Hike #1644: 1/26/25 Union Waterworks to Sand Beach with Peter Fleszar, Diane Reider, Kirk Rohn, Professor John DiFiore, Evan "Joe Millionaire" Van Rossum, Alyssa Lidman, Maria M., and Everen
This next hike would be another out in Pennsylvania, planned specifically because of the previous week snow fall, because I wanted to do something that was heavily road walk in case that issue persisted.
The subject of this hike would be the historic Union Canal, an old canal route that stretched from the Schuylkill River to the Susquehanna River.
The Union Canal was an 82 mile former canal that connected the Schuykill Navigation System in the vicinity of Reading PA with the Pennsylvania Canal at Middletown on the Susquehanna.
Completed in 1828, the canal had 93 locks between the two rivers rising over 180 feet in elevation.
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| Lock 6 across the creek today |
Additionally, the Union Branch Canal was constructed north to Pine Grove as a feeder and to bring coal south from the fields of western Schuylkill County.
The advent of the railroad killed the Union Canal early on, and it was shut down by 1887.
This was once an incredibly important route. Work actually began on this canal during George Washington's administration in the 1790s. In fact, Washington turned the first shovel of earth for this canal himself. He also inspected some early locks that were made in the area of Lebanon, just to the east of where we would be hiking.
The canal plan stalled for many years, and work didn't begin again until after the War of 1812.
When completed, it was the only real connection for transportation between the two rivers. Pennsylvania's Main Line of Public Works, the system of canal and rail, would originally have to make use of the Union Canal to get to the Pennsylvania Canal at Middletown from the Schuylkill.
By 1834, the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad was completed, and the Pennsylvania Canal, originally intended to terminate at Middletown, was extended south to Columbia. The Union Canal could not compete with that.
Additionally, there were drainage problems on the Union Canal. It was apparently not lined with clay properly, which was necessary for it to hold water. Without this, water would just soak into the earth in the trench.
Because it was abandoned so early on, very few photos exist of the Union Canal in service.
I have had interest in the Union Canal for years. The tunnel on the canal just outside of Lebanon is the oldest transportation tunnel in America, and so I was well aware of the route, just not what was left.
Outside of Reading, over five miles of the canal can be walked along the Tulpehocken Creek, which is very nice.
I had done that section as part of my 911 Trail series, because the Schuylkill River Trail is routed onto some of it.
As part of that series, there is a really crummy road route designated for the trail, which really is only geared toward bicycles, and so I decided I would take on the parallel route and explore the remnants of the eastern division of the Union Canal.
This turned out to be really interesting and enjoyable, and I was quite glad I chose the route. It involved doing much of Blue Marsh Lake and its trail system, because the canal was flooded through it.
West of Blue Marsh Lake, roads are often kind of close to the route, and we had a great time tracing the canal westbound. I found many lock sites that seemingly no one seems to know about.
We continued on the canal to Lebanon, and from there, took on the rail trail to the north and other routes as part of our 911 Trail series. West of Lebanon, I never got around to finishing tracing the canal.
I have been meaning to get out there and explore more of this for so many years now, and the abundance of snow still on the ground was the perfect excuse to get me out to do a segment that would be heavily focused on road walking.
This hike would turn out to be incredibly rewarding for me. I had not done the entire route just west of the Union Canal tunnel, but that was close by and I would in the near future as planned.
I'd had questions about the arrangement of locks through all of my reading. I had been looking over historic atlas maps to find answers as to what locks were where, and this had been extremely helpful in the entire eastern half of the canal, and led me to actually finding many of them.
As we headed west, some of the atlas maps no longer had the locks or numbers, so this hike forced me to look some more of this stuff up. I ended up finding older county maps that had the locks numbered, as well as some newer ones that showed them somewhat accurately along the trip.
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| Either lock 18 or 19 |
Like so many of these hikes, planning how it was going to go was part of the trouble.
I had scaled this one off multiple times in the past, but hadn't quite figured out how it was going to work out. I finally settled on a route that would take us from Union Waterworks west to a point to the north of Hershey, across from Sand Beach, and be around 15 miles.
I would plan a future hike that would cover some of the Lebanon Valley Rail Trail and such to the north and cover the Branch Canal again, with a heavier focus on that since I'd already done must of the stuff up there before.
The planning of the hike was really a "what to leave in, what to leave out" deal. I had the problem that we sometimes had to walk parallel road walks that were somewhat far away from the canal. As such, I had to choose which roads we would be walking to get across and at least see the canal during the hike. I had to decide what ways would be most logical to walk at all.
I figured on a route that gave us the better road walks, and I had to consider both canal artifact accessibility, as well as which roads would be safer for walking with the stroller.
I stressed over exactly how this hike would take shape far more than I should have had to for such a straightforward, almost all road walking trip.
I finally came up with the route I thought was best, and then had to figure out parking for the thing.
At first, I was considering starting as far east as Lebanon, and doing some greenways within town there, but that would be way too far, and would cut us off way earlier than I wanted to. Further, it was not necessarily as good for the stroller with more off road on it.
I shifted then to the west a bit, and found the parking area along the Swatara Creek at Boathouse Park.
We could shuttle east after meeting here to a point near Union Waterworks, where Water Works access on Swatara Drive would get us as close as possible to the little downtown area of Union Waterworks.
I was glad I planned this right away when we arrived. The parking area across from Sand Beach, Boathouse Park, was a sheet of ice. I chose not to drive the van into it. Some of the group had 4WD and so they'd be fine getting out later.
I knew I was going to take my van to the start for the east of carrying Ev anyway, so I just stayed on the road, and when everyone arrived, we piled as many into cars as possible.
I was surprised that so many showed up for this middle of nowhere thing, on such an obscure route.
Maria hadn't hiked with us in a while, and it was the closest thing we'd done to her for a while. Pete used to live in Union Deposit, so this was of interest to him, plus it was something substantial without being far away.
We all piled in and started heading to the start point. Most of the way we were driving to get there was not the way we would be walking, but some of it was. Kirk doesn't like to ride the ways he was walking, so he said to tell him to close his eyes when we got to those parts!
There really is no convenient way of travel between these two points, which really puts in perspective the need for travel back in the day I think.
We arrived at the Waterworks lot, which is used mostly for people paddling the Swatara Creek, which was wide at this point. Some of it was completely frozen over, but not enough that we could walk the entire thing.
I started getting the stroller together, had Ev bundled up, and let him run around in the snow for a bit.
When I finally had everything together, we walked down to the edge of the "Swatty" as it is affectionately referred sometimes, to view it.
I looked across the creek to see remnants of the old canal, and was rather shockd to see the lower walls of Lock 19. I was amazed that any of it would still be visible from so far away. I wished we could go and see it close up. It is pretty obvious on aerial images.
The numbers that had confused me so much in this area was because they were so high for being in the western division of the canal. It didn't seem possible that in such a short stretch from the first three locks west of the tunnel, which I had already seen, that there could have been a dozen more locks between, but there were! Unfortunately, I will probably never see all of these lock sites, but some are visible on roads. I hope to get to them eventually.
I planned that the stuff on the canal route that we'd not see this time, I could drive to after the hike if there was time and see.
Ev didn't want to walk far beyond the parking area. He soon got up in the stroller and I got him covered over and warm.
We headed to the east on Swatara Drive out to Ono Road, which goes north/south and crosses over the Swatara Creek. We had good views of the creek crossing the bridge here.
Once on the other side, we approached the spot where the canal used to cross the road in the community. I got one of my then and now compilations looking to the east at what was the former weigh lock site, one of the few photos remaining of canal structures in Waterworks.
The historic image was apparently taken in 1885 just about the time of the abandonment of the canal. It was no longer profitable, especially in the face of major flood damages, such as the one in 1862, and the inability to keep it holding water.
Previously, there was a small community here known as Alger, but it grew substantially when the canal was built. It had a post office, hotel, and ice house for winter harvesting from Waterworks Reservoir, which provided water to the canal at the confluence of the Swatara Creek and Cattail Run, also known as Clarke's Creek.
For years following canal abandonment, the community saw recreational use on the lake, and some bungalows were added.
The dam on the Swatara broke during Hurricane Agnes in 1972, and so ended another era of canal infrastructure as well as its second generation use that followed for nearly a century later.
Union Waterworks was home to four lift locks and the one weigh lock. The weigh lock office in the middle was moved, and reportedly still exists on private property. Lock 17 was nearer, on the east side, about at the road. Lock 18 is filled in on the west side of Ono Road, and Lock 19 is extant on private property, the one we saw from the access at the start.
There was apparently also another channel and basin further on the inland side of the canal, which didn't exist through its entire existence, but some of the maps I was finding showed it.
Just out of sight from here to the east, the branch canal broke off to follow the Swatara Creek upstream. I had not traced this really, and only touched certain bits of it until getting up to points farther north. I'd traced a good amount up in Swatara State Park. Still more to do though.
To the west, there is a driveway and a sort of foundation with a dip down. I suspect this could be the filled lock, in part being used as some of that new infrastructure, but I can't be sure.
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| Looking toward lock 20 |
We headed up the road just a bit more, and soon turned to the right on Waterworks Way, which also goes off to the left. There is an old hotel that served canal interests down there, still standing.
On a future hike, I'm planning to take that route and see more of the remaining infrastructure.
We continued on the less busy Waterworks Way to the east, and then the north, where we could see into a gully that served some of the canal with water, and then continued to Harrison Drive.
The canal continues on private property along the Swatara and passes by lock 20. I don't know if there is anything remaining of it out there, but it continues on and crosses over to Yordy's Bridge Road where it is used as a farm lane to the east, and pastures to the west at Garden Meadow Farm.
We turned right and climbed on Harrison Drive to the crest of a hill, where it opened up to a very nice view to the north and west.
It doesn't look like anything today, but this height is the former site of a Schoolhouse according to the Frederick W. Beers Atlas of Lebanon County.
A farm in view to the northwest was shown as having been that of M. Forney. The old church in Bellegrove was also in view.
We continued along this crest of a hill on the road, and pretty soon some stone ruins, the shell of an old farmhouse, came into view down in a gully directly to the north of us. The Beers Atlas showed this as having been the home of an M. Uhrich.
We had more spendid views of the farm below us to the right as we continued on the road, and then dipped down to reach the intersection with Bellegrove Road, Rt 934.
We turned right, downhill a bit, then ascended a bit into the little village of Bellegrove.
On the right, we approached the old Christ Lutheran Church in Bellegrove Pennsylvania, built about 1850 when the settlement was known as Belleview.
Google maps showed a road going out around the east side of the church, unpaved, and skirting the cemetery behind it, so we opted to take that route.
This little road was not plowed at all, but there were some tire tracks in it that made traction possible. I pushed Ev's stroller up onto it, and it was a much nicer route than the highway, just barely below it on the field edge.
We started cutting to the east a bit, below the cemetery. When we got to the end of the cemetery, the road turned ninety degrees to the north, and then skirted that.
We continued on the road until the end of the cemetery, and then it looked like the road went onto private land. I decided that we'd head up into the cemetery.
The road was used as a driveway to the east, but it actually must have been a public one, because Kirk chose to stay on it, and it turned into the back alley parallel with the main drag through Bellegrove.
We made our way west back through the cemetery along its north lane, and then along the edge of the church building.
When we came out in front of the church, there were a lot of Spanish people coming and going. I was rather surprised to see that demographic so far out into Amish and Pennsylvania German country.
We turned to the right on Bellegrove Road, but only for a short distance when Kirk signaled us that we could get on the side road behind the houses for a much more pleasant walk.
The side road took us behind the homes for a time, to near the intersection with Bellegrove Road and Blacks Bridge Road.
We crossed the road and made our way onto Blacks Bridge Road heading north.
I had looked at the route and considered walking Yordy's Bridge Road to the north, which is closed down due to a problem with the bridge.
The bridge was built about 1924, on earlier abutments of it's predecessor. There has been a bridge here since at least the mid 1800s, and named for the Yordy (Yorty) family who lived close to the bridge.
Planned replacement won't come till 2028 at the earliest, and so I figured it would be a good, safe road to walk, but it would take us way out of the way, and then we would miss other canal features. Blacks Bridge was the better route for this time.
There are some cool features out in the area that we would have to miss. The Swatara Creek turns way north, then whips back around to the south.
The Union Canal skipped some of this corner and cut across farmland to its crossing of Bellegrove Road. On the east side, it is farmed out of existence through the cultivated fields, but recognizable as an island of trees that begins out in the middle.
On the west side of the road, it is recognizable as it goes by some barns and such.
After crossing that bit of land and passing into woods, the old canal once crossed over the Swatara by way of a rather large aqueduct. Immediately after crossing over the aqueduct, it passed through Lock 21.
Lock 21 is very visible to this day over on Old Schoolhouse Drive to the west. A portion of the canal is still watered on the farm land on the lower side of the lock.
From there, the canal comes up very close to Schoolhouse Road until it eventually turns away into the edges of fields and such. It goes through some yards just before that, and is still very recognizable as a towpath.
We continued walking up Blacks Bridge Road to the north, which started leading us uphill on a very interesting road that had sort of a pitch to it.
When we got to the top, there were nice views to the north and the east. We had a really nice view up here to the Blue Mountain and Fort Indiantown Gap.
The road turned to the west and we continued along. At one point, we passed above another lovely little farm with a stone barn. The 1875 Beers Atlas showed this as having been the farm of E. Forney.
We headed past a couple more pastoral views along the road, and then dipped downhill a bit to the crossing of the Swatara Creek. This must have been the site of Blacks Bridge, but it's now a modern structure.
Once on the other side of the creek, we ascended a bit toward where the canal would have crossed.
On the left, I saw where there was a sort of farm road on a level grade going to the west. I thought this was the canal at first, but it must have been something else.
We passed by an old house on the right, which was a rather new one. This was actually where the canal crossed. We could see a bit of a ditch on the east side of the road, and the canal prism on the west.
Historically, there had been a dry dock on the canal to the west of this location, out of sight from us.
I couldn't find anything on any of the old maps showing what the other grade might have been that was closer to the creek from the canal itself. There was one older house just up from the canal on the same side as the dry dock, and I'm not sure if that one was related to the canal.
From here, we had to continue heading uphill from the canal, which continues well onto private land with no access.
We continued up through a wooded section, and the road started to shift to the west a bit.
It was a pleasant road walk, as far as road walks are concerned. Along this stretch, Pete explained to us what the different numbers mean on each of the signs. He works in management of water utilities, and so it's interesting to hear his perspective on things like this, although I already forgot how to read the signs he referred to.
We continued as Blacks Bridge Road shifted to the south, and started heading back toward the Swatara.
When we got closer, we could see a driveway heading to the east, parallel with the old canal, which was pretty recognizable where it came up to run parallel to the road.
The road turned ninety degrees to the right, parallel with the canal, which was pretty overgrown in this stretch.
Probably within view of this location was the former site of Lock 22, which the old maps showed just to the east of this turn. It was far enough down the signed driveway that I didn't want to go off exploring it at this time. We opted to continue along the road parallel to the west. This section is within East Hanover Township.
The historic maps also show that there was a store located at this lock in the past.
The canal prism looked pretty wide to the left of us at times, but it was never welcoming enough to walk.
Soon, we reached a driveway across the former canal that leads to the Swatara Watershed Association.
I had hoped that this section and its property would have more of the old canal cleared for walking, or maybe at least some sort of interpretation, but there was surprisingly little.
There was quite a good sign about the Swatara Creek, and it had just about every feature along the entire direct watershed, and even included all of the old lock sites. I noted that some of the locks were shown in incorrect locations, but it was still overall pretty good. I took several photos of it to refer to as we continued from here to the west.
The worst part of the map that I could find was that the locations of both locks 23 and 24 were totally off, and the actual lock locations were not marked correctly.
We had a nice little break at this spot, but there was a gate over the Watershed Association property, and it wasn't open at the time. I didn't really want to traipse in there.
We continued back out to the road and headed west, parallel with the canal some more.
It was a relaxing walk through the section, and I kept my eye over on the old canal.
It looked like it had been trenched out more for drainage in the section ahead.
The next cool thing we came across was a small stone culvert that carried a spring beneath the canal. It was amazing that this was still intact despite having been abandoned since the 1880s.
I looked a little closer, and saw that it seemed to be collapsed directly beneath the canal prism, but the arch at the road side of it was still good.
We continued along the road for a bit, and the canal moved off away from it just a bit. As we were walking, and probably thanks to the bit of snow cover we still had, I spotted something in my peripheral.
There was a lock. It was not where the map at the watershed association said it should be, but there was no mistaking this. I hurried into the woods and had some of the others watch Ev.
It was amazing how well preserved this lock was. Of course, for its age, I have seen many other canals with locks better preserved than this, and I've seen better preserved ones on the Union Canal as well, but I've also seen them with all lock stones completely removed and almost unrecognizable. Sometimes these stones are taken up and repurposed for houses and other buildings.
The downstream walls were in rough shape. The north lower gate pocket still had some fine cut stone on the lower portion of it, and the south one had only one block remaining.
The upper north gate pocket had some fine cut stone in place, but what made that one so special was that there was still a piece of metal protruding from the walls. This would have been to wooden sheathing to the edges of the locks. Boats would bump up against the edges of these locks, and having them wood lined protected both the boats and the lock walls from damage.
The upper south gate pocket looked rough, much like the lower one.
I kind of wonder if when the canal was enlarged, maybe only one of the original gate pockets remained, and maybe they rebuilt the other side with composite material, which would account for why it looks as it does today.
This turned out to be lock 23. There was no evidence of where the lock house had stood that I can recall, and I don't recall seeing a bypass flume. The 1860 map seems to show the lock house was across the opposite side of the road.
Some of the others came over to have a lock at the lock as well before we headed back out to the road to continue west.
We continued on along the road for a bit, an the canal looked a bit wider, probably because areas near locks were basically like parking lots for boats.
Just when I figured we wouldn't see anything of particular interest more, there was another lock, in more plain sight, below the road a bit more than the previous one.
This would have been lock 24, and I was shocked to find yet another lock in place.
I made my way downhill though some weeds to the upper end of the lock. The walls still showed their historic curvature, but they were separated between one another more than they would have been in canal days.
I climbed from the upper end of the lock along the north side, above the lock wall, and then down to the downstream entrance to the lock for a better look.
This one had more intact fine cut stone in place for certain. The lower end of the lock, complete with the curves of the stone, was in beautiful condition.
There were a couple of collapses in the walls a bit further in, but not terrible. The south side lower gate pocket was in surprisingly near perfect condition.
The lower north side gate pocket was mostly collapsed, with no fine cut stone remaining in place.
I got lots of photos of the site, and then we made our way back uphill to the road to continue west again.
I couldn't quite tell where the lock house would have stood on the 1860 map of the area, but the 1870s map showed a building that reads "canal company" on it where the lock would have been, directly to the south of the road, and that was probably the lock house associated with this lock.
From this point, the road moved on uphill away from the canal again. The canal and the creek turned off to the left a bit and were soon out of sight from the road.
We climbed a bit of a hill on the road, and there was a very nice old farm on the right side.
Historically, this was the Getz family home. Thomas Getz is noted as owner in atlas maps from both 1860 and 1875. The location leads me to believe that this farm likely used the canal for shipping.
We continued past the farm and then past newer homes and such, and reached the intersection with Lindley Murray Road, where we turned to the left and continued pretty much westward.
As we walked, we came to the crossing of Raccoon Creek.
This was the location of B. K. Fisher's sawmill on the right, and the creek was once dammed here to serve it, as shown on the 1860 Library of Congress Collection map of Lebanon County.
The Frederick W Beers Atlas of Lebanon County from 1875 shows the house belonging to J. Seltzer.
The Union Canal passed through out of sight from us to the left and undoubtedly served the mill and farm business here. In those days, the spot was known as Manada Landing.
We continued ahead on the road and ascended a bit more. This brought us out to Gravel Hill Road.
There was a nice farm directly across the intersection, which had quite a large old house at it. Historically, this was the Beam farm in the mid to late 1800s.
We turned to the left along the road heading gradually downhill. There were religious signs reading "O Love the Lord" and "Keep Thy Tongue from Evil" along the way.
Near the bottom of the hill, there was a side road to the left labeled on Google maps as Dairy Lane. This is the earlier alignment of Gravel Hill Road, which was straightened at some point in rather recent years.
This little side road was a nice walk past some farm lands and a little stream. It was historically part of the Snyder Farm.
Pretty soon, we reached the old canal, which was recognizable off to the east, and to where it crossed under the road. A house to the right was the old Snyder Farm and store site, now just a private residence, and the canal went right alongside the front of it.
Snyder's blacksmith shop was opposite, and a warehouse and scales stood along the canal just to the west.
I posted my findings on the Metrotrails facebook, and a man named Jeffrey Dove commented that he grew up in the house. He said that they used the old canal as a driveway, and that there had been a foundation for the warehouse to the west of the building, but when Gravel Hill Road was rerouted, the foundation was destroyed.
We continued walking over where the canal was, and on the south side of the house along the road. We then crossed over the current alignment of Gravel Hill Road onto Pine Road.
We could see where the canal continued on the west side of the road, in an area that must have been a bit wider, probably to serve the area of the warehouse and store.
We continued on Pine Road, and soon it opened up with a splendid view of the Swatara Creek on our left. We also had a good view back at the bridge that carries Gravel Hill Road over the creek. I wondered what the original bridge at this spot had been like.
We continued walking down the road, and I kept my eyes out into the fields to the right to see remnants of the canal bed.
The canal follows a line of trees at first, and then opens up into a wider area, where it is supposedly watered. The current conditions would not have allowed any view of any water.
Apparently, a pond has either been built, or has utilized part of the old canal on this private property. I'm not sure if it was a canal basin or just something developed later.
The area in view was the Enceminger and Gerberich farms, as well as a brick yard in the mid to late 1800s.
We continued with the creek to our left, and fields to the right, and then entered a wooded area where there were some camp areas along the creek heading east.
Near the point where we hit the tree line, the abandoned former road alignment that crossed the Swatara Creek from Pine Road to Bindnagle Church, and on into North Londonderry Twp was to the right.
This road continues on the other side as Eisenhower Road. Only the short bridge span is extant and now private on the near side to us. k
We also saw an old toilet sitting in the weeds beside the road, which I had to point out to Ev. Odd things in places they don't belong are pretty amusing at this point.
We continued along the road next to the creek, which had a few private access points, and soon came to where Pine Road turned to the right, away from the creek a bit.
We reached where the canal used to cross, getting closer to the Dauphin and Lebanon County line. To the east, there was a large purge in the towpath, but it was very recognizable.
To the west, it looked like it might have been at least partially watered a little ways to the west, and used as a private pond. There were trees planted into the towpath.
We continued on Pine Road a bit ahead, and passed the intersection with Early's Mill Road. We turned left and continued uphill a bit more to the west, through some farm and wood lands.
The road weaved around a bit, and then made a ninety degree turn to the right.
Pine Drive soon approached Laudermilch Road, Rt 743. It had been my intention to turn left on this, and head down to where the canal used to cross it.
I wanted to turn right from this onto Old Laudermilch Road, an earlier alignment that would have crossed the Swatara at a different location, from which we could head north on High Drive to Canal Road.
When I looked at Laudermilch Road, it was just way too busy. The other stuff would be more like an out and back, and wouldn't really show us much more than we would have seen otherwise.
We crossed over onto High Drive and continued to the east a bit, since that road would be safer, and we would have a better walk. We would have been adding extra miles otherwise as well.
As we turned a slight corner on High Drive, our last minute decision to adjus the route slightly paid off with the chance meeting of a man who lived on that corner.
Mr. Mark Watts, a former master welder who had retired somewhat recently, was outside working as we were walking by.
He was rather surprised to see a large group of people walking down this road, which certainly sees next to no pedestrian traffic on a regular basis.
Watts had a very interesting lawn ornament outside that looked like "Nomad" from an old episode of Star Trek, the original series. We started chatting with him and asked him what the thing was.
He explained that it was a turn of the twentieth century natural gas tank, which he rescued from likely scrapping at one of his last job sites.
I suspect the prop used in the episode of Star Trek probably was a modified one of these pieces of equipment.
Mr. Watts retired from a long career in welding in 2019, and graciously took some time out to tell us about his life, some local history, and of course his unique piece of decoration.
He explained that he had learned to weld at a young age, just things around the farm and such, but then learned to master the trade over the years and traveled the world doing these different jobs.
He went as far as to doing some underwater welding, which was quite intricate and really a master craft. He explained how he just had to do it, and it took him away for a long time, but he had to just send those checks home to take care of a family. He said his son was going to be stopping by to see him in a short while.
He was really very interested in history and explained that he had a friend down the road who had just recently purchased some of the property that had belonged to Milton Hershey, when he was just starting out.
We were of course just a little north of the town of Hershey PA, and Milton Hershey's grave is only just across the Swatara from where we were standing. I told him we'd visited Hershey's grave on previous hikes on the nearby Horse-Shoe Trail.
Milton S. Hershey was born in Derry Township where the famous chocolate manufacturer is located, but he started his life as a Mennonite farm boy who was not educated beyond fourth grade due to the farm obligations.
His family helped him become involved in confectionary, and he learned how to make caramel in Denver. He travelled the country somewhat, and had failed business attempts in the caramel industry including in NY City in the late 1800s.
Hershey founded the Lancaster Caremel Company in 1883 and found great success with it. He sold that company for one million dollars and started the Hershey Chocolate Company in 1900.
Milk chocolate at the time was something considered to be only for the rich, but Hershey strove to perfect a formula. He had plenty of milk in Lancaster County to work with, and the first Hershey Bar was produced in 1900. The first Hershey Kisses came in 1907, and Hershey bars with almonds came the following year. Hershey Chocolate became the first nationally marketed product of it’s kind.
Because Hershey and his wife could not have children, they focused on philanthropy and started the Hershey Industrial School, which controlled the majority of his assets.
Hershey died in 1945 at the age of 88, just one year after leaving the board. Due to his charitable work, he was honored with his own stamp in the Great Americans series.
Mr. Watts asked us if we were familiar with the famous Hershey Park, the theme park started by Mr. Hershey, and of course we were.
He went on to explain that the original venue had moved somewhat from where it had been originally, and that his friend had purchased this land. It had had a small scale railroad for tourists and other amusements, the ruins of which could be seen on this property.
Mr. Watts gave me a phone number to reach out to his friend, which I need to do, in order to plan a future hike and potentially visit these interesting sites.
It was really a fantastic way of connecting as we were getting down to the final portion of the hike for sure.
We said our goodbyes and made our way down High Drive a little further to the south, where we reached the intersection with Canal Road, where we turned right.
This road was far above the canal most of the time, but it was still a pleasant walk to take.
We didn't get to see the bit of it that I'd wanted to from Rt 743, but Jeffrey Dove also commented further on this one, that the lock was around 150 yards east of the highway, but that the only thing left from it was the mud sill of the floor beside the creek. Some of it was probably washed out I assume, but Dove claims that the stones were probably taken to construct a nearby barn, and that this was commonplace along the former canal route.
The crossing site was also home to a canal store as well as a hotel, and Laudermilch was the name of the proprietor of at least one or both of these establishments.
We continued along the road heading to the west from here.
On the right, soon there was a lovely farmhouse in South Hanover Twp. The 1860 map of the area show this as the farm of J Koontz.
Fortunately, the road wasn't terribly busy, because there wasn't much of a shoulder on it.
Soon, we came to a little village area. I'm not really sure what it was called because it was not coming up with any particular little name on any of the historic atlas maps.
I had been to this spot before, backpacking with Jillane way back in probably 2010 on the Horse-Shoe Trail.
On the right, Trail Road comes in to Canal Road. Trail Road is so named for the route of the Horse-Shoe Trail, where it was originally laid out through the area. It was moved in the past several years to a more off road route to the west, closer to Sand Beach, and only some of the earlier route is used for a hunting season bypass. I could see some of the painted out old yellow blazes of the trail.
The Horse-Shoe Trail in eastern Pennsylvania owes much of it’s existence to a man named Henry Woolman.
Woolman, a business man with the Supplee-Willis-Jones Company, and before the merger with the previous, General Manager of Woolman Dairies. He was a graduate and trustee for the University of Pennsylvania, and through these connections certainly would have had some some social pull.
In 1926, Woolman purchased the Cressbrook Farm in the northeastern corner of Tredyffrin Township. An avid equestrian, he would spend his free time riding the many trails through area hills.
That same year, Woolman embarked on a two week horseback riding trip through the Great Smokey Mountains, through North Carolina and eastern Tennessee along the Appalachian Trail. Between 1926 and 1930, Woolman would embark on three more trips to the Great Smokey Mountains with hopes of having the Appalachian Trail opened to equestrian as well as foot traffic.
"Gradually the idea germinated in my mind that here at home we could have a little Smoky Mountain Trail and although the depths of the valleys were in hundreds of feet rather than thousands, the colors of the sunrises and sunsets were just as gorgeous. There were ridges and ridges stretching across Chester, Berks, Lancaster, Lebanon and Dauphin counties connecting Valley Forge and the Appalachian Trail." Woolman said of the beginnings of the Horse-Shoe Trail Club.
By 1934, Woolman had ridden his favorite horse, Hackaway, along many of the woods roads, and in farther areas we explored by car.
In March of that year, he called a meeting of the University Club in Philadelphia to discuss the organization of a club that would build, mark, and maintain the trail. Many different organizations and officials from both the state and clubs attended, and appointed Woolman temporary Chairman.
The remainder of 1934 was spent locating, blazing, and blazing the trail with yellow painted horseshoes (which was later abandoned for standard paint, though occasionally an old horseshoe can be found along the trail).
"Let us work for a trail in the East, free from the automobile, without gas stations, billboards or hot dog stands on the entire length of 120 miles, dedicated as a parkway from Valley Forge to Manada Gap for hikers, riders and nature lovers." Woolman said of the new trail.
The club was officially incorporated and the trail opened in 1934-35, and it has been among the most popular trails in the southeastern portion of the state.
I first set out to hike portions of it years ago, with my first section in the Fall of 2008.
I fell in love with it immediately for its diversity. It reminded me of the Patriots Path and other oddball trails back home that I really liked, passing through whatever weird lands were available.
After doing two sections on the eastern side, I decided I would work from he west and backpack some with Jillane, and together we did most of it from St. Anthony's Wildnerness as far as the Conestoga Trail intersection.
Jillane decided she hated the trail, and never returned to do any more sections of it with me after 2011, but I continued to do more with the Metrotrails groups, and eventually completed the entire trail.
As long as it looked passable enough, my plan was to get on the abandoned older Horse-Shoe Trail route I had done with Jillane, because it descends and follows part of the old Union Canal briefly on the Hershey Farms properties to the south of us.
We continued along on the road to the west for a bit, and eventually came to the old Horse-Shoe Trail route, where a marker used to point out the turn.
We could barely still see the painted out blazes, and we headed into the fields parallel with the edges.
It was snowy, and so pushing the stroller was a bit of a chore, but not too terrible.
The trail cut into a swath of trees in a bit of a gully off of the edge of the fields. There were a few fallen trees that required some lifting of the stroller to get over them, but we manged alright.
We soon descended to the end of the gully and toward the open fields, where the now mostly overgrown Union Canal prism hugs the north side. I pointed it out to everyone as we went across it.
It was far too difficult to continue walking on or next to the canal because the area had grown in so heavily. Instead, we made our way to the south a bit more, into a plantation area where many new trees had been placed in the flood plains along the Swatara Creek. It was rather surprising that they took fields out of agriculture to do this, but good for the watershed for certain.
I was able to push Ev much more easily through the fields through the open area, and soon we were reaching the farm access lane back up to Sand Beach Road, the current route of the Horse-Shoe Trail.
We turned left here and soon crossed over the bridge across the Swatara Creek, where we could clearly see our end point at Boat House Park to the right.
I got some hands to help me lift Ev's stroller over the guide rail on the opposite side, and we walked over to the edge of the Swatara in Boat House Park. We just followed the access road along the side out to the fomer site of the original Sand Beach Road Bridge.
The road into the park was actually the original alignment of the road, and further up where we were parked, we could see where it continued to the north before connecting with the current alignment. People commented on my facebook posts about this on how they used to jump from the original bridge back in the day.
The bridge that had been here was known as the Sand Beach Covered bridge or Church Ford Covered Bridge, a Burr Arch Truss built in 1853 and rebuilt in 1906. Sadly, the bridge burned down in September 1966 only a few yeas after it had been restored by the Hershey Foundation.
We headed from here back to the edge of the creek up to the cars and loaded up to head on out.
It had been a really rewarding trip, far more than I'd expected it was going to be.
As I should have expected ahead of time, this made me want to complete my series on the Union Canal that much more. At this point, we're so close.
On the west side, there is only one more hike needed to do the last section between Sand Beach and Royalton/Middletown at the western terminus.
That is the last bit of the main canal. On the Branch Canal, the only bits I really have left to trace are from Union Waterworks north to Swatara State Park. Some of this I have already done as bits of other things, when it comes close to the rail trail, or when the trail actually switches to the canal.
I can pretty much finish all of the segments on the Branch Canal that I'd not done before in two hikes, maybe three if I want to try to get just a bit closer than I'd been on past ones. It would probably be worth doing. Some of those are especially good to do as Summer ones, so I'll be looking at that in the near future.
We got shuttled back to my van, and Kirk, Ev, and I still had just a little bit of time left before there was no sunlight left. So, we headed back out on a drive and I photographed all of the canal crossing spots that we didn't get to on the hike because I had to route to the area that was best for walking and with the most canal access points.
Included in our drive following the hike was Yordy's Bridge Road, Bellegrove Road, and School House Road. It was rewarding to see these remnants, and we could even see the lock on School House Road from the van, so it was worth it.
It will be great to complete yet another historic route.
