PA Lancaster Junction Rail Trail

You know the old saying that the place we know the least about is our own backyard? Welp. I decided to finally walk this little local gem of a rail trail following a long meeting at work. The Lancaster Junction Rail Trail gets a nice mention in the guide book Rail-Trails Pennsylvania (see Notes) and I am trying to complete all the trails mentioned there, so this is an easy one to check off. Why wait? I needed a good leg-stretch after a few hours sitting and what the heck, it's on the way home (sort of), so why not? 

Drink stand and honor box

The original Reading & Columbia Railroad line was begun in 1861 to link Reading to the transportation hub at Columbia then on to the Susquehanna River where goods and resources were transferred to the Tidewater Canal that delivered produce, lumber, and especially coal to Chesapeake Bay markets. Later the line ran directly along the eastern shore of the Susquehanna all the way to Perryville, Maryland.

This line was active until the 1970s with a busy freight and passenger service between Lancaster and Reading.  I walked from the trailhead at the Emergency Services Training Center out to Lancaster Junction where the rail trail ends and turned back. At Lancaster Junction, once a busy freight center and RR community, the rail trail meets with an active freight where a passing train sounded its horn at all the road crossings as I walked back. 

Chiques Creek

Chiques (Chick-eez) Creek sidles up against the old rail bed for a mile or so before it veers away to the west to makes its zig-zaggy way to the Susquehanna River and the Chiques Rock cliffs. This little creek is prone to flash flooding and with recent torrential downpours, the woods on either side of the trail were stacked with muddy, woody debris, scrubbed clean of living vegetation. 

American Toad, 

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on New York Ironweed

Orange Coneflower, Rudbeckia fulgida

Early Goldenrod, Solidago juncea

So about that little drink stand and honor box (pictured at the top) that I came across about halfway to Lancaster Junction... seeing as it's summer in Pennsylvania, it is almost sacrilegious not to have an ice cold root beer and, being a devoted fan of homemade root beer, I could not pass up the opportunity to drop $2 into the honor box and grab a bottle from the cooler. Would it be the real thing I wondered as I unscrewed the cap.

Lancaster Junction

Historic freight warehouse

Why this devotion to homemade root beer? Let's go back in time to when I was ten and on my annual summer visit to stay with my Great Uncle Russ and Great Aunt "Ginn" Virginia who lived in the Appalachian/Blue Ridge Mountains. They lived in a cabin just up the hill from the Shenandoah River and tended their own orchards, hunted and fished, raised bees, foraged the woods, farmed a little, and generally lived off the land. Every summer Uncle Russ, a proud Welshman, produced a heavy wooden flat filled with tall, glass, recapped Coke bottles filled with dark homemade root beer - the fizzy kind with a kick. My Aunt Ginn, who spoke German when she was especially proud to serve us her tinctures and home cooking knew that I lived for her root beer. I dreamt about it all winter. I begged for it when I got there. And when I turned ten and was allowed to drink a whole icy bottle by myself (no more little jelly jars portions!) I cried. It was that good. "Der Sommer ist da!" Aunt Ginn declared. Summer is here!  

Beer and the lemonade chaser 

Well, I cried again on the Lancaster Junction trail today as I gulped that nice fizzy cold root beer. Just like I remembered, it zinged of sassafras and birch root. It sang of sarsaparilla and ginger. And just like that old family recipe (still in the family but made with "Big H" Hires Root Beer or Lancaster's own Stolzfus extract today) it faded away with hints of cinnamon and clove and a touch of honey. Holy moly.  It was good German stuff that would have made my Uncle and Aunt applaud. And, just like the summer tradition of offering a chaser of ice cold lemonade to follow the root beer, just in case "the fizzy makes one dizzy" as Aunt Ginn would say, I returned the empty bottle and then bought a homemade lemonade for the walk back. 

The real deal. 

Notes:

My favorite rail trail guide, Rail-Trails Pennsylvania, is available through the Rails to Trails Conservancy  which serves as an organization dedicated to the national rail trail movement to promote community accessibility, connectivity, public spaces, and local recreational economies. Note that federal rail trail funding has been hit very hard with the passage of recent legislation that claws back hundreds of millions of dollars dedicated to helping communities develop their rail trail infrastructure. Please consider supporting RTC as they fight to restore funding, restart grant programs, and stabilize community rail trail transportation and recreation projects. I do!  

About that root beer recipe - here's what almost every Amish root beer brewer in Lancaster County uses today and I'm telling you, it's that good. https://lancasteronline.com/news/homemade-root-beer-appears-at-scores-of-roadside-stands/article_be7b5324-3011-5113-b97a-c705661fbd5e.html While local homemade root beer does contain a tiny bit of alcohol as a result of fermentation (the "kick") it really depends on the amount of sugar put into the brewing to feed the yeast that allows the taste of real birch, sassafras, and sarsaparilla to come through. Our family recipe also calls for a little cinnamon and ginger. Too much sugar and the root tastes are overpowered by the sweetness. It's still sweet but a little beer-bitter too. Mmmmmm! 

PA Gallitzin State Forest - Bog Path Trail

The Bog Path Trail is part of the John P. Saylor Trail (JST) system in Gallitzin State Forest and has been on  my list of wetfoot muck walks to do this year. In early July I had my chance to walk it and wanted to make another loop with the JST. It was hot and very exposed, however, and my big black dog Amos did not care for any of it, so we made a quick four-mile out-and-back hike instead. A few of the board walk sections were slightly flooded since there has been so much rain and the main trail was a bit mucky, too, but all the better for a good muck and for cooling off in the shady edges.

The Great Bog 

Bogs form when old lakes, ponds, or wetland fill in with Sphagnum Moss. In older bogs the moss can often can be several feet thick! I pushed my hiking pole into the moss mat at several locations and found the moss to be about three feet before touching the bottom of this shallow wetland. There was very little open water except for a stream inflow and lots of open sky. Where the Sphagnum was thick enough to create little spongy islands, some trees, Spruce, Alder, Poplar, and White Birch grew.

 

A bog is mostly dead plant material trapped beneath a cover of living Sphagnum. This creates an oxygen-poor, highly acidic, nutrient poor environment. With such difficult growing conditions that reach extremes of cold and hot seasons during the year, few plant species thrive in the open here so plant biodiversity can be low depending on how far from the wooded margin they can grow. The plants that do survive in a bog, however, are super interesting and right away I came across one of my favorites. 

Leaves adapted to catch insects - Northern Purple Pitcher Plant

A very sweet treat - Northern Purple Pitcher Plant 

Northern Purple Pitcher Plants (Surracenia purpurea) appeared as soon as we stepped out of the hemlock woods into the sun. I'd hit the bloom period just right, happy to see all those weird flowers poking up like War-Of-the-Worlds spaceships high above mounds of highly adapted, insect-catching leaves. It was prime time for insect capture and for every pitcher leaf I peered into there were two or three insects captured in enzyme-laced water inside. How do Pitcher Plants avoid capturing their own pollinators like Bumblebees? The flower grows high above the pitcher leaves, often by a foot or two (!), and the pollen and nectar of the flower is incredibly sweet smelling and tasty, super attractive to Bumblebees. The scent of the pitcher leaf water,  however, emits an odor not so attractive to bees but very attractive instead to flies, beetles, and ants. 

Tawny Cottongrass

As we continued across board walk sections out onto the open bog, Tawny Cottongrass (Eriophorum virginicum) lifted its spidery flowers above the thick moss blanket. Come fall these flowers will look like wads of cotton held aloft by their spiky bracts. Neither a relative of the cotton plant nor a grass, the cottongrass is a sedge that grows only on deep, old peatland. Seeing Cottongrass is a sure sign you've found an old bog. 

Dewdrop, Rubus dalibarda

Margins in the cool shade

To keep Amos from overheating I brought him out of the sun into the cool, moist shade of the woods edges quite a few time and explored the margins of the bog. Here I found Dewdrop (Rubus dalibarda) growing in profusion. I'd hoped to see this showy little groundcover at least once this year and here it was growing throughout the hemlock margins where ever we ducked into the shade. Dewdrop loves bogs but not too much sun, so encountering it here was a real treat. In PA it is only found along the Allegheny Front and only around but not in the open bog. 

Feeder stream

We crossed a feeder stream where Amos wanted to grab a sip of water but he soon discovered it tastes pretty bad, quite acidic from tannins and peat. He drank all of his water bottle and half of mine in his little collapsible bowl but nothing seemed to help with the heat except to keep ducking into the cool muddy margins of Hemlock and Rush. I knew it was time to start heading back to the truck after a few miles in. It is no fun being a big black dog during a Pennsylvania heat wave in an open bog!

Cool mud beneath Rush beds

We found an old section of boardwalk that helped us cross a small stream back into the shady woods. The old wooden planks were cool on Amos' paws. As he gets older, now eight years old, he - like me has grown less and less tolerant of heat. I sometimes worry about this and today was a worry day. It was brutally hot with high humidity and I didn't want him (or me) to get sick out here especially since he'd gone through most of the three liters of water I was carrying. We got back to the truck where I keep a five gallon jerry can of cold water and he drank his fill while I started the engine and the air conditioner. 

Back to the woods

Back at our campsite at Blue Knob State Park high on the mountain (where it was at least ten degrees cooler than in the bog) Amos climbed atop his camping bed in the shade and quickly zonked out. We kept the next day's hike to the cool mountain summit trails. We'll be back when the JST is cooler to enjoy another muck hike before the year is over. Well done, old boy. 

Yellow trail (4 miles) out-and-back

Notes:

Flora of Pennsylvania - Dewdrop  https://www.paenflowered.org/apgii/rosales/rosaceae/rubus/rubus-dalibarda

U.S. Forest Service - Pitcher Plant https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/sarracenia_purpurae.shtml

Gallitzin State Forest (maps) https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dcnr/recreation/where-to-go/state-forests/find-a-forest/gallitzin

PA Buzzard Swamp Wildlife Management Area - Allegheny National Forest

Buzzard Swamp Wildlife Management Area is a partnership project area shared by the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the Allegheny National Forest. We visited this vast wetland system and hiked an out-and-back on its main loop trail for about 2.5 miles. Pleasantly surprised by the beauty and the richness of wildlife here, we could have stayed the whole day but decided to make a half-day of it due to the heat and biting flies and my big black dog being uncomfortable with both. 

We took our time and admired every view, pond, meadow, and lake and were pretty much awed by it all. With over 1,200 acres of protected wetlands, a chain of ponds and lakes with large wetland marshes is partly managed by humans with small culvert and sluice gates but the real water managers were the beavers and muskrats. We found evidence of both everywhere we went from beaver dams and beaver lodges to muskrat cattail huts along a main gravel road. There were deer, so many birds, and plenty of scat on the path - coyote, mink, raccoon, even fisher. 

Beaver dam against the road

Butterflies and dragonflies were everywhere in the road, most feeding on salts found in scat piles or preying upon the flies that hung around the scat. Monarchs were common thanks to vast meadows of Milkweed, Indian Paintbrush, and other host plants. The beaver-made wetlands are critical habitat for two Clubtail Dragonfly species of concern in Pennsylvania. We stopped at Pond #5 (out of 15) for a water and snack break and watched families of Barn Swallow swoop out of the culvert we were sitting over, We could hear the young begging from the nests inside the culvert. 

An Osprey adult flew with her two newly-fledged young who were just earning their wings over the largest lake behind us. A juvenile Broad-winged Hawk flashed through a spruce woods that ringed with Red Maple and grassy marsh. We had just experienced an adult Broad-winged Hawk wheel at eye-level over the truck on the rough road up from the Clarion River, so seeing a juvenile within the hour was a treat.

Milkweed

Spruce opening

This is the kind of place that whispers to you when you hike through. The wind in the meadows creates a kind of sigh that is perfectly punctuated by Red-winged Blackbirds. You can almost hear the flap of Tiger Swallowtail Butterflies as they cruise close to your ears. Green Frogs and Red-eyed Vireo compete to be the loudest until the Marsh Wren shows up. To not stand still and listen to the chorus of meadow insects and the whirrrr of dragonflies over the ponds is a mistake. Take the time to stop and do nothing else but listen. 

Looking out across this vast basin of ponds and marshes I felt somewhat reassured that everything will be alright. Migrating waterfowl will begin arriving by September and Atlantic Flyway will again be full of birds moving steadily south. There was something tremendously hopeful in how this wetland complex was so full - absolutely crammed - with animals, birds, bugs, reptiles, and amphibians. We came across a Snapping Turtle nest that had survived predation and showed the prints of tiny turtles fanning out from the nest to the edge of a pond. The cycles of life large and small wound round and round, full of promise. 

While on our camping break in the Allegheny National Forest I had learned about the passing of Joanna Macy, American Buddhist and great lover of all things wild. I'll write more about Macy in my companion blog Uphill Road over on Substack later this week, but here in the middle of the great wet meadows I had the sense that this was a place I could find her if I needed her, a traveling poet spirit on the breeze in "widening circles" through the watery landscape not unlike and nor far from her Western New York childhood home. 

“To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe—to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it—is a wonder beyond words."

- Joann Macy, World as Lover, World as Self (1991)

Notes:

Allegheny National Forest trail map for Buzzard Swamp WMA https://www.alleghenysite.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Buzzard-Swamp-Trail.pdf

PA Shawnee State Park: Disappearing Allegheny Oak Glades

On a very hot, humid day in the Allegheny Front region of Pennsylvania I decided a change of plans was needed to spare my not-so-heat-tolerant coonhound from another day in the sun-exposed bogs of the Gallitzin State Forest. We retreated instead to the nearby oak forests of Shawnee State Park, a few minutes east. I had just listened to the latest 1A podcast episode on Sam Bloch's new book Shade  so of course I had to make some plant surveys! I chose a closed canopy 2 mile-long forested trail within the park but what I found there - besides being drastically cooler - was a real treat for me (and Amos).

Bloch describes how tree shade affects humans and animals biologically as a multi-layered canopy  lowers air temperature on a hot day by as much as twenty degrees F. The heart rate slows down and the body's cooling mechanisms relax. Shady forests can even generate their own ground to canopy breezes which help with evaporative cooling.  As we climbed up the slope to the broad knoll on top, the shade quality went from humid and deep to breezy and cool above. Amos even had a little fancy prance at just about 80 F' compared to his sluggish walk in the open bogs at 95 F' yesterday. 

Chestnut Oak, Quercus montana

As we hiked along the dry shady oak ridge of weathered sandstone, the cooling effect of the great old oaks was intoxicating. Acres of massive Chestnut and Chinquapin Oak, all of them hundreds of years old with their great out-sweeping limbs shaded  patchy below-canopy grasslands spread across the forest floor like a vast carpet. But, unlike what I'm used to seeing in our acidic woods at home, there were no heath plants, no blueberry or huckleberry, no laurel or rhododendron understory, so I knew the soil composition was very different. I scuffed around in the duff which was very thin over light sandy soils that barely covered the sandstone bluff.  The deeper we went down this old growth path the more I suspected that a unique kind of habitat, part woodland, part grassland, was unfolding in front of us. 

Chinquapin Oak, Quercus muehlenbergii 

Aprons of grasses and small forbs grew in the distinctly circular canopy shadow beneath each of the giants. Beyond the aprons were small Sassafras, Shagbark Hickory, larger Cherry and Sweet Birch saplings all forming a ring of transition woodland around each of the giant oaks. Seeing the repeating pattern of open shaded grass glades beneath each of the old trees, mostly made up of native Poverty Oatgrass and Little Bluestem, I was sure I'd wandered into an Appalachian Oak Glade, one of Pennsylvania's most vulnerable Allegheny Mountain habitats. I stepped carefully into one of the large green patches beneath a Chinquapin Oak to survey what grew there. 

Indian Tobacco

Blue-Eyed Grass

Grass Pink

Poverty Oatgrass

Pennsylvania Sedge

The vulnerability of the Allegheny Oak Glad is concerned with invasive non-native plants and fire/grazing suppression. These little patches are little prairie oak savannas in miniature and they occupy mid-elevation southern facing outcrops with poor soils underlaid with calcium-bearing sandstone. Valued by indigenous people who lived in the Allegheny/Appalachian Valley and Ridge region these little oak glades attracted big game like White tailed Deer, Elk, and Bison. Controlled fire was used to sweep upslope to the summits to deter all but the toughest trees like Oak, Pitch Pine, and Chestnut while favoring the deep-rooted grasses and forbs that herbivores love. 

Oak Glade in transition

As settlement and cultivation overtook the fertile valleys and Shawnee peoples were forcibly moved off their ancestral homelands, farmers continued to use these open oak glades for summer livestock pasture. As Crosby (1986) described, the Neo-Europeans and their non-native livestock swarmed over the Alleghenies, "grunting, lowing, neighing, crowing, chirping, snarling, and buzzing in a self-replicating and world-altering avalanche." This activity bought the oak glade habitats a little more time until another invasion took hold. From DCNR flyers of non-native invasive plants, these were some of the most abundant invasives I noted in the little aprons of Oak Glade grasslands:

 

Now that controlled fire and intensive livestock grazing is all but gone over this sandstone knoll (being a protected landscape within the state park) the little patches of prairie beneath the old growth oaks are threatened with a number of invaders. Encroaching on the little grassland habitats were hundreds if not thousands of small sprigs of Japanese Barberry as far as the eye could see. Interspersed among these were Winter Creeper, an invasive vine that prefers open woodland, and a few dense stands of the prolific Common Velvet Grass, a common, aggressive European pasture grass that has made its way upslope from farms beyond the park. 

So what? Isn't this just a little niche habitat doomed anyway to environmental change and not worth all the worry? To the everyday hiker a little disappearing oak glade may even be invisible, therefore not a concern at all as one goes on about her hike. But this is for me an example of living in Aldo Leopold's "world of wounds" where my love for ecological communities and environmental history can leave me feeling sad. Standing along the mile-wide knoll with all its many patches of oak glade grasslands tucked neatly into the cool, cast shadows of the giant tree canopies overhead, I saw the shade for what it provided this wild, increasingly warming world with its own special sanctuary from the sun - a place born of harsh, hot environments after all and that offers us the possibility of shady resilience against the onslaught of heat waves. Amos loved this slow paced walk among the old trees so much that he gave a few of them a loud HELLLOOOOO! 

Notes:

Alfred W. Crosby. 1986. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900 - 1900. Cambridge University Press. 

Common Velvet Grass  https://elibrary.dcnr.pa.gov/GetDocument?docId=3643509&DocName=Velvetgrass.pdf

Winter Creeper https://elibrary.dcnr.pa.gov/GetDocument?docId=1738762&DocName=winter%20creeper.pdf

Asian and European Barberry https://elibrary.dcnr.pa.gov/GetDocument?docId=3549861&DocName=Barberry.pdf

Shawnee Trail, Shawnee State Park, PA 

PA Gifford Pinchot State Park: Round the Lake Hike, 12 mi.

 

American Toad - poison glands obvious! 

On a very rainy day my dog Amos and I hiked a circuit around the large impoundment lake at Gifford Pinchot State Park in York County. I am not a fair weather hiker. I go hiking no matter what. "It builds character!" a hiking friend once said  (we were hiking in a hurricane) and that's sort of how I felt about this excursion. Amos and I harvested some more of that character on this 12-mile slog through flooded trails that, with one major road-walk reroute, ran and pooled with water the whole way 'round.  It was a challenge - and a lot of fun!

We started at 9am when the rain did...

...and the mud became muddier...

...then the trail ran like a river...

...until it became a lake.

Amos will wade through any water AS LONG AS IT DOES NOT TOUCH HIS BELLY. That said, I tried hard to follow Leave No Trace principles and not hike around, but Amos and his belly dictated that at least two deep water go-arounds were non-negotiable, so a-bushwacking we went.  Otherwise we waded and mucked and sloshed straight on through. 

Oyster Mushroom

Mullein

Coreopsis

A well-known wildflower photographer once gave a workshop at our local nature center. He stressed that cloudy, rainy days are the best times to go out and capture color. I remembered that little tip as we passed woods edges full of flowers so brightly beaming yellow despite the low light. Even yellow mushrooms were in on the act. Goldfinches and a Common Yellowthroat at the marsh twinkled in their intense yellow spring plumage. It all but made up for the absence of sun.

See the resemblance?

Diabase rocks made monumental pasture walls

Diabase boulder overlook

Tessellated weathering (tiles)

Diabase is the rock type here. It's a sub-volcanic rock that weathered out from buried plutons, underground chambers that cooled in place and never reached the surface as lava. Diabase is found throughout Northern York County in a belt of volcanics that stretches from Gettysburg in Adams County in an arc across the Susquehanna River east towards the Iron Hills of Lancaster and Chester Counties. It's hard stuff and farmers did everything they could to clear their fields of it or risk breaking plow blades. By the Depression Era, farmlands in the area had been exhausted and much of the landscape was secondary scrub, overgrown and run-down. In the 1950s the state acquired the farms and began constructing the first metropolitan part in the growing state park system. By 1960 it was open for business including public swimming beaches, trails, playgrounds, and small boat launches. It was a tradition growing up with "Pinchot" summers. See Notes (below).

Vernal pools and citizen science!

Stopping by for a frog check

Cattail and pond lily marshes

By the time we reached the far side of the lake the rains were really pouring down. We checked out the marshes for ducks but could hardly see through the downpour. My binoculars stayed dry and unused in their drybag in my pack but everything else on me or inside my pack (even with a rain cover) was drenched. Oh well. It was warm enough not to have to worry much about getting cold as long as we didn't stop for too long. We crossed the bridge into the woods through the old Weller Farm wall gate and soon emerged into the day use area with its fields of picnic tables, grills, picnic lawns, and playgrounds. Time for a snack break in the pavilion but as winds increased even under roof, the rain found us. 

Old Weller Farm gate 

Drenching through the farm site

Snack break in a driving rain

The open fields of the day use area really drenched us. Once back into the woods following the yellow blazes I noted how much rain the canopy overhead intercepted from our direct battering. Amos was happy to be under cover again, but now the trails really were becoming small rivers and lakes. He kept looking back at me as if to express his worry of a wet belly. 

   

 

White Jelly Fungus

Skullcap

Ghost Pipes 

As we progressed towards the ravine where the dam was built in the 1950s to create the lake, the trails became completely submerged. All that water was running down the same hill we were hiking down. I heard the wet-foot stream crossing long before I saw it. Normally this little stream is a hop-skip across smooth ledges to continue the trail on the other side, but not today! Amos was very nervous about approaching it, even if just for a minute to get a picture. Turn around! Don't drown! We high-tailed it back up the hill to the nearest intersection with a bridle trail and slogged through some very deep mud horse trails out to the road. We rerouted for a two-mile walk around the ravine valley. 

Turn around! 

A little road walk...

... past the Maytown Schoolhouse...

...and Benders Cemetery.

Died 1844, 80 yrs. 

Road walking has its joys, too. We found the Maytown Schoolhouse and explored the Bender Cemetery along the Alpine Road to the dam parking lot and the next access to the Lakeside Trail. In the graveyard we found many birthdates before 1776. Some of the markers had flags and I wondered if they were Revolutionary War veterans? A nice lady pulled up alongside and asked we if needed a ride. I told her no, thank you, we were hiking in the rain on purpose. She gave a big smile and said "Atta girl!" and waved goodbye as she pulled off. 

Crossing over (not through) Beaver Creek

Spill way into Beaver Creek

Mason Dixon Trail and Lakeside Trail combine

Alpine and Mason Dixon Trails combine

The rain finally subsided after mile 8, which would have been mile 6 were it not for the 2-mile road walk (which was delightful) and we strolled past the great diabase boulders and rocky overlooks, slowly drip-drying as we went. Like meeting up with an old friend, the robin's egg blue of the long-distance Mason Dixon Trail joined the Lakeside Trail and I decided to stay on the MDT and divert off the Lakeside Trail. Around mile 10 we cruised through the disc golf area where we met a soaked but happy player who offered me a free throw (!!) and past a little boat launch where Amos told me he was extra hungry. At mile 11.8 were back at the truck with a deep toweling off for Amos, dinner, and a well earned hound's nap in the back of the truck. 

Let's go eat!

Amos snoring in his comfy bed by 5pm. 

Both the Mason Dixon Trail and Pinchot State Park are like old friends to me. When hiking pal Kim and I finished our MDT section hike in 2016, I remember coming through the park feeling like a homecoming. How many times have I followed the blue blazes through this park - first with my dad and then with friends and many dogs over the years. My first time to Pinchot was when I was eleven. Soon I'll be 65 and thankful I can keep coming out to walk these trails even in the pouring rain.

Notes: 

Pennsylvania's First Metropolitan State Park  Pennsylvania Historic Preservation blog; PA State Historic Preservation Office. July 31, 2024 

Road walk = orange dots / loop travel  = clockwise / 12 miles