PA York Heritage Rail Trail: Segment 11 - The Last Out-and-Back

Segment # 11:  Railroad, PA, to the Mason Dixon Line and back, 6 miles. 

It stayed blissfully (for Amos) cloudy and cool with some spotty sun for 5/6ths of this 6 mile out-and-back until the last mile returning when the sun shone full bore. Amos does not like heat and his shiny black coat was soon soaking up the glorious sun and forcing him to walk way off to the side in as much dappled shade as the early spring forest canopy would offer him. But he did it! We finished our 2025 Walk with Spring back at the truck, parked in the rail trail parking lot in Railroad.  Fifty miles (25 miles x two) of out-and-back hikes from John Rudy County Park 25 miles south to the Mason Dixon Line, and this 8 year-old hound was right proud of himself. 

Good job, ole' boy.

The Mason Dixon Line is the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, the demarcation between northern states and southern states, a political border that was vitally important during the American Civil War (1860-1864) - which it feels on some days that we are still fighting. Even so, the MDL marks the boundary for Freedom Seekers  who came in their thousands from Maryland to Pennsylvania, hoping to establish themselves as free people in the Northern States or Canada. It always sends a little shiver to stand on this line and imagine the feeling of crossing into freedom here. 

New Freedom Station

The New Freedom Rail Station, unlike older stations below the MDL, was not built to have segregated waiting areas or ticket counters, a practice that stayed in vogue until the 1960s.  Arriving at New Freedom Station, there were no more car inspections to separate black and white riders or exclude riders from dining. But the town was named not for its MDL heritage, instead, in was named for its founder and family, French Huguenot Conrad W. Free of the of the De Ferree family who fled France and religious persecution in the 18th century. 

South Branch, Codorus Creek

We continued to walk next to the South Branch of the Codorus Creek which flows north to the Susquehanna River. It's been next to us almost the whole way south, but now it is a yard or two wide and just a little stream. Its headwaters gather just over the Maryland Line in a long valley of wetland seeps and springs.

 

Making a new friend

On our walk down from the town of Railroad, PA, to the Mason Dixon Line we met two guys sitting on a park bench along the trail at a little scrap metal sculpture garden. Amos wanted to go visit so I asked if he could come over. One of the men suddenly teared up and opened his arms to Amos. "I'm without a dog for the first time in my life," he cried. The other man smiled and nodded as Amos curled himself around his new friend. "Where did you find such a beautiful hound?" he asked. I told him about the American Black and Tan Coonhound Rescue  and said how sorry I was. "I'm gonna check this out," he said, as Amos offered his ample rump to both men for a scratchy scratch. 

Wild mustard on the old rails

Our last outcrop - wavy!

Spring is here in all its glory, even though northern parts of Pennsylvania are still getting snowy days, the south-central region is in full bloom and bud burst. Even so, spring has been a bit of a tease in these parts with some stretches of cold, wet weather and persistent cooler temps. Everything smells wonderful. Amos loved the smells coming from the Hound Dog Bakery!

Amos got a nice sample biscuit here - yummy!

Ma & Pa Engine 84

South of New Freedom, a mile or so before reaching the Mason Dixon Line is a cool forest where we sat for snack ( a peanut butter bone from Hound Dog Bakery) and water. Not too many people on the trail today because it was Monday morning but a few daily walkers were out and stopped to chat about the trail, the weather, and to say hello to Amos. It was nice to see the canopy developing overhead. Soon this stretch will be shady under summer sun. 

Railroad cut through forest

Mile 0! 

At Mile 0 we snapped a picture of a smiling hound and posed by the Mason Dixon Line Kiosk for an official "on the line" celebration. Another snack and another long sip of water before heading back through New Freedom and Railroad and planning for our next hike. Thanks for coming with us in this Walk with Spring 2025 post series!

Amos' nose is in Maryland! 

Notes:

History of New Freedom, PA https://yorkcountytrailtowns.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/TT-History_New-Freedom.pdf

Hound Dog Bakery https://hounddogbakery.com/

PA York Heritage Rail Trail Segments 9 & 10

 Segment 9 (3/29) Centerville to Pleasant Valley Road Bridge O&B (4.5 mi) - Glen Rock, PA

RR Bridge over South Branch Codorus Creek 

Things are really heating up now! With temperatures in the 70s for both segments of this pair of walks and with the promise of warm rains causing American Toads, Spring Peepers, and Wood Frogs to erupt in near constant calling, spring is definitely here to stay. Starting at the Centerville Parking Lot just north of the charming railroad town of Glen Rock, PA, however I realized too late that hiking on this glorious Saturday meant crowds and I soon found myself boxed into my parking space even before we set out. People were trying to make parking spaces out of any available (or unavailable) opening as the main lot was filled. A Jeep pulling a trailer for two big and heavy e-bikes pulled longways behind me and a small pickup truck edged into a narrow space between my truck and the information kiosk. Well, I thought, I'll see what happens when I get back...

Upper trail crossing in Glen Rock

Lower trail crossing

As we walked into Glen Rock the bike traffic increased and I had to keep Amos strictly to the side though he really wanted to walk in the middle of the trail. The south branch of Codorus Creek kept inside its stone wall raceway through town and it seemed every old building on the street nearest the creek had once been a mill or had a raceway of some sort attached to it. The hills surrounding the town were almost pink with the swollen buds of Red Maple and Red Oak. In the distance a train horn wailed and Amos began to get excited. He loves to bay at the trains. 

Leaving Glen Rock

Krebb's Store

Outcrops!

South of Glen Rock, past Krebb's Store, the outcrop action began to get interesting. I love studying our local geology and here was no exception. Mosses are turning bright green again and colonies of Lichen are ramping up their growth cycle, spreading out into new territory of raw rock at the rocket-fast speed of a single centimeter per year. The train horn was getting closer and Amos was dancing around while I studied a big boulder of metabasalt, once a blob of volcanic ooze that had pushed its way into a crevice in stretching bedrock. It now stands proud by itself everything around it having weathered away

Metabasalt exposure

A quiet little GE 80-ton diesel engine pulling a few excursion cars made its way by prompting Amos to sing and shout and holler. It was so quiet (except for the thrum of wheels on rail) that I was surprised to see it sweep into view. The engineer waved at Amos and sounded the horn which Amos loved and it made him sing all the louder - he actually tuned in to the pitch of the horn. An impressive duet!

GE 80 ton locomotive 

Quartzite summit of Glen Rock

Poor Amos, though, is not a fan of heat and soon after the train encounter I decided to turn around and head back, making our walk about 4 miles out-and-back. We dodged bikes and runners as he ambled slowly along making his way north again. I promised not to take him out in the midday heat for the rest of the year and to chose weekdays over weekends for the more popular trails that tend to get crowded. Since we were going a lot slower I was able to spot Bloodroot growing in some of the most inhospitable places along the railroad - places where coal dust and open gravel made growing conditions harsh, especially in heat. The more I looked the more I found, the tough little Bloodroot popped up everywhere other plants didn't stand a chance.

Bloodroot on a coal & gravel bank

Tough! 

Glen Rock Carolers 

Amos finished off one bottle of water and started a second bottle in the shade of the Glen Rock Carolers statue, a dedication to the Christmas tradition of door-to-door holiday singing kept here since the mid-1800s. Soon we were on our last stretch back to the parking lot north of town. The beautiful Codorus Creek flowed next to the trail and Amos wanted badly to go down into it. Back at the Centerville Lot I was still boxed in, so we waited in air conditioning until the riders returned to move their cars, though I needed help getting my truck out of a tight squeeze with that Jeep and trailer. 

South Codorus Creek 

Segment 10 (3/31) : Pleasant Valley RR Bridge to Railroad Out-and-Back (3.5 mi) 

A Monday morning section hike of only 3.5 miles up and back from our turn around point on Saturday proved to be more to the old coonhound's liking, but he still enjoyed a few lay-downs after his water breaks despite the shorter distance. I think this is his way of telling me he's had it with the rail trail's flat, gravely base and warm plodding. Back to the mountain trails soon, buddy.

Very few people out this fine morning so we could safely zig-zag from one side of the trail to the other for Amos to sniff all the smells and for me to spot all the signs of spring. There is one very long outcrop in this stretch which I could have spent another hour exploring for all the different kinds of mosses, fern, liverwort, lichen. But tracking a Groundhog was of utmost importance.

Skunk Cabbage 

Bloodroot

Spicebush

Of course these long outcrop road cuts represent the underpaid labor of Irish immigrants in the 1830s who with star-bit drills and sledge hammers, hand dug and cleared the path of this railway from Baltimore to York. Now, a recreational path and excursion line, it is sometimes easy to forget or not to know at all how this route was built and to whom the real credit goes for its construction. I was happy to find a fairly new interpretive panel honoring those immigrant workers at the end of the long outcrop cut. I was also pleased to read on that same panel the encouragement to look carefully at the outcrop how nature re-inhabits these rugged places. Outcrops are diverse habitats that support some of the first life forms to colonize an exposed area and as these colonies of mosses and lichens mature, they literally "lay the ground" on which other plants and animals can then occupy. I counted dozens of Miner Bees, a patch of Saxifrage, gardens of emergent ferns, and cascades of Mountain Laurel. 

Moss gardens

Apple Moss, Bartramia pomiformis

One more section and we'll be finished with our 2025 Walk with Spring on the York Heritage Rail Trail. I'll have to time it just right so Amos doesn't feel the heat or the crowds, but today was the perfect meandering hike for him. Soon on to the Mason Dixon Line for the finish! 

Long road cut outcrop

Notes:

Since we did this trail as a series of out-and-backs, we actually double the mileage of the trail one-way. 

AllTrails completing time is figured for biking, below. 

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

Sketchy Business: Walk with Spring 2025 Landscapes

I received a few emails after our meeting at the Natural History Society of Maryland workshop on nature journaling last week asking for more process sketches for how to do field work. Since I've been walking the whole York Heritage Trail for my PA Walk with Spring 2025 pilgrimage, I thought this might be a good time to pull up some of the work that was done on site and finished at home. Our workshop at NHSM was entirely indoors, so the group did miss out on this part of the nature sketchbook experience. It's very different from studio and museum work!

Phyllite in a road cut on the YHRT

When I go into the field to hike, backpack, or bike, I always pack a dedicated sketchbook that travels well in my backpack or daypack. I also carry a limited number of drawing implements - a small collection of earth toned colored pencils and a black ballpoint pen. This is different kit than what I carry in my adventure truck (more on that later) which serves as my studio away from home. All my materials are packaged in a double Ziplock 2 gallon freezer bag. When I get to my destination, I decide how to arrange my sketches for the day. I usually draw a few random hand-drawn frames in blue pencil or soft graphite pencil on a page. This is part of the process of committing to the work each day, kind of like making a promise I make to myself to the work of observation and later, study.  On this day, I laid out three frames on a single page - meaning I promised to stop at least three times on my hike and sketch! 

Frames with rough sketches

On this section of the YHRT I knew I would be seeing some cool rock outcrops (I love geology) and passing through an historic railroad tunnel. The trail also follows Codorus Creek the while way and I knew there'd be some bridge crossings. So I made three frames and Lo! filled all three in as I went along and I added a few extra sketches on the following page since there was so much more to gawk at. But let's stick with the three frames I started with. 

As my hike went on, I filled in each of three frames with the highlight stops of my hike. These are rough, fast, and strategic:  I look closely to determine the darkest parts of my scene. I reserve the lightest parts of a scene. I reduce the massiveness or complexity of the scene to foundational structures. In addition, I take three or four reference photos - but no more. I try to reduce the potential for becoming overwhelmed in both the sketch and the number of photos. 

Here's some secret sauce: Work fast. Turn off your brain. Look for the basics - form, shape, contour, shadow. Don't overthink it. If a scene makes you stop and go "Whoa!" - stick with that immediate response. Don't dissect what you see. Instead, draw the awe. 

If I have the time to develop a field sketch a little more, I will devote no more than twenty minutes to it. Same rule follows - if I start to bog down or make editorial decisions that threaten the Wow Factor, I stop! For this hike, I did spend some extra time at the tunnel since there was a nice wayside with a table and bench to work in. Amos took a nap. 

Howard Tunnel on site- rough color/pen

 

I stopped at the phyllite formation on the way back. The sunlight was richer, the sun lower in the sky. It looked richer than the first time I studied it. I wanted to capture that richness and the way the angled sun broke the complicated outcrop into sub-units of light and shadow. This allowed me to see how the metamorphic process of pressure and heat deformed different parts of the outcrop. I roughed in color and dark/shadow areas with pen before moving on, but neither the Howard Tunnel sketch or rock outcrop took more more than twenty minutes. I saved the rough sketch of Codorus Creek as it was, no color work. Then home and a few days later, the challenge of color began. 

Phyllite road cut

To arrive at the sketch above, I devoted a few hours to reading about the properties of phyllite which is the "in-between stage" of mudstone (sedimentary) to shale (sedimentary to metamorphic) to schist (deformed metamorphic). Phyllite is shale on its way to becoming schist. I researched the history of the railroad and the technologies used to construct the railroad and was geologists have written about these outcrops and rock types. Using layered colored pencils I build the color notes (made on site) with what I now know about phyllite mineral content, weathering, and deformation behavior. All told, that little 5" x 6" sketch might mean a whole evening of study and application. 

More secret sauce: I use gel pen in the final renderings to emphasize lines and forms in shadow. Since gel pen when wetted behaves like watercolor, it's a great medium for pulling shadows. Just a little water on a fine brush is all you need to blend the beautiful purple-gray ink over the colored pencil. 

For the Codorus Creek landscape, I worked from my reference photos as I built up my color notes. This sketch frame took far less time than my little geology sketch since I didn't need to know as much about the properties of the creek as I did for phyllite! I work with flow-y music playing as I develop the sketches at home or in camp. 

Picking up from my on-site color notes, I add umber and purple.

My light-reserved spaces receive color

I begin layering related earth tones

Very strategic gel pen - don't overdo it!

More or less finished for now.

It's so important to NOT think of your sketches as "finished" - that by their very nature of being impressions of a few minutes of awe makes this kind of art transitory and changeable. Nature is always changing, right before our eyes. Nature sketchbooks allow us to capture moments in time and to become part of the story of your time in and around nature, not the grand finale. Think of this as a practice, not a product. 

Colored pencil is one set of techniques I use in field sketching. I also use watercolor (more on that another time), again with a very limited palette of color. The tools I take into the field should be few, light weight, and easily accessible. By pre-framing a page before I head out, I have already committed to that experience. 

A "finished" page for this day's walk. 

If you'd like to join me for a field session, consider jumping into one of Lancaster Conservancy's  monthly workshops (second Sunday of the month year 'round) or I can come to you if in the Mid-Atlantic region for a group session indoors or out - preferably outdoors! April 13 is our next meet-up in Lancaster County! https://www.lancasterconservancy.org/events/