PA Horse Shoe Trail: Brecknock Loop West

 #37 2022 52-Hike Challenge: Horse Shoe Trail - Brecknock Loop West, 5 mi 

I returned to the Brecknock Township Building and Police Station and pulled into the designated HST parking space as I had two days ago. I came back to complete the loop I'd cut short, this time hiking west to complete the full ten mile loop I had originally planned, adding the final five miles. Turning towards the low sun on the ridge, I hiked up and down a series of hills and stream valleys until reaching the next parking area on New Holland Road (Rt 625) where officially completed Map 4. Yay! 

Alleghany Meetinghouse, 1855

Before I started my hike for the day, I stopped by the Alleghany Mennonite Meetinghouse built in 1855. The Meeting was formed in 1754 and until the meeting house was built a hundred years later, the German Mennonite settlers gathered for Sunday worship in each other's homes, much as the Amish do today. A log cabin meetinghouse existed here before the stone structure and was shared in worship by three German/Swiss denominations in the valley, the Mennonites, Reformed, and Lutherans. The structure is made of the beautiful red sandstone common to this section of the Iron Hills. This structure is the oldest originally furnished Mennonite meetinghouses in the country.  Stopping here first helped me frame today's hike as a remembrance of the German and Lenni Lenape families who lived peacefully together here for nearly two hundred years, sharing resources, abundant game, farming land, and skills among them. It was one of the few Pennsylvania valleys in the great curve of the Appalachian range where peace persisted among native and immigrant people for so long. 

Charcoal Hearth Road

Unlike my loop hike to the east, this section was free of game cameras, CCTV, and any warning signs save for one property owner who seemed hell-bent on spray painting every tree with purple that bordered the HST. I met a dog walker whose big pup was decked out in blaze orange. He called these next few days "the quiet before the storm" when, come the Saturday after Thanksgiving, firearms season for Whitetail Deer begins and runs for 10 days. 

Blackhaw, Viburnum prunifolium 

American Beech, Fagus grandifolia

Signs of deer are everywhere. Buck rubs and scrapes lined the trail, as do tree stands and hunting platforms. Hunters know that deer follow hiking trails as will Black Bear, Coyote, and Red Fox. I can't count the times I've met Whitetail coming the other way on backpacking trails. Out west in 2016, my son and I had to stand aside while a huge bull Moose ambled down the trail, only to decide he really liked it more for sleeping! As he bedded down right in the treadway, we had to turn back - there was no safe way around him. 

Whitetail Deer buck rub on Red Cedar

Aside from a single evergreen American Holly, the woods were thick with green patches of non-native privet and bush honeysuckle. These bushy shrubs covered south facing slopes so that nothing else seemed able to grow beneath.  I even found a non-native fungus growing even in the cold on the cut end of a rotting log.  All other trees and shrubs are bare of leaves now and the thick carpet of loud, crunchy leaves hid plenty of rocks and cobbles to slip and trip on. 

Red Sandstone

Asian Beauty, Radulodon copelandii

It's hard to photograph old charcoal hearth sites so I didn't bother, but I counted 11 just along the trail and the network of wagon roads was impressive. Lime kilns for agriculture and iron furnaces and forges required tons of hardwood charcoal for fuel for nearly two hundred years. Colliers and their helpers were often indentured immigrant workers and before 1780 in Pennsylvania, African slaves. The Allegheny Valley was a known route for Freedom Seekers on their way to Reading and the nearby Joanna Furnace was an important employer of Free Black and former enslaved people. 

Deer hunters build platforms right over the HST

This platform was once a tollbooth

The trail eventually becomes a gravel road that runs another mile to a main road, my turn around spot for this loop. Cabins and hunting camps line the road. In a few days they will  be full of hunters for the week. I'll take another break from the HST until mid-winter and return to walk again as I make my way, one loop or out-and-back day hike at a time, northwest to the terminus with the Appalachian Trail. 

Alleghany Valley - the HST runs across the ridge in the distance

Notes:

The Alleghany (original spelling) Mennonite Meetinghouse does not maintain a web site or internet presence but more information about upcoming events (like the Christmas Carol Singings) can be had by emailing/leave a message at  leidcountry@outlook.com (717-305-0231 or jgsen@windstream.net (717-278-8459). Two informative brochures are offered on the front (women's) door of the meetinghouse. This is still an active church, so please no visits on Sundays - and mind the horses.