Shawnee National Forest

The Shawnee National Forest is a United States National Forest located in the Ozark and Shawnee Hills of Southern Illinois, United States. Administered by the U.S.D.A. Forest Service, it consists of approximately 280,000 acres of federally managed lands. In descending order of land area it is located in parts of Pope, Jackson, Union, Hardin, Alexander, Saline, Gallatin, Johnson, and Massac counties. Forest headquarters are located in Harrisburg, Illinois. There are local ranger district offices in Jonesboro and Vienna. The Shawnee National Forest is also the single largest publicly owned body of land in the state of Illinois. It is considered part of Southern Illinois, and is south of the St. Louis, Missouri and Metro-East areas, in Area code 618. Portions of it are in the far south area of Illinois known as Little Egypt. Cities in or near the area are Carbondale, Illinois, Marion, Illinois, and Cairo, Illinois.

Designated as the Illini and Shawnee Purchase Units, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared these purchase units to be the Shawnee National Forest in September 1939. Most of the land added to the Forest in its first decade of existence was exhausted farmland. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the Civilian Conservation Corps planted pine trees to prevent erosion and help rebuild the soil. However, the Forest is also home to many hardwood trees and other plant and animal species characteristic of the region.

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