PA York Heritage Rail Trail Segment 7 & 8

Segment 7:  Seven Valleys to Larue, Out-and-Back, 7 mi. 

Slowly the grassy shoulders are turning bright green, the kind of green that is fresh out of the box. The Red Maples are almost pink with fat buds ready to burst. Wood frogs and Spring Peepers are loud in the places where Codorus Creek has made oxbow ponds. Our walk today was warm, in the 70s, and Amos was already feeling the heat. We stopped a lot to get a drink. At one point he laid down behind a bench to take a break. Poor guy just doesn't do warm or hot weather at all. Winter and fall are his best hiking seasons, and as coonhounds are apt to do - he prefers sleeping all day in a shady spot come summer. 

Lines converge at Hanover Station

From Seven Valleys we walked south 3.5 miles one way, rested (water!) and returned. This section of the York Heritage Rail Trail passes by some very historic places and the railroad follows the creek closely, making for beautiful views. At the Hanover Station, which is still closed for the season, I noted the spur line that veers away and behind the station towards the northwest. This was the line that brought iron ore mined from the Strickhouser Iron Company mines, now the site of Joseph Raab County Park.  The Gettysburg Railroad connected here, too, bringing passengers twice a day to connect with North Central Railroad trains heading into Baltimore. 

Hanover Station

Old German farmhouses and barns continue to stand proud on the rolling landscape of fields and pastures and one runs right up against the rail trail where Amos found two comfortable, resting long-eared cows very interesting. This old farm on Maple Street has always interested me and I will purposely make a point to drive by it in all seasons. There are always the two comfortable cows, but there is, too, the massive brick farmhouse that stretches back from the road. The outbuildings, corncrib, tractor shed, and huge hay barn, weathered and gray now, hint at their colorful pastel painted past. The louvered windows functioned as ventilators that kept hay stacks inside from overheating and provided cool cross-cooling to keep hay dry.

Seven Valleys farm

When the railroad came through this valley to connect York to Baltimore in the 1840s, most farms near the rails like Hanover Station, oriented their production to serve buyers in Baltimore for dairy, orchard fruits, eggs, and vegetables in the 1800s but by the 1900s Baltimore lost out as the railroad was used to ship agricultural product to York instead. Here were the new, big canneries and industrial processing plants for poultry and frozen vegetables that overtook the market. This farm would have joined all other York County farms in adjusting their production to accommodate changing demands for canned foods and long-storage commodities like powdered milk, dehydrated and frozen foods. By the 1960s however, full-on industrialization of the American agricultural landscape made these small farms unable to complete with large farming operations in the Mid-West and South. The decline in smaller railroads also made shipping costly and unreliable, even to local markets. I looked at the two comfortable cows, and wondered what changes this old farm had welcomed or endured over the past two hundred years. 

Antietam Formation 

The visible geology was sparse on this section except for a small road cut of Antietam Formation quartzite. It is fun to think about this having been an Outer Banks-like barrier island at one time. How much our landscape has changed over time. How little we appreciate time as a factor that created and now gives us glimpses of landscapes so different from what we see today.  Farther down the trail the views over the creek valley included higher, resistant ridgelines of that same formation while the valley through which the creek flows is underlain by less resistant limestone being weathered away by water and erosion. 

South Branch Codorus Creek

Whistle stop signal

What was more fun than imaging old landscapes was hearing someone call out "Is that Amos!?" and meeting up with a former science student who now lives along the trail and who owns the historic Seitzville Mills! York County is still a small-community place to live and I've been happy meeting lots of folks I know out for their walks and getting caught up, but this little reunion was the best. 

Historic Seitzville Mills today

In the 1990s when the North Central Railroad line was being converted to rail trail in Ashland, MD and re-opened section-by-section and year-by-year to York as a recreational corridor, many historic sites that relied on the railroad in its day were discovered to be heavily neglected. Over the decades many of these sites have been restored by communities who now take pride in their proximity to this trail and the Seitzville Mills is one such property. Over several owners who have made serious investments in this lovely four-story flour mill, my former student and her husband are the latest to be stewards of this remarkable come-back site, investing elbow grease and money in its care. 

Photo: Jim Miller 1992

This care and stewardship of the historic places and landscapes along the York Heritage Rail Trail as well as a revival of railroad community businesses and services that cater to the users of this beautiful trail has earned the YHRT several top honors among recreational trail associations. It is consistently voted as best trail in annual state and regional rankings and has also earned top national recognition by the Rail-Trail Conservancy. 

Seg. 7 in yellow, Seg. in green

Segment 8: Glen Rock to Larue, Out-and-Back 4 mi.

This short section was not as picturesque as others, mainly walking from Glen Rock to the Larue intersection where we stopped last (2.1 miles one way from Centerville Parking Lot) although the creek had a few trout fishermen on it. Instead of boring pictures of road crossings and a parallel road, which is annoyingly loud, here is Amos who has walked the whole Walk with Spring 2025 project with me - he is also loud. 

Amos, The Minor Prophet