Northern white cedar, Thuja occidentalis, is mainly found far north of this place. Native Americans in Canada ate its leaves to counteract scurvy and saved a party of French explorers by sharing that knowledge, leading the explorers to call it arborvitae, or tree of life. During the last Ice Age, these trees thrived here while their current range lay under a glacier. As temperatures warmed, they moved north and were out-competed by other trees in most of Virginia. The shaded, high-walled gorge formed by the creek below remains cooler than the surrounding land, however, and shelters so many of these rare trees that the waterway became known as Cedar Creek. Among the last of their kind in Virginia, they survive here as living remnants of a different era.