Category: St. Clair Outdoors

A whole new kind
of racing comes to
St. Clair County

Story by Graham Hadley
Photos by Michael Callahan
and Graham Hadley
Video by Graham Hadley

From private parties to massively popular competition racing, Beaver Creek Offroad Park is St. Clair County’s place for fun in the sun with mud.

When Allison Morgan and her husband, Jason, inherited St. Clair farmland near Vincent that has been in the family since 1823, they knew there was one thing they did not want to do with it — farm.

She is a teacher, and he is an engineer, and while they loved the outdoors and spending their time with their kids outside, they had no desire to plant crops and till the soil.

“I grew up learning to work in the fields, but we don’t have time to do that. We had a garden for awhile, but before you knew it, it was overgrown,” Allison said.

Then one day, while driving to Walmart, like lightning, an idea struck: The property, with an abundance of wet springs and good terrain, would make the perfect outdoor park, complete with a massive serpentine competition ORV mud track with steep banks, a long straightaway and deep mud holes.

“It was an idea that we, me and my husband, had on the way to buy groceries. I was looking online, and all our friends from Pell City were going all over the place to drive in the mud,” she said.

Beaver Creek Offroad Park was born, and mud racing had officially come to St. Clair County.

“We had come up with something that provided family time where we could have fun, and we wanted the public to come out and enjoy the outdoors the way I did growing up. This was a good fit for us,” she said.

The project started out modestly, with just a simple muddy area for riders, but has steadily grown since then.

“The first time we opened, it was just basically a mud hole, but we had 800 to 900 people out here.

“Then we posted on Facebook just to see if people would be interested in having something like this track. We ended up with 40 people on our doorstep who wanted the park. The racers just showed up at 9 at night and asked if we would build them a place to race,” Allison said. “We did not know what they were talking about, so we researched online.”

From the word “go”, the park was a success — and since both Allison and Jason were new to the sport of mud racing, there was an admittedly steep learning curve.

“We started on the track in August and worked through September and October 2013. Then the racers showed up, and we had our first race in April 2014,” Allison said. “We had an excellent turnout. We were kind of shell-shocked by the number of people who came out. We were understaffed; we had no clue what was coming.

“Since that day, we have learned a tremendous amount about running these kinds of events and this sport.”

On average, they can easily see 800 people at the park in a single weekend, with bigger events drawing even more.

Those big events can include truck racing, ATVs, side-by-sides, sometimes combined with a music fest where they play everything from country to hip-hop. The music events are taking on a life of their own, with an emerging style of music that actually combines those two disparate music styles becoming especially popular with the mud-racing crowd.

Allison says the park is making money, but they are not pocketing the profits. She has put her teaching career on hold to run the park, while Jason works as a plastics engineer supporting the family. The extra money the park earns goes into expanding the park and building on the already solid business foundation.

“It is a work in progress. I don’t know if we will ever be finished in our eyes. We are always working on something,” Allison said.

“I put my dreams as a teacher on hold for this, but it has been a success. We are still in the process where we are growing and expanding, so every dime we make at the park is turned around and invested in the park. I believe 100 percent it will be a financial success, but we are not calling it that yet because we are still investing in making the park the best it can be.”

Family Fun

A key to that success is the family-inclusive nature of the park, with a focus on providing a place where people of all ages can experience the outdoors. Allison and Jason want a place where they can have fun with their children and where other families can do the same.

“Family time is important. It’s kind of our motto: This is a family place. We want to be able to bring our kids out there,” Allison said.

“It took awhile for people to realize our dedication to the family environment. We have been fortunate that we have not really had any problems. The fans respect what we are trying to do. The people show up, respect our rules — they have an amazing time. It is turning into a great thing.”

Race Day

That family atmosphere was pervasive at one recent mud-racing event April 19. Everywhere you looked, people were out riding around the park with their kids, cooking out with their families and watching as the specialized trucks raced against the clock and each other through the track, several areas of which were full of many feet of water thanks to days of heavy rain.

For the Morgans, they were hard at work as a family supervising everything — a busy job for Allison, who was running the concessions, and Jason, who was down in the pit area keeping the drivers and their crews organized.

And many of those teams were family and friends themselves, often racing against each other in different trucks.

Eddie Blevins from Shelby, Ala., said he just started racing last year.

Pointing to the stands, he said, “I used to be up there watching. Now I have not missed a race here.”

With pit support from his son Cale, Blevins had a solid showing with his truck Never Satisfied — “We did pretty well, won two and lost one” of the races.

At a previous race, they had won almost $1,000. For Blevins, that’s a win-win situation however you look at it. “You get paid to get out here and do something you love,” he said.

The winnings from those races can add up quickly — something that is important in a sport where the price of vehicles can hit the $40,000 range or more for the higher-end trucks.

But many drivers, like Blevins, are fielding much more affordable rides.

One young man who had just turned 15 was racing that day — and winning — in a truck he and his friends, with help from his father and family, had built literally out of spare parts for almost nothing.

David Matzke pointed proudly to his son Austin, saying, “He won his first race today. He turned 15 Friday. We probably have $1,000 in that truck.”

Austin grew up watching his Dad drag race. “He always wanted to race, so I taught him mechanics. We built this truck in two weeks.”

David said he is a huge fan of the mud racing scene and the family-friendly environment Allison and Jason are fostering at Beaver Creek.

“I love to see the kids out here doing this. Out of everything they could be out doing, this is a good thing to do,” he said.

Travis Perkins from Columbiana, who is also in his second year of mud racing, and Brian Johnson said the Beaver Creek track fills out the area perfectly. With two other regional tracks, Beaver Creek makes three. That lets them rotate venues every week or so without having to travel all over the Southeast to keep a regular racing schedule.

“We love it here. Allison and Jason Morgan, they are good people. If it was not for them, we would not be out here,” Johnson said.

While mud racing may be the big draw, with music fests a close second, the 150-acre park also has paths for ATVs and other off-road and off-highway vehicles, room for camping and other outdoor activities.

Allison says they are looking at finding a way to also eventually add rock climbing to the park. That’s not the people clambering up cliffs with ropes kind of climbing, that’s the specialized off-road vehicle clambering up piles of boulders kind of climbing.

“We are improving; we are expanding; we are making things out here that we need,” Allison said.

“I think this year is going to be great.”

The track is located at 139 Beavers Lane, just off U.S. 231 south of the Logan Martin Dam road
between Pell City and Vincent.
You can find it online @ beavercreekoffroad.com
and follow it on Facebook.

Mud Racing

76 photos

Big Canoe Creek & Chandler Mountain Orchard

Story by Carol Pappas
Submitted Photos

It’s more than just a job for Wendy Jackson, executive director of the Freshwater Land Trust. When a piece of land, a creek or a stream can be preserved, it’s about the future.

It’s about her grandchildren and their grandchildren. It’s about partnerships, where public and private entities come together to preserve the past for the future. And it’s about sharing those protected treasures for generations to come.

Few know that better than Doug Morrison, who heads up the Friends of Big Canoe Creek in Springville. Since 2009, he and his group have been working with Freshwater Land Trust, St. Clair County Commission and City of Springville to protect this pristine area as a nature preserve in the state’s Forever Wild program.

Atop Chandler Mountain, Jerry and Janice Lanning know the value of the work, too. Their acreage is being preserved as an orchard growing a blight-resistant American Chestnut Tree, one of only two such orchards in Alabama and the state’s base of operations.

“It looks like a go,” Jackson said of the Big Canoe Creek Nature Preserve, which is nearing an expected real estate closing in coming months. Forever Wild, a state program that buys land to protect and preserve it, has made an offer, and the landowner has accepted.

“Mayor (William “Butch”) Isley and the City Council of Springville, the St. Clair County Commission and the Friends of Big Canoe Creek really stepped up to the plate and did what others around the state have been trying to do,” Jackson said. Their success will mean 327 acres of land fronting Big Canoe Creek near Homestead Hollow can be preserved for the future and shared for the public to enjoy.

“We are so excited. It really is testament to a lot of leadership in St. Clair County. A lot of other counties haven’t seen this success,” she said. In addition to the obvious win on the environmental side, Jackson called it a “huge win on the economic front” because it is expected to lure tourism dollars to the county.

“This is a great example of how we work,” she said. “We’re not an advocacy group. We don’t file lawsuits. We believe hunters and anglers are some of the greatest conservationists, helping to preserve places that matter.”

Based in Birmingham, FWLT does its work in an eight-county area through public and private partnerships and a tool called a conservation easement. “It helps keep family lands in family hands,” she explained. Landowners can continue to farm or manage a forest while preserving it for the future. They can protect the land from future development and “preserve a way of life they care about.”

There are estate planning tools through conservation easements that can reduce estate taxes, but many people don’t know of their existence because the act that created it was not passed until 1996.

“We want to make sure farms stay farms,” she said. “In 50 years, we will need to feed two times the people we feed now. The average age of a farmer today is 60, and we’re losing farms every year.”

And they want to ensure that lands rich in biodiversity like Big Canoe Creek are protected and preserved. “Doug Morrison has really been a hero in this along with the city and county. He has really been a champion and stayed on it.”

“We are thrilled that this project is moving forward,” Morrison said. “The Friends of Big Canoe Creek originally nominated this parcel in July 2009. We were later approached by an adjoining land owner and nominated a second tract in April 2010. In May of 2010, we partnered with the Freshwater Land Trust and conducted a Bioblitz on the nominated parcels.

The Bioblitz was an intense 24-hour biological survey in an attempt to record all the living species in the area, land and water.

“We had groups of scientists, biologists, naturalists and volunteers participating. Some of the groups attending were professors and students from Birmingham Southern and Samford, a biologist from the Nature Conservancy, folks from Alabama Rivers Alliance, the Black Warrior Riverkeeper, photographers from the Conservation Photographers of Alabama, and of course, many volunteers from the Friends of Big Canoe Creek. After the first tract is acquired we are hopeful the second tract can be added.”

When the property gets its official designation, it will become a nature preserve. Its nomination letter describes it as “hilly, forested terrain and aquatic and riparian habitat in and near Big Canoe Creek, including the drainage of a significant tributary of the creek.”

It has “abundant creek-side scenery and wildlife habitat. High points on the property afford views of the uppermost section of the Big Canoe Creek watershed, including beautiful rural Canoe Creek valley and the opposing ridges of Pine and Blount Mountains. The site is suitable for hiking, bird watching, paddling, mountain biking, horseback riding and a variety of other outdoor activities.”

“This endeavor is truly a community driven project,” Morrison said.

American Chestnut making comeback

Meanwhile, another environmental project is taking root in St. Clair County on Chandler Mountain, where the Lannings have donated land for an orchard to regenerate a blight-resistant American Chestnut Tree.

Originally known as the Redwoods of the East, these enormous trees — once found in Alabama and St. Clair County — became extinct because of a Japanese blight accidentally introduced in the United States in the early 1900s.

Once the blight spread, there was no stopping it. It wiped out these majestic trees, completely changing the landscape of the Eastern United States. “My mother remembered seeing them as a child,” Jackson said. After that, they were gone.

Working with the American Chestnut Foundation, timber companies and other groups, FWLT is involved in the St. Clair project, which is predicted to take decades to reach its goal of a blight-resistant tree.

“It’s a long-term proposition,” Jackson said. The tree is planted and at a certain age, the blight is introduced. If it survives, that tree is propagated. “It’s a multigenerational thing that will take decades for complete regeneration.”

And just as partnerships have worked well in the Big Canoe project, partnerships are playing a key role in this one, too, she said. Timber companies are helping with seedlings. A whole team of work volunteers from Honda Manufacturing of Alabama laid pipe for an irrigation system and planted another tier of trees to expand the orchard.

What is happening on top of that mountain is a valiant effort to bring back trees that the country’s founding fathers used to build furniture and split rail fences. They were trees that provided food to support an abundance of wildlife. It’s about the ecosystem, and it’s about timber for wood products — all interested parties working together to make something good happen.

But it’s more than that, Jackson said, adding a personal view of it. She knows it can’t come to fruition in her lifetime. “My goal is for my granddaughter to one day be able to walk under the shade of a Chestnut tree” — a simple pleasure she wants for her grandchildren and the generations that follow after.

Annual event continues to draw attention

Words and Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.

Legend and tradition meet each year in Ashville when Lyman Lovejoy hosts the Lovejoy Slingshot Hunt in honor of his father, Sim Lovejoy. Breakfast and lunch, cooked over an open pit is always a treat, and the Lovejoys supply flips and ½ inch ball bearings for ammunition.

Today, the flips are produced by Don Hulsey. Don has succeeded in carrying on Sim’s design tradition.

Sim’s ability with the flip was legendary. As young as seven, he was known for killing running rabbits as well as squirrels running through the branches of trees. His accuracy has not been matched by his progeny, and they will not try to tell you otherwise.

His generosity in crafting flips for children was legendary, too. And there is no shortage of children at the Lovejoys each year. They are as much a part of the hunt as flips and squirrels.

Participants, young and old, practice with their flips and take to the woods for the grand hunt after breakfast in wagons pulled by tractors. Trees are shaken, dogs bark, and comparisons are made to previous years. Another spot is always better, so the hunting party wanders through the woods with heads tilted back, searching feverishly for any sign of a squirrel.

An occasional ball is hurled toward a bundle of leaves stuck in the high branches of a tree, in hopes that the elusive prey will be rousted from the suspected nest. Squirrels, wily as they are, either pretend well to not be there, or are not there at all.

Once one is spotted, the chase is on. Shouts of “Get ahead of him!” ring through the woods as men, old men, bound through the brush like youngsters. A fuselage of steel balls fly through the air as the squirrel dances from limb to limb, searching for shelter. “Get around him!” “There he goes!” “Knock him down!” “He’s comin’ back this way!”

Most escape. It is not easy to hit a squirrel with a slingshot.

Once a squirrel is bagged, adolescent boys will give sincere testimony that it was their ball that brought it down. If there is a dispute, the compromise is, “Well, I hit him right when you did,” which is acceptable, and ends any conflict.

The little girl, whose shot barely left the flip, is encouraged by her father saying, “Well honey, you didn’t hit him, but you sure scared him.”

Sim Green Lovejoy died one day after his 92nd birthday, on Oct. 14, 2006. Buried in his overalls with a flip in the front pocket, his fishing pole by his side, Sim was wearing his favorite cap.

That is not a bad way to go, and the annual hunt is not a bad way to be remembered.

Editor’s Note: This year, the hunt captured the attention of Fred Hunter and will be aired on Fox 6’s Absolutely Alabama Feb. 20.

Sim Lovejoy Squirrel Hunt

282 photos

Driving directions to
St. Clair’s scenic spots

Words and Photos by Michael Callahan

For many of us growing up, the Sunday evening drive was something both parents and children looked forward to. It became something of a ritual down through the decades. I was fortunate that my father was something of an explorer. He never found a main or side road that he did not want to investigate. As my Mom often said, “There is not a pig trail” in this county your father has not been down. This was a trait he passed along to this writer/photographer son.

Somewhere between finishing high school, furthering my education, marrying and the demands of life, my spirit of adventure and my father’s beloved Sunday evening drive got lost. Add to that Arab oil embargoes in the mid-1970s and for so many of us, a wonderful tradition was all but lost.

The good news these days is that oil prices are on a decent downward trend. Add to that fact we live in a beautiful county with diverse landscapes from the northern to southern county boundaries, and we have the makings for many a great Sunday evening drives.

So this writer/photographer, armed with a full tank of gas and ample photographic gear, spent many days traversing scenic roads in the northern part of our county to capture some new memories. Why the northern part? Well, elevations bring out a bit more color during the Fall season. What I want to leave you with is a sense of, “Hey that looks like a great way to spend a couple of hours on Sunday evening.”

Starting out on U.S. 231 from Pell City, I made my way north toward the Ashville area. As I passed the city limits of Ashville and started my climb up Straight Mountain, the views were becoming exactly what I had hoped for. At the top of the mountain, I turned on to County Road 12. I drove roughly 100 yards and turned on to County Road 24 for a short but winding trip of about two miles. As I rounded the final curve, an immense vista of St. Clair County lay before me. It is a view you will want to relish and just stand and soak in. Bring a camera. You will need it. Too soon I had to move on. As I started back down Straight Mountain into the valley, the mist made for some wonderful viewing.

At the bottom of the mountain, I turned hard left onto County Road 35/Gallant Road and immediately was in awe of the views unfolding before me. Further down the road, I turned left onto County Road 44/Camp Sumatanga Road. As you can see from our pictures, you must take the Camp’s loop road. Back onto Gallant Road, awesome views were around for many a mile.

Wanting to explore further, I came back down Gallant Road and turned onto County Road 42/Chandler Mountain Loop Road. After ascending the mountain, Horsepens 40 invited me to make a short visit. What a place. Rock climbers from all over the world come here to try their skills against some of the incredible rock formations — a must see.

Continuing down the loop road, I was treated to wonderful scenic views of the rim of Chander Mountain to the east. Just a quarter mile down the road, the tomato fields stretched out before my windshield for hundreds of acres. Stopping by a roadside produce stand, I was able to buy some of the last succulent Chandler Mountain tomatoes of the season. You can also grab a five-gallon bucket and pick them right out of the fields yourself.

As I made my way back down to U.S. 231, I knew my next drive would be U.S. 411. Just go to the square in downtown Ashville and head northeast on 411. Beautiful farms and huge expanses of “Big Sky” await you. While driving down 411, I decided to turn right onto Mountain Spring Road leading over to County Road 33. I was rewarded with scenic farms and large expanses of sky. Well, it was getting time for me to head back and wrap up my drive and returning down to 231, I came across the turn-off to County Road 26. I had to stop and capture some of this beautiful valley before I wrapped up the afternoon.

Just so you folks that take short drives don’t think we have left you out, I have included some short but really nice drives you can do close to home. So go ahead and treat yourself and your family. Just sit back and enjoy the drive in this breathtakingly beautiful county we call home.

Photographer’s Note: Thanks to Mr. Roland Thomas, who inspired this article, and Jerry Smith of Discover Magazine, who served as a tireless tour guide for my camera and me.

Scenic St. Clair Drives

53 photos