The Devil’s Tramping Ground: A Bare Circle That Outlived Its Own Explanation.
A roughly forty-foot patch of bare earth in the Chatham County woods, where the Devil is said to pace at night. The state once found the soil sterile with salt. A soil scientist sent to settle it in 2015 came away without an answer. What is left is the least mystical explanation available — and a legend that now maintains its own evidence.
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Confidence key — claims in this file are tagged as follows Verified primary documentary support · Claimed asserted by a named party, not independently confirmed · Disputed credible sources contradict each other · Unverified we could not substantiate it · how we decide
What the Devil's Tramping Ground is, in a paragraph.
The Devil's Tramping Ground is a patch of barren earth in western Chatham County, North Carolina, about ten miles from Siler City, near Bennett in the Bear Creek community. The standard description — set down in the Encyclopedia of North Carolina — is “a foot-wide bare path forming a perfect circle 40 feet in diameter,” with normal vegetation around it, only a wiry grass inside, and nothing at all growing on the path itself [1]. The legend attached to it is old and simple: the Devil paces the circle at night, and nothing will grow where he walks. Two further claims travel with it — that the wiry grass cannot be transplanted elsewhere, and that objects left inside the circle are found cleared away by morning [1].
What makes this more than a ghost-tour stop is that the central claim is physical and therefore testable. Either something in the ground stops plants growing or it does not. It has been examined at least twice, and the two examinations point in opposite directions. In 1946 the North Carolina Department of Agriculture tested the soil and found it sterile [6]; the salt-content explanation attached to that result became, for decades, the standard scientific answer [1] — though as set out below, the sources do not agree that the 1946 work established any cause at all. Then in 2015 the public-television series UNC-TV Science took a soil scientist to the site to settle it, and the segment is titled around the fact that he could not [4].
This file takes the position that the barrenness is real, that the chemical explanation is in doubt, and that the most economical remaining explanation is not chemistry at all but traffic: a well-known, easily-reached site that people have driven to, camped on, parked on and lit fires on for generations. If that is right, it produces the genuinely interesting thing about the case. The legend brought the visitors; the visitors keep the ground bare; the bare ground sustains the legend. The story became its own evidence.
The documented record.
The site is real and its description is long-standing
The clearing exists and has been written about for generations. Verified The Encyclopedia of North Carolina entry places it “ten miles from Siler City in western Chatham County” and describes “a foot-wide bare path forming a perfect circle 40 feet in diameter” [1]. The legend was popularised nationally by the North Carolina writer John Harden, whose 1949 collection took its title from the place: The Devil's Tramping Ground and Other North Carolina Mystery Stories [2].
It carries an official folklore marker
The state's folklife body has formally marked it. Verified In 2021 the North Carolina Folklife Institute and the William G. Pomeroy Foundation erected a marker at the site under the Foundation's Legends & Lore programme. Its text reads in full: “TRAMPING GROUND / NEAR THIS SITE, CIRCLE OF BARE EARTH BELIEVED FOR GENERATIONS THE SITE OF ANGRY TRAMPING BY THE DEVIL CAUSING SUPERNATURAL EVENTS” [5]. The wording repays attention: it marks a belief, held for generations, and does not assert that anything supernatural occurred.
The state tested the soil in 1946
A soil study was carried out, and we can date and staff it. Verified Samples were run by the W. A. Bridges Laboratory in Wilson and passed to Dr. I. E. Miles, Director of the Soil Testing Division of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture. The account traces to a 1946 interview in the Herald-Sun, reported by WRAL [6].
What that study concluded is disputed
Two credible sources give incompatible accounts of the same tests. Disputed The Encyclopedia of North Carolina states that “samples of earth taken from the bare path proved to be sterile due to an extremely high salt content,” with “the remains of natural salt licks” nearby, and calls this “possibly the most plausible explanation” [1]. WRAL, working from the contemporary press coverage, reports the opposite conclusion about causation: “Tests determined that the soil was sterile, and newspapers called the mystery ‘halfway solved.’ But, they acknowledged, even those tests did not determine why this strange circle of sterile soil exists” [6].
Both agree the soil tested sterile. They disagree on whether a cause was established. This matters more than it looks: the salt explanation is the one repeated everywhere as the scientific answer, and on the contemporary account the 1946 work did not actually supply it.
A soil scientist was brought in on camera, and the mystery survived
The most recent public examination did not resolve it. Verified On 2 June 2015 the public-television series UNC-TV Science published a segment on the site. Its own catalogue description is a single sentence: “Soil scientist Rich Hayes tries to solve a Chatham County mystery” [4]. Contemporary reporting on that investigation describes results that did not account for the barrenness — see What's Claimed, where the limits of what we can verify are set out.
One rival explanation has been tested and does not hold
The mill-horse theory fails on comparison. Verified A long-standing local explanation held that horses working an old molasses mill wore the circle by treading it. The Encyclopedia of North Carolina reports that “comparisons to the paths formed at similar mills do not support this theory” [1].
The competing positions.
That the Devil walks it
Claimed The traditional account holds that Satan paces the circle nightly and that nothing grows where he treads [1]. This is folklore, recorded as folklore by the state's own marker, and this archive treats it as such: a durable and locally important story, not a proposition about soil.
That the soil chemistry rules it out
Disputed Reporting on the 2015 investigation describes soil results that did not explain the barrenness — sodium above normal but not enough to prevent growth, potassium consistent with campfire ash, and nothing present in quantities sufficient to stop plants. We have not been able to verify those figures against a source we are willing to cite. The news article carrying them is behind an access block; the television segment has no published transcript; and a direct quotation attributed to Hayes does circulate, but only through content aggregators repeating one another, which is not sourcing. What is verifiable is that the investigation happened, and that its framing is one of an unsolved problem rather than a solved one [4]. The tension with the Department of Agriculture's salt finding [1] is therefore real but not fully documented, and we flag it as disputed rather than resolving it.
That people made it and people maintain it
Claimed The mundane explanation is mechanical rather than chemical: an accessible, locally famous clearing subject to decades of foot traffic, parking, camping and fires. Compaction and repeated burning suppress regrowth in a way that soil chemistry alone would not predict. This archive regards it as the strongest available explanation, and notes that the photographic record supports it — the site as photographed is a used clearing with litter and vehicle access, not an isolated formation.
That it is ancient and ceremonial
Unverified Two traditions hold that the circle was made by Native American ceremonial dancing, or that it marks a battle site connected to the Croatoan carving at Roanoke, preserved by tribal gods [1]. No archaeological support for either is cited in the literature we can check, and the Roanoke version is a nineteenth- and twentieth-century storytelling motif rather than a documented link. See The Lost Colony of Roanoke for what the Croatoan carving actually supports.
The gaps in the record.
The 1946 report itself
We can date the study, name the laboratory and name the analyst [6], and still not read what they wrote. No report number, no published findings and no archival location for the original Department of Agriculture testing has surfaced in anything we can check. That gap is why the two accounts of its conclusion can both persist: with the document absent, the salt explanation [1] and the “did not determine why” account [6] have nothing to be checked against.
The 2015 results in citable form
A soil scientist examined the site for public television and the segment is three minutes and twenty seconds long [4]. There is no published data table, no peer-reviewed write-up, and no transcript. That is not a criticism of the programme — it was television, not a study — but it means the most-cited modern refutation of the salt explanation cannot currently be quoted responsibly.
Any controlled test of the traffic hypothesis
The compaction-and-fire explanation is plausible and unglamorous and, as far as we can find, has never actually been tested. Nobody appears to have fenced a section, excluded traffic and fire for a few growing seasons, and recorded what happens. It would be a cheap experiment and it would settle the case.
A baseline for the circle itself
The “perfect circle 40 feet in diameter” is the description everything else is built on, and we could find no survey establishing it — no measured plan, no record of whether the shape or the diameter has changed across the decades of documentation. Photographs of the site do not obviously show a geometric ring.
Where the material is.
The documentary base for this case is small and largely secondary, which is itself worth stating plainly. There is no case file, no agency archive and no body of scientific literature.
The reference record. The Encyclopedia of North Carolina entry by Kimberly Hewitt, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2006 and available through NCpedia, is the most authoritative single account and the source of nearly every specific claim in general circulation [1].
The folklore literature. John Harden's The Devil's Tramping Ground and Other North Carolina Mystery Stories (1949) is the book that carried the legend beyond the county [2]. Richard Walser's North Carolina Legends (1980) is the other standard collection [3].
The broadcast record. The UNC-TV Science segment of 2 June 2015 is held by PBS North Carolina [4].
The physical record. The site is on public land off State Road 1100 near Bennett, and the 2021 Legends & Lore marker is documented by the William G. Pomeroy Foundation with its full inscription and location [5].
The sequence.
- 19th century The legend is established locally; the site is known as the Devil's Tramping Ground well before it is published nationally.
- 1949 John Harden publishes The Devil's Tramping Ground and Other North Carolina Mystery Stories, taking the collection's title from the site.
- 1946 Samples are run by the W. A. Bridges Laboratory in Wilson and passed to Dr. I. E. Miles of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture. The soil tests sterile. Sources disagree thereafter on whether a cause was established.
- 1980 Richard Walser includes the site in North Carolina Legends.
- 2006 Kimberly Hewitt's entry appears in the Encyclopedia of North Carolina, becoming the standard reference account.
- June 2, 2015 UNC-TV Science publishes a segment in which soil scientist Rich Hayes examines the site.
- 2021 The North Carolina Folklife Institute and the William G. Pomeroy Foundation erect a Legends & Lore marker near the site.
Full bibliography.
- Hewitt, Kimberly. “Devil's Tramping Ground.” Encyclopedia of North Carolina, edited by William S. Powell. University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Available via NCpedia, State Library of North Carolina. The authoritative reference account and the source of the circle's standard description, the salt finding, and the mill-horse comparison.
- Harden, John. The Devil's Tramping Ground and Other North Carolina Mystery Stories. University of North Carolina Press, 1949. The collection that carried the legend beyond Chatham County.
- Walser, Richard. North Carolina Legends. North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1980.
- UNC-TV Science, “Devil's Tramping Ground,” clip, 3 min 20 sec, published 2 June 2015. PBS North Carolina. Programme entry. Described by the broadcaster as “Soil scientist Rich Hayes tries to solve a Chatham County mystery.”
- North Carolina Folklife Institute and William G. Pomeroy Foundation, Legends & Lore marker “Tramping Ground,” erected 2021, State Road 1100, Bennett, North Carolina. Marker record with full inscription.
- Leah, Heather. “‘No human knows:’ Devil's Tramping Ground legend predates founding of the United States.” WRAL, 10 October 2020, updated 4 October 2023. Article. Source for the 1946 date, the W. A. Bridges Laboratory, Dr. I. E. Miles, and the contemporary press account that the tests did not establish a cause.
- Photograph of the site by Wikimedia Commons user DrStew82, 19 August 2017, CC BY-SA 4.0. File record.
Frequently asked questions.
What is the Devil's Tramping Ground?
A patch of barren earth in western Chatham County, North Carolina, about ten miles from Siler City. The standard description, from the Encyclopedia of North Carolina, is a foot-wide bare path forming a circle roughly 40 feet across, with normal vegetation around it and nothing growing on the path itself. Local legend holds that the Devil paces the circle at night and nothing will grow where he walks.
Where is the Devil's Tramping Ground?
In western Chatham County, North Carolina, near Bennett in the Bear Creek community, roughly ten miles from Siler City and reached from State Road 1100. A Legends & Lore marker erected by the North Carolina Folklife Institute and the William G. Pomeroy Foundation stands near the site.
Why does nothing grow at the Devil's Tramping Ground?
No explanation has been established, and the sources disagree about whether one ever was. The 1946 state testing found the soil sterile; the salt-content explanation attached to that result is the one usually repeated, but the contemporary press account says the tests did not identify a cause. A 2015 investigation by a soil scientist for public television did not resolve it either. The most economical remaining explanation is not chemical but mechanical: an accessible, locally famous clearing subject to generations of foot traffic, parking, camping and fires, where compaction and repeated burning suppress regrowth.
Was the Devil's Tramping Ground ever scientifically tested?
Twice, and neither settled it. In 1946 samples were run by the W. A. Bridges Laboratory in Wilson and passed to Dr. I. E. Miles of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture; the soil tested sterile. What that established is disputed — the Encyclopedia of North Carolina attributes the sterility to an extremely high salt content, while WRAL, working from the contemporary press coverage, reports that the tests “did not determine why this strange circle of sterile soil exists.” In June 2015 the series UNC-TV Science took soil scientist Rich Hayes to the site; the broadcaster's own description is that he “tries to solve” the mystery. No data table, peer-reviewed write-up or transcript has been published from either investigation.
Is the Devil's Tramping Ground a perfect circle?
That is the traditional description, and we could find no survey supporting it. No measured plan appears to exist, and there is no record of whether the shape or the diameter has changed over the decades it has been documented. Photographs of the site show a scrubby, litter-strewn clearing rather than an obvious geometric ring.
Do objects left in the circle really disappear overnight?
That claim is part of the traditional account recorded in the Encyclopedia of North Carolina, which reports that visitors have anchored sticks and other obstacles in the barren area and that “morning always finds these obstacles cleared away.” It is recorded as legend, not as an observation under controlled conditions. The site is publicly accessible and heavily visited, which supplies an obvious alternative explanation.