The Experimental Forest Is Real Piney Woods

The Stephen F. Austin Experimental Forest keeps the Piney Woods from becoming just a postcard phrase. Eight miles southwest of Nacogdoches, the 2,560-acre tract sits with the Angelina River and Alazan Wildlife Management Area along its south and east edges.

Much of the forest is older bottomland hardwood: about 1,800 acres. The rest is southern pine and mixed pine-hardwood forest. The USDA Forest Service brought the tract into the National Forest System in 1945. Forest Service staff in Nacogdoches still use it for wildlife and timber research, so the woods have a real work life.

The trails give that research forest a human pace. Jack Creek, a cool spring-fed stream, anchors a 0.8-mile paved loop through mature mixed forest. The full system has 4.8 kilometers of trail, picnic and parking areas, signs, bridges over Jack Creek, bird observation space, fountains, and restrooms. It is not a neat campus lawn. It is a working East Texas forest with a footpath through it. That mix is the local color: river bottom, research woods, and public trail in the same county landscape.