Wolf Rock Cave is often called the only cave in Louisiana. The Forest Service describes it as two small rock overhangs above Bundick's Creek in the Vernon Unit of the Kisatchie National Forest, and it is the only rock shelter in the state known to have been used by its early people. The rock is the Catahoula Formation: river sands, clays and gravels laid down about 30 million years ago and hardened into stone. Erosion cut the softer lower layers back under a harder cap, leaving a low cliff with two shallow shelters and, behind one of them, a low passage with a flat ceiling.
People came here in the Late Archaic, between about 2500 and 1000 BC. The archaeological record suggests some of them lived here for short stretches, and the cave guide at showcaves.com adds that they came mostly for chert, the hard stone they shaped into tools. Later the overhang was a camp for hunters and fishermen, and in the 1950s and 1960s a place where teenagers from Pitkin and DeRidder came out to drink beer. After the site passed to the Forest Service in the 1970s, the agency judged the back of the cave too unstable for visitors and sealed two rear rooms with explosives. Nobody had surveyed them first, so the stories have grown ever since: a great chamber that hid Union horses and supplies in the Civil War, and Jesse James lying low. Treat those as campfire lore.
From Highway 171 in Pickering, take LA 10 east for about 4.6 miles, turn right at the caution light and stay on LA 10 for 1.7 miles, turn right onto Forest Road 421 and after a tenth of a mile left onto Forest Road 403, and drive about 2.3 miles to the parking area on the right. There is no fee. Bring water, since there is none at the site, and keep dogs on a leash. The shelter is an archaeological site: rockhounding is not allowed in caves on the forest, and disturbing or removing artifacts breaks federal law. The Vernon Unit around it is 85,000 acres of longleaf pine, and Little Cypress Pond, a spring-fed pond ringed by an accessible half-mile trail, is close by.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
