The Needles, which rise as silhouetted rock pinnacles in this sunrise photo are a group of mountain peaks adjacent to Topock Gorge, and the Colorado River on the northwestern edge of the Mohave Mountains. They range in height from 1207 to 1600 feet. They are reflected in the foreground by the water of Topock Marsh, created with the establishment of Lake Havasu, a dammed section of the Colorado River. As part of the Havasu National Wildlife Refuge, Topock Marsh serves as critical habitat for migratory waterfowl, songbirds, fish, and other wildlife (including my first sighting that morning of a Bobcat in the wild). Topock Marsh and Lake Havasu form the border of California and Arizona and offer a beautiful oasis of life in the harsh Mojave and Sonoran deserts.
As one who has deep family roots in Indiana, but hasn’t really lived there until a couple of years ago, Madison is everything an outsider might expect to find in small town America. But Madison is closer to a rarity, than the rule these days. Sadly, in my travels through Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, I see a lot of the history of small town America disappearing rapidly, whether its an old barn collapsing in a farm field, or a once beautiful mansion left to rot on a forgotten side street. Fortunately, Madison has managed to protect and embrace its history, as well as the natural beauty that surrounds it. This offers visitors a lot to see and explore in Jefferson County. Being relatively close to where I live, I have been drawn back numerous times, and there is still plenty left to see.
Madison Historic District
With more than 130 blocks of historic buildings, Madison boasts one of the largest historic districts of any city in the United States. Buildings within its historic downtown cover every era of its history, from its founding in 1809, through 1939. Its architecture includes shotgun houses, Federal style and Greek Revival mansions, and various industrial buildings and commercial storefronts along Main Street.
What impressed me most, was just how large the historic district really is. In many small towns you drive through, you are lucky to see anything beyond the main street through town. But in Madison, you can go 4-5 streets on either side easily and find beautifully kept buildings. And for those who are really into history, you can spend several hours, or even longer walking to all the different sections of it.
Clifty Falls State Park is a 570 acre nature park that resides on the Northwest side of Madison Indiana. Created in 1920 from land donated by the people of Madison, the park is a gem, and I say that as someone who has closest to many of America’s great national parks. I have visited the park on several different occasions, from spring through fall. In part, as photographer, this was to get my bearings, particularly with how the waterfalls in the park behave at different times of year. I more use to falls that fairly predictable throughout the year, regardless of the rail fall. Of course it helps that most of the falls I have encountered are in mountains where they are fed continuously from higher elevation run off, which is relative gradual. Where as in Indiana, most of what seems to feed rivers, and indeed falls here is storm run off, and when it storms the falls are bursting at the seams, and when its not raining for extended stretches during the summer, water is nowhere to be seen. So I have spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out the right time to come to the park, among a variety of other considerations, including when other aspects of the park at their best, like leaf out in spring, and the best weekends to come for fall color. Through in the mix, a near historic summer drought in 2019, and Covid in 2020, visiting the park and how it changes with the seasons has been an interesting experience.
I should note that the reasons to come to Clifty, are not just the waterfalls, because frankly they aren’t always predictable. Fortunately there is nature in general to enjoy, wildflowers that change over the course of the spring and summer, wildlife, a historic train tunnel (filled in the winter with bats), and numerous trails that run along the tops and bottoms of several gorges that run from north to south.
Railroads and more
Historically, Madison has served as both a crossroads and a jumping off point from other parts of the Ohio River. Its from the latter where my relatives first entered Indiana prior to the Civil War. And its history as a river town and a railroad town are evident on the landscape. This is particularly true of the railroad. As noted previously in the section on Clifty, numerous pathways were considered to bring the railroad through Madison, including an abandoned attempt using tunnels within the park, and another pathway in a gorge just east of the park. This second pathway, which has been called as the steepest grade of wheeled railroad in the United States, is no longer a functioning line, but remains a track open to the public that still has sections of track along it. What I found remarkable about this hike, was not only the beauty of the area, but just how quickly an unmaintained track, particularly one with a steep grade, will return to nature if its not maintained. Whether its vegetative overgrowth, or deeply eroded sections of track, both are completely understandable in a climate that gets more than 40 inches of rain a year.
For more information google the Madison Rail Trail, and the Heritage Trail (they share the same trail head parking lot.)
So if you find yourself in the southwest part of Indiana, and want to get outdoors to explore nature or some of the history of the state, consider a drive to Madison and Clifty Falls State Park.
As anyone who knows me can attest, one of the photographic subjects I find most fascinating is rock art. Such art offers a window into the lives and minds of people who lived hundreds and in most cases thousands of years ago. Without a common language or reference, such art often leaves us with more questions than answers, while at the same time reminding us of our connection to the people who created them. The fascinating aspect of the Sahara cave paintings and petroglyphs is that they give us an extra element of detail about the world of their creators that you generally don’t get in the American Southwest, and other places. We know this, because of the animals and human activities they drew on walls thousands of years ago, are in most cases completely incompatible with the Sahara we see today. They even show us through the animals depicted at different times, how life in the Sahara was changing, so much so that the various dating periods for the rock art in this area have been defined by the animals displayed. The earliest rock art shows animals that are either completely extinct or which haven’t lived near the Sahara for thousands of years. While more recent rock art displays animals like horses and cattle that were able to live in the Sahara in more recent times, but no longer. And finally, the last prehistoric examples, show animals like the camel which are recent transplants from Arabia, that are among the only large animals that can withstand the Sahara as it currently is.
While some may be skeptical about the ability of such art to give us an accurate picture, other research techniques have since proven, from the study of ocean cores off the West coast of Africa to the finding of freshwater fossils, and lake bed soils in the middle of the Sahara desert, that the Sahara has undergone numerous and repeated climatic changes over at least the last 2 million years. These cycles have shifted it from a bone-dry desert to a lush green landscape sporting some of the biggest lakes in Africa. And the transition from wet to dry has been at times dramatic even on the scale of a single human lifetime. What the prehistoric rock art shows us, is merely the latest wet to dry cycle in a much longer story about climate.
Here are a few of the places where the Sahara’s dramatic and recent changes have been captured.
Tassili n’Ajjer (Find It) – is a large plateau in south-east Algeria famous for its cave paintings. Not surprisingly the area remains one of the few places in the Sahara where vegetation and animal life retain a foothold. This is in part due to its altitude and the water holding properties of the soil and rock that make up the plateau. Among the 15,000 carvings found in the area, are depictions of elephants, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, crocodiles, antelope, wild sheep, cattle herding, and horse-drawn chariots. The oldest rock art in the area has been dated to 10,000 B.C.
Because of the importance and abundance of prehistoric rock art in this area, it was designated a national park in 1972.
Acacus Mountains (Find It) – In these mountains located on the border of southern Libya and Algeria are depictions of giraffes, elephants, ostriches, camels, and horses.
Ennedi Mountains (Find It) – much of the rock art in this area is of a more recent variety, and displays animals that have lived in the Sahara during historic times, such as camels. Probably the best example is the cave art of Manda Guéli.
Sabu-Jaddi (Find It) – this rock art site, located in today’s Sudan, depicts life in ancient Nubia and features both domestic and wild animals. Animals depicted that are extinct in the Sahara include hippopotamus, crocodiles, giraffe, leopards, and antelope.
Cave of Swimmers (Find It), is a cave in southwestern Egypt, named after what has been interpreted as to be rock art of humans swimming. Other drawings in the cave display giraffe and hippopotamus. The rock art is believed to be from around 10,000 B.C.
It has been speculated that it was this dramatic and sudden shift in climate that drove many people who lived in the Sahara to the Nile Valley, and to later form the civilization of Ancient Egypt. With its predictable water supply from the mountains of Ethiopia, the Nile River, and the fertile soils that surround it offered one of the few remaining refuges within the Sahara’s inhospitable vastness.
