Nature Watch stop on the Poverty Point National Monument’s walking tour

WALKING TOUR STOP 16

DRIVING TOUR STOP 7

Nature Watch

The Nature Watch stop on the Poverty Point National Monument tour is nothing more than a stop in the forest where you can read two paragraphs in the Hiking Trail Guide / Driving Guide that detail the types of animals that can be found in the park: birds, deer, raccoons, armadillos, snakes, and even bears. If you want to stand around for a while, you might actually see one of these animals. The location of the Nature Watch stop is different on the walking tour than it is on the driving tour, but the purpose and information is the same.

For those touring Poverty Point on foot, it is roughly .4 mile to the next stop. When you come out of the forest you will be back at the ridge complex. While these ridges are quite distinct compared to others in the park, if they weren’t pointed out to you, you’d just think they were common gullies and small hills. But don’t feel that you are an unobservant person. Nobody recognized these as man-made structures until 1953 when archeologist James Ford studied an aerial photograph of Poverty Point and realized the hills and gullies formed a pattern.