#41 2022 52-Hike Challenge: Palmer State Park, Iron Works & Flint Mills Trails - 4.5 mi.
Amos and I hiked almost five miles at Palmer State Park as we walked the Flint Mill, Iron Works, and Hornbeam Trail up and over and around this very undulating landscape. We stopped to stare down into the flint (quartz) quarries and explored the flint mill ruins on Deer Creek. I found an arborglyph I hadn't noticed before and wondered at its age. It definitely was not recently done and compared to others I've documented on American Beech in the southern PA/ northern MD area, it looked old.
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| Arborglyph |
I documented the glyph with a photograph and GPS coordinates in case it should have any historical value. Archeologists are racing to record these kinds of markings in the west as important artifacts of the Basque culture when shepherds carved trees from the 1890s through the 1930s. They are hurrying because Aspen trees do not live beyond a hundred years. Seeing this deer on skis, a vivifact - an artifact created on a living thing, reminded me of a Seneca arborglyph I saw in Western PA of a deer on skis that dated from the 1940s. It was carved into the inner bark of a Birch tree but the tree had died so the owner of the property has tried to preserve the wood.
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| Ruin of the Husband Flint Mill come into view |
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| Surviving twin furnace |
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| Mill race and wheel pit |
This is one of my favorite local parks and so I've posted before on Palmer State Park. It's just a few miles south of the Mason Dixon Line in Maryland and only a 25 minute drive from home. It's also one of the most important pieces of the northern Maryland forest that creates connectivity and corridors for all kinds of wildlife, especially interior woodland birds, reptiles, and mammals. But a hundred years ago this landscape would have been just beginning its recovery from its long industrial use. Today it is mature Oak, Hickory, Poplar, and Beech forest but in no way is it old growth.
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| Spring seep and its emergent stream |
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| Deer Creek |
As we swung up the hill from our exploration of the flint mill ruins, I noticed another trail that continued below us along the creek bank. I'll have to come back and follow that path up to the old bridge and find the ruins of the Deer Creek Iron Works Forge. With the deep quartz quarries to our right we looped around on the Iron Works Trail and were stopped in our tracks by a coyote trotting across the rim of the pit across from us. Amos made such a fuss! Lordy.
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| To the quarries! |
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| Super deep quartz quarry |
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| Coyote (not visible here) was running the opposite rim |
As Amos was losing his mind and the coyote long gone, a group of Turkeys swept over the pit on dark wings and glided downhill to a place they felt safe from wild and domestic dogs. Back to hiking and on on the Hornbeam Trail towards the parking area, we met with a loudly talking couple who I've seen out here before. They stopped to pet Amos. "We never see anything!" laughed the nice lady with her Scooby Doo water bottle as I told her about our encounters. She was convinced that Amos is not a coonhound but an undocked Doberman. I didn't argue, but her husband reminded her that Dobermans don't have those huge jowls and four neck rolls.
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| 1858 Map of Harford County: Husbands Flint Mill and Deer Creek Iron Works |
Notes:
The ecological and forestry study for this new park determined that the Palmer tract serves as a hub for interconnected forest corridor which is considered critical habitat. See: https://dnr.maryland.gov/publiclands/Documents/PalmerLandPlan2012.pdf
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