One of the Deep South’s finest pockets of deep woods, Alabama’s William B. Bankhead National Forest has a potential for adventure and natural beauty you’d expect of a bigger, wilder place. The forest’s 180,000 acres encompass pine-clad and hardwood forest, burbling streams, deep gorges, and an arkful of wildlife. Bankhead is part of the Warrior Mountains, the western terminus of the Appalachian Mountains; before Europeans arrived, the forests here had been hunted for some 12,000 years by the Choctaw and Cherokee peoples.