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/

MD Natural History Society of Maryland: Nature Journal Workshop

 

I always tell folks who attend my nature journal workshops that I promise I won't come around and look over their shoulders - and I never do - but I do watch them, their body language, posture, concentration. This time we had a workshop at the Natural History Society of Maryland in Baltimore where twenty people had gathered to work from taxidermy mounts and specimens on this breezy, drizzly, grey day. We did our timed warm-ups and took a "nature walk" around the museum with timed stops. It's important not to dwell too long on a sketch otherwise the internal editor and critic begins to slow down the works and have you doubting your very existence. "Time to move on!" I called after ten minutes at three different stops. Here we were in a museum full of animals for whom time had ended. They make nice models but movement, change, life itself was missing from our work. So we move ourselves.

Of course, in any natural history museum, I am drawn to Arctic animals and animals of the long past tundra which once covered the whole Mid-Atlantic region. I try to ignore the Polar Bear standing on hind legs towering over me but I find myself transfixed from across the room. The skeleton of the great tusked Woolly Mammoth (my favorite animal) seems to much to resist. Instead I focus on feathers and whale vertebrae and the people looking intently at their subjects. "Draw what you see," I call. "Not what you think you see. Shut off the thinking brain." 

In the 1700s Immanuel Kant challenged the notion that what we think we see and feel and know is reality. Instead, he argued, we simply perceive a reality that is structured by how we think. Our baked-in perceptions limit us and cause us to doubt the possibilities we deny ourselves. Don't think too hard, I urge them. Don't overdo it. 

Kant argued that our perceptions of time are extremely limited, so narrow that we make it all about us. We struggle with the bounds of our own egocentrism and miss 99% of the whole show. But getting lost in the sketching, in the process and not the outcome, helps to slow us down, helps us to concentrate and swirl into life on the page with pen or pencil a whole universe of life that has travelled from mitochondria to mammoth or mollusk in thirty minutes. I call time. Our "walk" has ended. They step back from their work and gasp. "Did I just do that?!" 

I therefore had to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

Immanuel Kant

PA York Heritage Rail Trail - Segments 5 & 6

 Segment # 5 - Brillhart Station to Howard Tunnel (March 2 2025) 4.5 miles O&B

16 miles to go!

A bright but colder day, Amos and I completed a 4.5 mile out-and-back starting at the YHRT parking lot at Brillhart Station to make the historic Howard Tunnel our snack break and turn around point.  As we walked past the old station house (now a private residence) and the small Brillhart trackside community, Red Tail Hawks were circling and calling over the Codorus Creek valley. Their courtship calls filled the next mile of rail trail walking and was a welcomes sign of spring on this chilly day. The tracks curved around bends ahead following the creek closely.

Amos sunning

Near an outcrop of phylite (metamorphosed shale, sand, and mudstone) the sun heated up the forested curve like a greenhouse and Amos decided to pause for a sun soaking. He does love sunning. I explored the outcrop while he warmed up and found some star bit drill tracks including a horizontal bore hole. These were made by hammering hand held drill bits into the rock that allowed for blasting sections of wall away to make room for the double rail line. The North Central Railroad (NCRR), first run in 1838, connected Baltimore with York and was a vital link for transportation and transfer of goods for over 125 years. 

Drill trace

Horizontal bore hole

This famous rail line was one of the first to radiate out from the Baltimore in a network of lines that connected Philadelphia, New York, and industrial cities during a time of capitalistic expansion in the 1830s. By mid-century, the NCRR was a busy rail corridor and a target of Confederate attacks to derail northern supply lines. As we approached the historic Howard Tunnel I could see clearly the hilltop outpost above the rail line where Federal troops maintained a cannon and guard station. 

Going through the Howard Tunnel

A fault line and a Union outpost

The brick-lined tunnel marks a place where the Martic Overthrust Fault Line can be seen as it runs nearly up against the tunnel opening and stone facade. This Alleghenian era fault line marks the crustal boundary of two continents that smashed against each other 320-million years ago, a line that runs all the way to Long Level on the Susquehanna River and across into Lancaster County. This is the fault that gives us the Wind Caves, a tectonic plate shift cave in PA, currently one of the Lancaster Conservancy's unique preserves.   

Dressed stone 

Slickensides of vertical fault line tracks

Overthrust fault boundary at tunnel entrance

This system of faults shows up in several places in York County including in Emigsville Codorus Stone Quarry near where we started this Walk with Spring. The Martic Fault runs in a SW to NE line from southern York County beyond Quarryville in Lancaster County.. It is visible in other railroad cuts as well, namely the Enola Low Grade Rail Trail across the river. It serves as clear evidence of how collisions of tectonic plates buckled, folded, and finally broke to shear up and over other masses of rock, actions that formed entire mountain ranges in the Eastern U.S. 

Vertical phylite outcrop

A cold air vent with teeth 

Original NCRR mile marker for Baltimore

After having a snack at the tunnel, reading the historical panels, and enjoying the tranquility of this preserved landscape we made our turn around. On the way back I noted a few fractures in the outcrops where deep cold air gaps appeared to have teeth of ice. Those warm outcrops of near vertical phyllite rock slowed Amos again and though he didn't sit down, he slow-walked this section to soak up as much warmth as he could. An original NCRR mile marker indicated southbound trains had another 52 miles to go before pulling into the Baltimore station.

Codorus Creek 

Sec. 5 (4 mi) yellow, Sec 6 (7 mi) green

Section #6  Seven Valleys to Howard Tunnel Out-and-Back, 7 miles

The South Branch Codorus Creek was never far from the winding path of the North Central Railroad on this section of the YHRT and to our delight it was filled with sounds of spring with Wood Frogs, Spring Peepers, and a Barred Owl sighted not far from what appeared to be a nest cavity in a sycamore along the edge of the stream. I neglected to bring my binoculars but if I squinted hard enough I was able to see the bobble head of an owlet inside as she shifted back and forth to look back at me and the dog.

South from the Howard Tunnel

We're starting to make friends with the regular walkers and riders of the trail as we recognize each other along the way. Today a bicyclist stopped to ask how far we've come so far and I figured we're at or just past the half-way point over these past few weeks of out-and-backs. He rides the entire trail every week (40+ miles) and so has been the one to call out "Amos!" on his way by. 

Fine quartzite with embedded biotite crystals

Tiny little things

 

Several outcrops of phyllite, quartzite, and schist frame the railroad cut through the woods and while there is some folding and faulting, not as dramatic as Section 5 (above). The biotite crystals were cool though! In a little hillside springhead green grass and bright yellow-green watercress blanketed the ground adding a splash of color to the otherwise earthy brown hillside of dead leaves and bare woodlands.

Glatfelter Station 

The original 1750s Glatfelter farmhouse marks the nearby crossroads where the Glatfelter Station once stood, an important local stop for this valley full of farms that delivered dairy products north and south on the freight trains. The creek meandered all across the wide valley and with so many oxbow ponds tracing older channels of the stream, it seemed all there was to hear was Wood Frogs and Spring Peepers in all their courting songs. 

Broad valley hemmed by Antietam Quartzite ridges

Seven Valleys park and rail trail access

Amos let me know many times on this section that I'd forgotten both his water and his little bag of kibble treats. When we arrived back at the Seven Valleys parking area he put on a dramatic show of needing to get to his forgotten treasure by yowling at the bike sculptures. No time for pictures, just get him to the truck!