The Best Day Hike You Can Take With Your Dog In Tennessee

Hidden Passage Trail
Pickett State Park and Forest • Jamestown

Situated in a remote section of the upper Cumberland Mountains, the 17,000 acres of Pickett State Park and Forest, once owned by the massive Stearns Coal & Lumber Company, became one of Tennessee’s earliest state parks in the 1930s. Here are botanical and geological wonders Seaman will find nowhere else in Tennessee. The Civilian Conservation Corps set up shop in the dark forest during the Great Depression and crafted enough buildings of locally quarried sandstone that the park is listed on the National Register o fHistoric Places.

With 58 miles of hiking trails you could hunker down with Seaman for a week in these hollows but the attraction of Pickett for most canine adventurers is that most of the more accessible trails are short, ranging from a quarter-mile to three miles so you can sample many of them with your dog in a short visit.

The Hidden Passage Trail launches just across the street from the park office but it doesn’t take long to feel as if civilization has been left far behind. The big loop ducks in and out of rock houses and slides past waterfalls in its nearly ten miles. Expect to linger with Seaman at the stunning Thompson Overlook.

Pickett is a wild place and trail maintenance may be spottier than the groomed pathways prized in some parks; also make sure you secure a good map to help with the abundance of spur trails. Don’t count on Seaman to always find the way.

HIKING TIME: 4-5 hours

(from the book 300 Day Hikes To Take With Your Dog Before He Tires You Out: Trails where you won’t be able to wipe the wag off your dog’s tail)

Hiking With Your Dog In Tennessee