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

PA: York Iron Company Mines/ P. Joseph Raab County Park

 

As I hiked the short loop trail at P. Joseph Raab County Park in southwest York County, I imagined the sounds of this place during its time as a sprawling iron mine landscape, the voices of quarry men, who mostly likely spoke Welsh or the dialects of Northumberland and Cumbria, England. I imagined the sounds of heavy hand held star-bit drills and the clang of metal on metal as the  hammermen, who were trusted with good aim, pounded the drills into the hard Phyllite deep enough to make a blasting hole. 

Trench pit

The sounds of mules and horses whinnying was real enough coming from a farm nearby so it was easy to imagine the sounds of heavy ore wagons being pulled, thudding and creaking, over the rocky roads.  These were hand dug mines with their open pits and deep shafts that reached thick veins of heavy Hematite ore. The massiveness of mined landscape surprised me - all done by human hands. 

Milky Quartz

York Iron Company made a good bit of money off this large mine as it was a very productive site for over forty years.  Now grown over into mature Chestnut /Hickory hardwood forest the park still feels busy as if a team of mules pulling an ore wagon could come over the rise of the well-used path at any time. I imagine the smell of black powder and blasted rock and the metallic dust of the ore.  Ore delivered to York furances and foundaries during the Civil War was made into the cannons and cannon balls that roared and thundered to life at the Battle of Gettysburg and were used in the fierce atrillery engagements that followed down in Maryland and Virginia. 

Cut-Leaf Goldenrod & Green Metallic Sweat Bee

Finding big veins of quartz was an indicator of rich Hematite nearby and was often attached directly to it. It was dumped into waste heaps that line the old roads. I kicked a few chunks around and found several Hematite adhesions too small to be worth anything to the mine company but heavy in the hand, rusty black. Lying by delicate fronds of Cut-Leaf Goldenrod sat a big chunk of Milky Quartz and Amos licked a dark adhesion and immediately regretted it. The sharp metallic taste no doubt offended his finely tuned taste buds! 

Rimstones of weathered Phyllite slabs (fortress ramparts)

Amos and I ventured out to the rim of the largest pit, a deep cavernous trench that dropped a hundred feet at its deepest point from the weathered rimstones on top. It was so deep that I couldn't see the bottom from two different overlooks. The trail was faded and maybe not quite  "official" but signs of people having bushwacked up from the creek and across the wooded knoll were everywhere. 

 

Witch-Hazel

There were piles of stacked stone, spray painted outcrops, beer cans, trash. I picked up the beer cans and trash and stuffed all of into a trashbag then into my pack. The trail clung tight to the edge of the pit and Amos and I moved cautiously down, me mostly on my arse and him on his haunches, to the creekbed below. On the slide I picked up more trash but admired the fall-blooming Witch-Hazel. At bottom two American Crows swooped down to the creek and began bathe. I watched the sunlight play off their feathers as they stooped into the pools and splashed in the shallow water. There seemed to be an aura around the birds as the water flew in arcs around them in the humid air.  Such fun to watch.

Deep, steep pit! 

Overhead Crows were calling, rallying, gathering in dozens, and soon the woods were full of them. Thinking about Welsh folklore, it was easy to imagine the high cliff walls of mine behind me formed the ramparts of a castle while the Crows that perched and called over the pit became the Dinas Bran, the Fortress of Crows. In Welsh folklore Crows are the feathered prophets to the great kings and Amos the Coonhound, named for the Old Testament prophet ("Let justice rain down like rushing waters!")  may have met his Celtic cohorts if he hadn't been so oblivious to the racket being raised all around him. He along with the first two Crows to arrive continued to enjoy the creek bed while the feathered hoard decended into the pit and worked over the ground for acorns which were then raining down from the oak trees where branches bobbed from the weight of birds.    

Phyllite cliffs  (Fortress Walls)

We left the Crows to their fortress and acorn-gathering and walked up the creek until we came to a trail crossing. Floods had ripped an old open-grate fording bridge from its anchor points in the bedrock of the creek but it still served to carry hikers over the water. We walked  up the old wagon road past several open mine shafts gated now by the Pennsylvania Game Commission for the conservation of wintering Little Brown Bat colonies. Another hiker came down from the highest gated shaft and happily reported that he was the volunteer responsible for monitoring bat activity. 

Bat conservation cave (Mine shaft)

"We go in now and then and do proper counts, pick up trash people toss in and whatnot," he said. He was very proud of the fact that this particular mine shaft has been housing upwards of 130 Little Browns each winter. He thinks that number may be increasing and he was looking forward to the winter. He remembered coming to the old mines before it was a park. "Oh the fun we had here as kids!  This is where I first encountered bats and have loved them ever since." I agreed! As kids we had an abandoned sand and gravel mine near where we lived and we were always there exploring, playing, riding gravel before gravel riding was even a thing.  While we chatted, Amos was luxuriating in the spill of cold air pouring from the mine shaft. Glorious. 

Panicled Aster

A cool down for a hot hound. 

Notes: 

Jeri Jones is many years retired from York County Parks, but as a geologist and educator, his work on regional geology and industry is found on his website and in local papers. He appears frequently around the region for talks and tours. And he has a good Welsh name. 

Jones Geological Services https://jonesgeo.com/

Rock Zoom Room - (which often features my cousin Andrew "Rockhound" Eppig)  YouTube Channel (Jeri Jones) https://jonesgeo.com/zoom-rock-room/

York County Parks:  P. Joeseph Raab Park brochure  

Though some of the trail system in this park follows wide wagon roads, some of the trails are quite rocky and steep. A section of rim trail around the deep pit mine is "sort of" closed off but it is clear that many folks continue to use it, as I did.