"Rough and Ready Botanical Area, Highway 199, southwest Oregon."

Rough and Ready Botanical Area
The Rough and Ready Botanical Area has inspired nick-names such as the Red Rock Rain Forest by some and Gobi Desert by others, each name describing the barren landscape in a place that gets about 60 inches of rain every year. Here, amid forest lands of dense pine and fir forest, is a place with a plant community you would expect to find in the high desert of eastern Oregon.

The stunted growth of these plants is the result of the soil these plants grow on all of which comes from the hills in the distance, part of the largest serpentine rock outcrop in the nation. Serpentine soil has a high content of magnesium but very little calcium. Plants substitute the magnesium for calcium in molecules that regulate plant growth. The result is a reduction in the rate that plants can grow and this results in small stunted trees that can be hundreds of years old but no taller than 20-30 feet.

The mountains seen in the distance behind the Rough and Ready Botanical Area are part of a large outcrop of serpentine rock, one of the largest exposures of this type of rock in the nation. They may not look unusual but these rocks are a tribute to the tremendous forces found where the continent of America collides with the Pacific Ocean plate. Rocks that were once miles below the surface of the earth are uplifted to become the tops of mountains where they are eroded away and replaced by rocks that come from a place that was even deeper. Serpentine is actually rock that has been uplifted from the earth's mantle that is usually found about three to four miles beneath the ocean crust.

This illustration shows the mantle rock of the distant hills (bottom) in the approximate position where they once sat three to four miles below the ocean crust. The red at the bottom of the illustration is mantle rock. The orange is the lower part of the ocean crust and the dark green is the top of the crust. The ocean is drawn in blue at the top. What wasn't illustrated is about 2,000 to 3,000 feet of sedimentary rock that probably sat on the top of the ocean. It is safe to say that the hills in the distance once sat about 15,000 to 20,000 feet below the surface of the earth.

Some people may now have the impression that there was once a massive mountain about 20,000 feet high where these hills are now seen but in reality it is unlikely that the mountains in this region were ever much taller than what you see today. Uplift happens at a very slow pace and mountains are eroded down about as fast as they are uplifted. The process of uplift continues today at a rate of about 3-5 millimeters a year and forces of erosion transport and deposit sediments in places like Rough and Ready Botanical Area, a plant community growing on the rocky debris carried from the hills you see in the distance.

Directions

From Cave Junction, follow Highway 199 south for about five miles. The road will go past a lumber mill where it widens into a four lane highway. The turnoff into the parking area is on the right just before the bridge where the road narrows to a two lane highway. The drive into the parking area is just after mile marker 34.

The highlighted "trail" is a suggested walking route following existing roads. The total distance from the highway, around the loop and back again is under a mile on relatively level terrain. The route is rocky. Watch your step.

Wildflowers

The best time to see wildflowers at the Rough and Ready Botanical Area is in early May through early June. Wildflower programs and classes are offered in the spring by local community groups such as the Siskiyou Field Institute and Native Plant Society.