PA Hellam Hills Preserve: A Guided Hike

 #32 2022 52-Hike Challenge: Scout/Prep/Guided Hike - 9 miles

I'm including this one "work hike" for 2022 just because it represents what goes into offering a guided hike for the public. I've guided hikes my whole career in conservation education and interpretation and the plan is pretty much the same: a pre-hike scouting trip to make sure the trail is safe and clear, brush-up on natural history and human history to share with participants, and the admin that goes along with it (a team effort). So having hiked the route twice, once for prep (4.5 miles) and once with participants (4.5 miles), it is now a sample of a guided hike for this year. Off we go...

Bluffs over the Susquehanna 

The Hellam Hills area of North-Eastern York County, PA, is one of several very rugged regions of the county that includes this excellent nature preserve owned and managed by the Lancaster Conservancy. Jeri Jones has written a nice piece about the geology of Hellam Hills, see Notes. The standout areas of this preserve are geological gems like the great bluffs above the Susquehanna, the steep-creek ravines of Wildcat and Dugan Runs, and the dome-like Buzzards Roost.

Mason Dixon Trail blue blaze

When I scout a hike I look for seasonal things that may only be observed during the time of our hike. I spent some time nosing around for fall breeding salamanders and found just the place to share with my group the next day. Of course the colors were a-m-a-z-i-n-g. And, with leaves dropping steadily now we can begin to see further into the woods to observe some of the oldest trees and charcoal hearths. 

An old road is part of our trail to the river and back

I want to give Travis, the preserve manager, a huge shout-out for getting the trails cleared of leaves with his trusty backpack blower! He was moving just ahead of me as I scouted our route for the next day. It was great to have the leaves moved off the really rocky sections of the MDT so my group was able to navigate around all the ankle-twisters and steps. 

An old Witch-Hazel growing on the edge of the check dam

Several trails cross the preserve including a section of the long-distance Mason Dixon Trail that is being re-routed off roads to the wooded hills here. The preserve holds several historical gems as well, including an old quarry site and roads integral to the operations of the Codorus Iron Furnace. The furnace is still standing and can be found up Furnace Road from the preserve on the south side of Codorus Creek.

Wet-foot crossing at a Marietta Gravity Water Company check dam

The Marietta  Gravity Water Company once managed Wildcat Run impoundments for water supply that was piped under the river to the town of Marietta across the river in Lancaster County. The tumbling waters of the ravine creek were quite a tourist attraction and people would take a ferry to the Hellam Hills shores to climb rickety steps to the falls there and have lunch. To reach the falls today, it is quite a climb up or down the ravine (which is not on our agenda for this hike) but it was completely doable by ferry boat and a system of docks, decks, and stairs accessible only from the river. A tourist hotel and restaurant were built into the cliffs. All of it was burned in fire in the 1920s and never replaced. 

Wildcat Falls - rickety bridge and stairs - oof! Photo: Cleon Bernteizel 

Lunch on the deck at the base of the falls.  Cleon Bernteizel

Post card for the Wild Cat Ferry

Though the Codorus Iron Furnace (1765) is not on Lancaster Conservancy property it is easily visited just up the road. Reconstructed and cared for by the Conservation Society of York County, the furnace structure that remains is but a small part of a much larger iron industry complex that existed on this landscape including the quarries, ore pits, and tailings mounds that the MDT weaves through before coming to River Road, the turn-around point for one wing of our Y-hike. Across the road at this point will be one of Pennsylvania's newest parks, Susquehanna Riverlands State Park. 

Quarry rim trail that connects to the MDT

When our group hiked this section the next day, we spent some time calculating the age of the trees that grew along the deepest edge of the ore pit to discover when this quarry was closed. They nailed it - 150 years ago the largest of these Red Oaks began to grow, and our local historian and Volunteer Land Stewart Mike confirmed their findings that yes, the iron furnace shut down in the late 1860s. 

A dark phase Red-Backed Salamander - don't touch!

As we hiked near the place I'd found a dark phase Red-Backed Salamander the day before (above), I invited a young hiker to help me carefully lift some old stacked and rotting firewood to see if we could find another. And luckily we did! A beautiful little female Red-Backed Salamander with a rusty red racing stripe down her back allowed me to scoop her up on a tuft of soil so that I did not accidently touch her skin. This species is one of the lungless salamanders and they breathe through their skin so touching her would surely damage her soft, damp skin. I showed the young hiker how to lift the salamander and hold her safely on the little mound of leaf litter and soil in my hand. Everyone got pictures (except me) and we gently placed her under the log with the help of Volunteer Land Steward Brad who made sure the old firewood went exactly back into its leafy nest just as he had found it. 

Trace fossils of Annelid worms, 540-580 million years old

I alerted the group to the type of rocks we were walking on as we wobbled back across the top of Wildcat Run heading down the second branch of our Y hike. I explained we were walking on an old beach from Cretaceous times, 540+ million years ago when this area was covered by a shallow sea. Sand bars, beaches, sand shoals, and marsh sediments became sandstones and quartzites and some of it contains trace fossils of invertebrate burrows like Annelid marine worms common to that ancient environment. Soon we came upon a beautiful Skolithos linearis fossil that I had set aside on the white blazed trail along the ravine creek that showed clearly dozens of straight burrows that had filled with fine sediments. 

Main impoundment dam of the Marietta Gravity Water Company

Old NO TRESPASSING sign (reposted recently)

Travis had blown the leaves off the white blazed trail that took us down to the remains of the breached dam so it looked like a green carpet, easy underfoot compared to the rocky MDT. The trail passes right through a large charcoal hearth pit and I pointed out its features so the hikers could find them on their own. Figuring it took an acre of hardwood charcoal to keep a furnace in blast for one day, we tried to imagine this landscape as it must have looked in the 1840s - cut over and desolate, its forest reduced to carbonized chunks of Oak, Hickory, Maple, and Chestnut. The forest here has completely recovered, minus the Chestnut, so it took some imagination to picture the smoke-filled air, dirty colliers, and the teamsters driving their horses hauling wagonloads of fuel to the furnace up this steep road.

A bluff view of the Susquehanna

Finally we reached the bluff at our end point for this branch of our Y-hike. Everyone had a good long look at the river and excellent peak of fall colors across the River Hills. I explained how these bluffs act as the sides of a wind tunnel to funnel fall migrating waterfowl like Tundra Swans at night and Hawks and Eagles during the day. The Susquehanna Valley is a major flyway for birds migrating out of New England, New York, and Canada from August through December and IMHO these bluffs are every bit as exciting to hawk watch from as the venerable Hawk Mountain north of Reading, PA.

Scouting assistant, Amos 

Notes:

Lancaster Conservancy's Hellam Hills Preserve is open to deer hunting Please wear blaze orange and keep dogs on leash as hunters are in the forest in autumn through winter. The hunting map shows areas that are for archery and mixed hunting. It is also a good map to use for finding the trails, several of which are still under development including the re-route of the MDT.  

Jeri Jones, geologist and excellent interpreter of all things rock in York County, has this excellent article about Hellam Hills and other rugged lil' mountainous places nearby. https://www.ydr.com/story/opinion/2019/05/30/can-you-name-some-mountains-and-hills-york-county-part-2/1288959001/ 

For more Wild Cat Falls tourist photos check out Extraordinary Stories blog post here: https://lifewithldub.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-york-county-wildcat-falls-story.html

Codorus Iron Furnace is preserved and cared for by the Conservation Society of York County.