment of the Buffalo Trace was located.
“I’ve been trying to identify segments of the Trace for many years,” Doyle said. “I thought, I’m going to put all of these people together and introduce them to each other.” Her first action was to set up an email group to allow them to all correspond.
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