Hike #1271; Doylestown South Area

Hike #1271; Doylestown South Area

11/9/19 Doylestown Area: Barn Plaza/Edison to Peace Valley Park with Justin Gurbisz, Shane Blische, Lyz Abeth, Ric Giantisco, John DiFiore, Kevin Kowalick, and Carolyn Gockel Gordon

This next hike would be the next in my continuing Neshaminy Creek series. This would cover the last section of the main creek before it branches off into much smaller branches.

Neshaminy Creek from Barn Plaza

We had left off in the Neshaminy series at the Barn Plaza just south of Doylestown PA, after having started down along the Little Neshaminy Creek. At this point, much of the series is going to be bits here and there tracing the smaller tributaries. Typically, I’d start the hikes in a series like this at the head waters and go down stream, so this was the first one where we started at the upper end, which I think worked well in this case. There are so many substantial tributaries that it made it a bit easier to put together.

Barn Plaza

I still have more to do on the Little Neshaminy, and we had covered a few creeks but the plan for this hike gave me many different options of where I could have it end up. I finally settled on Peace Valley Park and Lake Galena. There is a trail all the way around it and a few connectors so that would help us to connect up to future trips. Plus, I had always wanted to hike it. When I first joined Appalachian Mountain Club in 2004, there were a lot of hikes posted there. It’s a nice easy loop, but I had never connected it with anything. It’s kind of odd that I had never connected anything still.

Neshaminy bridge

The lake is fed by the North Branch of the Neshaminy Creek. The area seemed perfect for us to have our ending.

Under Rt 611

I came up with a route that I thought looked really interesting, and actually easier than some of the previous ones, and set the meeting point as Peace Valley Park’s Pavilion #5 lot.
When we arrived, there was a park ranger talking to a guy down at a pavilion below us. I didn’t know if it was a rented thing or what. The lot did have a gate on it, and while I intended to be done by dark, I just wasn’t sure about it.
The ranger came over to say hello before moving on, and asked us what we were doing. I told him about our hike, and how this was part of the series on the Neshaminy Creek.

Neshaminy Creek

He seemed genuinely interested in what we were doing, and I asked him about the timing for the closing of the gates.
Rather than have a problem, he recommended that we move cars to the next lot down, which is open 24 hours. I told him that if we were slightly after dark, that it wouldn’t be all that much more (and turned out to be pretty spot on accurate too).
Once everyone had moved their cars to this lot, we all piled into my van and headed to our start point, where we had left off the last time at Barn Plaza a little to the south of Doylestown.

Neshaminy Creek view

We started walking from the cars out around the south side of the store fronts, back the direction we had come from the previous time, in order to walk behind the buildings.

Mail box and weeds

I had seen via aerial images that we’d have views of the Neshaminy Creek from behind the place.
There was a retention pond, and then we could see the creek pretty well. There was one way to get down to it if we wanted, by climbing through a retention pond thing, but it did not look inviting. We opted to just remain along the parking area headed north.
The Barn Plaza was apparently an old farmstead at one time. There is a stone silo in front of a movie theater section of it, which I believe dates back to the original farm, but I’ve gotten no for sure information about it.

Neshaminy Creek

We continued to the end of the plaza, and then started to make our way down to the Neshaminy Creek sort of off trail. There was a tiny herd path that led down to the edge. We turned left to follow the edge of it toward the Rt 611 bridge. It was my hope that we could just walk under the thing.
We did just that. The section of it we walked was separated from the watered area by a pier. We then climbed up to the bridge level and crossed the Neshaminy on that. Once on the other side, we walked through a parking lot to the left, where there was an old mail box standing in the high weeds.

Along the Neshaminy

I realized pretty quickly that we could probably just climb down the hill from here and get right along the edge of the creek again. I was thinking it would be all road walk for the section.
We did just that, and emerged at the edge of the creek where it was clear enough to continue walking up stream.
We followed along, and there was a handsome Sycamore that had fallen and continued to grow vertically despite it’s laying on it’s side.
We soon came to a former bridge site, where we could see an abutment to the right.

Neshaminy

I had been to this area before. Actually, the first time I had seen it was during the day of Lyz and Ric’s wedding reception. I overshot the site and had to turn around, and chose the spot where the bridge used to be to turn it around. To my surprise, there were still trolley tracks leading right up to the site. I was rather blown away that they were still there, just leading to nowhere. I was so interested that I had to get out and have a photo of it. I didn’t give it a whole lot more thought until one more day a bit more recently, Shane and I were driving around and doing some scouting for this very hike.

Bridge Point Bridge site

We scouted much of the route we would be following between the last couple of them in the series out to the Doylestown Central Park, and in doing so we stopped at the bridge point again.
As a matter of fact, that is the original name of the settlement: Bridge Point.
The area was established as a settlement before the American Revolution, and there was an old wooden bridge at the point until 1800, when a handsome seven arch stone bridge was erected across at this point.

When we approached the site of the former bridge, I could seed the remains of a bit of an arch, but I figured this was a structural thing like the covered bridge I’d seen by Newtown.

Bridge Point Bridge ruin

It turns out the remaining curve of an arch was all that remains of the first of the seven stone arches.
The village of Bridge Point was renamed “Edison” around 1880, probably in honor of Thomas Edison because he had just invented the light bulb. He was already gaining popularity, as he had perfected the phonograph in 1877.
The trolley line was built on and shared the bridge for a number of years. I think the bridge remained in use until around 1930, when the current alignment of what is now Route 611 was completed just to the east.

Old Bridge Point

The bridge was abandoned for a few years before it was finally demolished. Today, the land adjacent to the bridge is Bridge Point Park along the Neshaminy Creek.

Bridge Point Park

We climbed up the right side of the bridge abutment to reach Edison Road through some weeds, and checked out the old trolley tracks still up to the bridge site.
We then turned right, and then left down hill back into the grass of Bridge Point Park to followed the Neshaminy Creek up stream a bit more.
Off to the right, the old Blacksmith and Wheelwright shop, built in the 1800s, is now part of the park and handsomely restored. We checked that out and continued beyond.

Blacksmith and Wheelwright shop\

There was a sign about the Neshaminy Creek watershed at the entrance to the park, and a bit of a path. We continued from the end of the park back to Edison Road.

Creek view

We turned left on Edison Road and crossed over a small tributary with a busted old foot bridge off to the right. Some adjacent buildings might have been old mill structures.
We reached the intersection with Quarry Road where there was a collection of handsome historic homes, and turned to the left up hill.
We followed the road past the quarry entrance to the right, and then headed down to the intersection with Turk Road. I wasn’t really paying enough attention to my own plan at this point, because I intended to go left.

Old stone homes

My plan was to take Turk Road to a right turn on Wells Road, and then reach the Doylestown Trail System, but I had forgotten.
It actually worked out better, because the way we ended up going was more interesting with what we’d seen, and gave us some more trail time.
We turned right on Turk Road, and then climbed a bit of a slope up to the edge of a development, which was separated from the road by a hill and some evergreen trees. We followed this hill top to Rolling Hill Blvd where we turned to the right. The first paved trail bit was directly across the street.

Neshaminy Watershed sign

This was adjacent to Kutz Elementary School. We turned to the left parallel closely with Rolling Hills Blvd, and eventually the trail crossed the road to the left and made it’s way in toward the Doylestown Central Park.
This is actually a pretty extensive trail system, and I see a lot of opportunities for more hikes in this series connecting these bits together that we haven’t used.
We followed the trail into the woods and turned left at the first split. We then continued to a scenic little retention pond straight ahead. It actually looked natural or like an old farm pond.

Doylestown Central Park

While looking at the pond, a lady walking her dog came up to us and asked “Is this a group”, to which we responded we were.
I told her Metrotrails when she asked, and she said “Oh...I haven’t heard of that one! I thought you were going to say AMC or something!”.
I laughed and told her I was booted out of AMC, which has become somewhat of a term of endearment I suppose these days.
At least Shane and I looked quite out of the ordinary, because I was wearing a blazer, and he was wearing I think a bow tie and a hat and trench coat.

Retention Pond view

We turned to the left to follow around the pond to the south. These trails were all paved, but there were other unpaved ones that went off to the left as well.

Central Park

I was thinking there probably is a trail that connects in from Turk Road further back, but I didn’t even consider going and looking for it before, or even now.
We continued walking around the pond area to the left, in a trail that left it’s edge and went down along a small Neshaminy tributary to the left.
Doylestown Central Park is pretty big, I forget how many acres off the top of my head. It was originally all property of Delaware Valley University, but they sold it off to a developer.

Bridge in Central Park

The town purchased the land from the developer in 1991, and set up the park that would incorporate much of the natural landscape as well as ball fields and such. It officially opened in 1995.
We continued on the trail until it took us over a foot bridge, and then to the amazing four story “Kids Castle” on our left.
Everyone had apparently heard of this place but me. Shane said he used to play there when he was a kid, and Lyz said she used to hang out there when she was a teenager or something and do truant teenage goof off things.

Kids Castle

The Kids Castle is one of the most incredible kids playgrounds I’ve seen. Rarely do you see one that is this tall, and looks this fun. We all wanted to go in.

Native American memorial

The signs on the thing said it as not for anyone under the age of 12, and it had cameras attached to it, but it didn’t matter because it was closed for renovations anyway.
The thing was built in 1997, and most playgrounds actually have a shelf life of twenty years. They’re supposed to be ripped up and replaced by that time, but something as unique as the Kids Castle cannot be simply replaced.
Older playgrounds were built with pressure treated wood which is carcinogenic, or they say it is, and they’re worried about a kid getting a splinter or something.

On the trail system

Apparently a lot of the pressure treated wood on the thing had to be replaced. I suppose if it was just the government agency, they might have just ripped it down.

Trail system

In this case, they started a non profit or something, and it has it’s own board of directors and grants and such. It looks like the Kids Castle is going to be saved, despite it being closed. There were parents walking over with disappointed looking kids.
They had a smaller playground thing next to it, and signs saying “Build the Kingdom” of more playgrounds apparently. It looked by one of the signs that they were going to replace Kids Castle with one of those dumb things, but then I noticed that the one it said they were going to build on the sign was already built to our right.

Neshaminy

We continued up hill from the Kids Castle through the Central Park and it’s open areas. It took us out toward an access road, and we headed over to a picnic pavilion.
The thing even had a fireplace in it, as well as roll down drapes that could be used to keep it heated. This is certainly a well-to-do area to have such things.
We left the paved path here to take a shortcut across the open grassy field to the west, and soon came out to Wells Road where we turned right along the paved path to the east a bit. There was then a crossing of the road where the trail went down hill past some houses.

Neshaminy Creek

We had one of those white fences on the left, which Justin and I call recycling bin fences because they’re perfect for putting beer bottles in for people to find in fifty years.
The trail continued along the apartment buildings and near the dead end of Flint Circle and Sunrise Drive. It then moved off from them and came close to the Neshaminy Creek again, within some open fields.
There were some wetlands to the right, I guess a retention pond or something, and while I was taking creek photos, Shane and Justin pulled some cattail plants out.

Big Sycamore

They were trying to light the things on fire, but it wasn’t working, so instead they started beating the bejesus out of them. Shane realized they smashed pretty well.

Central Park connection

For a while, they fell behind because they were beating the things into the paved trail. Ahead, there was another paved trail that came in from the development on the right, and a lady walking her dog looked at us, and just turned right around and started walking back up toward the houses again.
They had the entire pavement covered in a white mess that looked like they were doing antiquing.
Lyz, Ric, and I moved on ahead, and the others eventually caught back up with us.

On the trail

The trail left the open area for a bit and went through a very nice wooded swath along the Neshaminy Creek. Quite a pleasant area.
We emerged into another area with fields, and came upon a park bench with a view into a meadow.
This was an interesting spot, because the bench had a painter’s pallet built into the right side of it. Someone can just sit at this bench with a steady pallet and draw or paint on whatever the media is they’re using at this point. I’d never seen anything like it before. The others caught up with us here, and we continued further on.

On the trail

The trail had another connection to the right into the development, and we skirted more woods in an open area until the trail started going slightly up hill and crossed a small bridge.
It headed up hill and passed along the parking lot for a sort of doctors park kind of office building.
We followed the same trail on a bit, and it goes around apartments to the right, but there was another narrower paved trail going in front of the apartments out to the entrance road and out to Lower State Road. The trail continues out to the Rt 202 Parkway Trail.

Art bench

I had considered remaining on that trail, because we were going to go to the Rt 202 Parkway Trail, but I didn’t want to miss seeing more of the Neshaminy Creek, which we could do of we’d just cover a bit more road walk.
We headed through the parking area, and there was a giant pink dumpster there with the words “Trash Daddy” on it, which was rather funny looking.
We turned to the left on Lower State Road, which was more busy than I’d have liked it to be for what we were doing.

Trash Daddy

Lower State Road brought us to the intersection of Almshouse Road, and straight ahead the road also changes names to Almshouse Road.
This didn’t make any sense to me at all at first.
We turned to the left to cross the Neshaminy Creek and get the views on the Almshouse Road bridge. This little settlement area is known as Castle Valley.
A short distance down, we turned to the right into Castle Valley Park, a small park that commemorates the former site of the Castle Valley Covered Bridge, once the longest covered bridge in Bucks County.

Neshaminy Creek in Castle Valley

There was a large sign with a painting of the bridge on it at the parking area.
Just into the woods along the creek was the former site of the covered bridge, which was three spans long for a distance of 483 total feet.
It doesn’t look today like a three span bridge would have been needed at this site, but historic photos of the bridge show that the creek was much wider.
There must have been an old mill and dam somewhere in this area for it to be so much wider.

Castle Valley Covered Bridge historic image

The bridge was demolished in 1930. Looking at the map, one can see how Almshouse Road used to continue more directly on through, when the covered bridge was there.

Covered bridge historic marker

I could see no sign of the far abutments or any of the piers. There was a natural rock outcropping in the creek below that I at first thought was part of an old dam, but wasn’t.
I climbed down along the side, and all that I could find remaining was a very badly deteriorating east abutment to the bridge. There were nice steps down to the creek on the north end of the park, and a little looping trail.
We turned to the right and headed back the way we had come, only this time on the trail.

Covered bridge site

When we got back closer to the newer bridge over the Neshaminy, we climbed up and crossed, then turned to the left on Almshouse Road heading west.
There was a nice old house I noticed back a long driveway to the right of the road, which kind of looked abandoned, but I’m not sure.
We made a corner where there was an old stone house, and then reached the Rt 202 underpass. We walked beneath, and then turned to the right to climb up the embankment.

Castle Valley Park

In this area, the Route 202 Parkway Trail travels from Doylestown area down to the area of Montgomeryville.

Former covered bridge site

It’s a wide, paved multi use trail that doesn’t always follow right on the highway, but veers off a bit so it doesn’t suck.
We turned to the left to follow the trail along the highway, and after a little bit it turned away from the traffic. This section was alright.
We continued over a bit of a knoll, then down hill to where Rt 202 crosses Neshaminy Creek and the trail comes back in to the road. Just before this, the Neshaminy Creek Greenway trail breaks off to the right, more of the Doylestown area trail system.
This trail was also paved, but was nicely situated along the Neshaminy Creek heading west.

Neshaminy bridge

I watched my Google maps through this area with the bicycle function on, which shows a lot of the trails pretty well. In this section, it showed the trail ending when we got to Upper State Road, from which point we’d go with my plan moving ahead.

An old house back a long lane

To my surprise, the trail did not end. It turned to the right parallel with Upper State Road, crossed the entrance roads to a sewer plant, and then passed along the edge of some ball fields where there was some active sports going on and tons of people parked.
The trail turned at the end of the fields and crossed over Upper State Road, turned right to follow it on the other side and crossed Teal Drive. It then turned inland a bit more and skirted the edge of the Beulah Cemetery with signs saying to stay on the trail.

Old home along Almshouse Road

Lyz said something about having hung out at this point too when she was going to school nearby.
We cut away from the paved trail at this point to walk through the cemetery to the north.|The Beulah Cemetery was established in 1882, and there was a lovely old chapel building known as Beulah Chapel in the middle of it. I assume that was built around the same time as the beginning of the cemetery.
There was some controversy I understand around this place, because there was a cemetery in a square in the middle of Montgomeryville or something, and all of the graves were dug up and added to this site because they wanted to develop something there.

Beulah Chapel

We continued through the cemetery and then turned to the right after the chapel to realize that the trail we were following actually followed the edge of the cemetery to this next road as well, another section of Almshouse Road, which turns into Tamenend Road just a little ahead.

Rt 202 Parkway Trail

The trail turned right across the road just ahead, and then crossed Cook’s Run on a foot bridge right next to the road bridge. We crossed this, and then turned away from the trail and the road onto Aarons Ave heading to the southwest.
A sign read that this was a “Loop Road” with an interesting sign. I was looking for an access off of this to the Wilma Quinlan Nature Preserve, which brings us once again along the edge of the Neshaminy Creek.
After passing a lot of homes, the first trail leading down into the preserve was on the left, just after a yard. We headed down it, which skirted the boundary markers all the way to the Neshaminy Creek, at a little bend.

View along the Parkway trail

There are a few islands and such in this area, as the flood plain starts to get a bit wider. The confluence with the Cook’s Run is right in this area as well. There was a bench and clearing across form the confluence, which led me to believe there might have been a way to get through from way back on Upper State Road, but we didn’t try it.
There had been mills at about this point, and a mill race would have come off of the Cook’s Run toward the Neshaminy.
The first industry on this site was about 1760 when Jonathan Mason constructed a water powered fulling mill and a homestead on Cook’s Run.

Parkway trail

His son Samuel Mason took over operation of the mill upon his father’s death in 1793.
Brothers Joseph and Benjamin Mathews bought the property in 1824, and several years later they erected what many believe to have been the first sawmill in Bucks County. I find that claim hard to believe, however, because they were already building Durham boats in the area that had been constructed prior to George Washington’s historic crossing of the Delaware, so I would bet there were some milling operations in place well before the 1820s.

Upper State Road bridge

Joseph Mathews ran the mill while Benjamin farmed the land. They demolished the original fulling mill around 1830 and added a Clover mill.

Neshaminy Creek Greenway

Peter Landis purchased the property around 1860, and with the help of his brothers Henry and Levi, demolished the old saw mill in favor of a newer one, and added a grist mill to the property. The mill was updated with steam and turbine technology, and remained under Landis family operation until the last brother died around 1905.
The property was sold to Jacob Fretz, and I’m not sure when the mill ceased operation.
The mill site was just barely up slope from where we came out to along the Neshaminy. There was a little historic marker and rest area.

Neshaminy Greenway

We turned to the right on the trail. A routed sign at this point told us that this was called Miller Point.

Neshaminy Greenway

No sooner did we get under way again, there was a giant swing, right in the middle of the path. This looked too fun to pass up, so we all took turns swinging on the giant thing.
It was secured far up in a tree overhead by way of vertical bolts, so it wasn’t going anywhere.
A lady came by walking her dog, and looked slightly annoyed by us swinging there. She sneaked on by us while we were goofing off, and I made a comment to her about how this is the kind of thing that makes a hike take longer. Her look of annoyance melted away slightly, she smiled, and replied “It IS a good swing!”.

Swing!

The soft surfaced trail continued along the Neshaminy to the west. The trail we had first taken in was Lenape Trail and I guess Scout Trail. We then got on Creekside Trail.

Neshaminy Greenway

This joined with the meadow loop trails, and then turned left to get even closer to the creek.
The trail eventually led us to the end of the property, where to the end was a private back yard. We had to turn right up hill on West Meadow Loop Trail to head north.
While walking, we came to an open meadow area where there were a man and woman clearing brush and doing work. We said hello, and they asked what we were up to, where we were going. I explained the entire Neshaminy series to them, and they were impressed. We chatted about invasive species and what they had to get rid of in this preserve. It’s always nice to meet good people doing things like this along the way.

Wilma Quinlan Nature Preserve

We continued around the outside of the property heading north, and merged into the Sunset Trail, which led us to the main entrance on Mathews Avenue.

Beulah Chapel and Cemetery

There was a cut up giant tree to the left of the parking area. We turned to the left on Mathews Avenue, and there was a memorial plaque to Leonard James Chant, who donated “Chant’s Woods”, a section of the Quinlan Nature Preserve.
We made a ninety degree turn to the right on Sand Road, and continued up hill across the former Doylestown Branch of the Reading Railroad, still active, and reached Butler Avenue where we turned to the left.
We walked along the edge of the road and passed some lovely old homes as well as an enormous black rooster statue.

Foot bridge in New Britain

Just after that, we reached our lunch stop, the New Britain Inn.
This was a quaint location with nice seating. It was a little brick building, not some old historic coach stop like one might imagine by the name, but it was still good.
Twin girls were the servers in the place, and they weren’t up for any silliness. When she took drink orders, I asked for chicken parm, to which she dryly replied “we don’t serve that”.
I suppose they were just busy at the time. I ordered a special burger that’s their signature thing, which came with fresh chips. It was actually quite excellent.

At New Britain Inn

I also ordered the strongest beer they had on the menu, which I think was a coffee stout, and it too was pretty good.

Cook's Run

Carolyn joined late at this point, just in time to get a drink and some food.
We forgot to ask the girl to split the bill up, so it was a bit of a pain for them, but we worked it out. We were then on our way, back to Butler Ave where we turned west.
The railroad was coming in from the left as we walked. We cut to the left through a parking lot, and then got on the railroad tracks for a little bit for some reason. I don’t recall it getting us anywhere, but we did it.
This was originally the North Pennsylvnaia Railroad, which opened up to New Britain in 1858.

Odd signage

It was extended to Doylestown, which was the end of the line and remains so today, although there were once plans to continue it on through to the north.

Entrance to the Quinlan preserve

It was taken over by the Reading Railroad and it became the Doylestown Branch.
We turned left on Bristol Road soon, just about where the former Reading Railroad crossed over Butler Ave. The sidewalk continued most of the way save for a nice spot where a tree inhibited the construction of a short bit.
We turned right from Bristol Road on Forrest Drive, a little development road, which would take us back down toward the Neshaminy Creek again.

Cocky?

Eventually, the left side of the road led us to J. Michael Bishop Memorial Park, where a paved trail led into the woods between homes, and then to the Neshaminy Creek.

Nice gesture

This was a scenic little section with some steep slopes on the far side. The trail remained close to the creek which made it particularly nice. A side path led right up to Landing Way and we remained in the woods heading to the west.
The trail entered a large open field area, part of the grounds of the Unami Middle School, and continued along the edge of the fields away from the creek and out to the cul de sac on Blue Jay Road.
We continued on Blue Jay Road for a bit, and then turned left on Cardinal Road, which led us to the Strong Family Park where we took a little break at the playground equipment. The trail continued paved from here through woods and meadows.
When we continued, the trail brought us across a foot bridge over the North Branch of the Neshaminy Creek. It split in two directions beyond. We turned to the left, because I wanted badly to see the confluence of the North and West Branches of the Neshaminy.

The confluence of the North and West Branches of the Neshaminy

An unpaved but mowed path led from the corner of the park land at the exact confluence of the two tributaries.

Swingin'

The point was a stony flat between the two streams with a high bluff on the other side. Not everyone came down right away, so I made it clear that it was a significant place, and everyone came down. I wanted to get my group shot here.
After checking this spot out, we headed back to the paved trail and continued to Butler Avenue in Chalfont.
Chalfont is an historic settlement that dates back to 1683 when William Penn signed a treaty with a local Indian chief to parcel the land to the Free Society of Traders.

St. James Episcopal Lutheran Church and Cemetery

Over the years, the settlement had several other names including Butler’s Mill, Kungle’s Tavern, Barndtsville, and Whitehallsville.

Chalfont Station on Reading RR

In 1869, the North Pennsylvania Railroad changed the name of the location and station stop to Chalfont, after Chalfont St. Giles in Buckinghamshire England, birthplace of William Penn’s first wife.
We crossed Butler Ave and then turned to the left along some buildings. We cut through a line of trees and then up into another parking lot where we had to turn right out to Main Street where we turned left.

We walked past the town hall, and I noticed to the left that the Krupp Park was across the North Branch of the Neshaminy from behind.

Chestnut Ave Park

We could have stayed along the creek on the trail, and then crossed a foot bridge from there to this point. Oh well, that’s for next time.

The group at the confluence of the North and West Branches

We crossed the road bridge over the former Reading Railroad, which still had a handsome old station standing to the left.

Neshaminy Creek at Quinlan Nature Preserve

To the right, there was a building that also looked railroad related, but I’m not sure what it was. We turned slightly right after the tracks into the St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church Cemetery.
The church is a handsome structure, but no longer used for services. It closed after 150 years in 2007.
The church was constructed in 1857, and interments began in the cemetery in the 1860s.
After the church closed, there were some plans to turn it into a restaurant, but those fell through I think because locals were complaining about the parking.

Quinlan Preserve

I’m not sure what’s in there now, but it appears to be kept up.
We continued walking out the church parking lot, across Park Avenue, and onto Chestnut Street.
After a little bit, we came to Chestnut Street Park, which had a paved trail along the edge of it to the right, heading down hill. We followed this to the north end, and then turned left to the northeast end.
I had gone over the maps and was thinking we could cut down through an industrial site to the right, but there were fences and such.
I found a spot where we could easily get under, so I went first to check it out.

Neshaminy at Quinlan

The buildings had not been used for some time, so I figured we could just get on through. I called everyone to follow me, and we turned to the left out toward the exit.
There was a chain link gate over there as well, so we had to crawl under it. Shane was behind a bit because he had to go out and blow mud in the trees, but fortunately he caught up shortly.
We reached Hamilton Street, and Spruce Road was a cul de sac right across from where we were. While everyone else waited, I decided to see if by any chance there was a path down there that would get us through to the next road, Lindenfield Parkway.

Quinlan

I got to the end, and unfortunately didn’t see a public path, though the road we were looking for was not far off.
There was a guy out doing yard work while I was there, and I said hello. He was a friendly guy, and I asked him if he would mind if we cut through his yard to get to the other road. He said that usually he would say no, but since we weren’t from around there we could do it!
Apparently he has a lot of locals try to cut through and he said his wife hates it when they do it without asking.

Sad death next to Quinlan

I motioned everyone to come on down, and the land owner led us through, down a slope, and to where his wife was moving leaves.

Memorial to Mr Chant

She asked if we were there to help move them.
The guy walked us out to the edge of the road, I thanked him, and we were on our way along Lindenfield, which had a paved path up the center of it.
At the end of the road, the path went slightly right, and then crossed a foot bridge over the North Branch of the Neshaminy Creek. On the other side, it entered North Branch Park.
We continued through the park, out across the grass, and toward the main entrance.

Old stone home in New Britain

There were a bunch of kids on bikes bumming around, and they approached us asking what we were doing. They seemed dumbfounded when I told them.
From there, we passed the police station and crossed Park Avenue to Indian Creek Way. We walked a block on this, then turned to the left on Forest Park Drive. We followed that to the end, where a paved path broke off of the culdesac and behind houses of the next development. We passed from an open field area into woods parallel with the Pine Run, another tributary to the Neshaminy Creek.

Doylestown Branch crossing

The trail crossed Pine Run on a foot bridge, started climbing, and then came out to the cul de sac on Cayuga Circle. We continued straight on the road from there to Pheasant Run Drive where we turned left.
This became Lenape Drive after a corner, and we turned left on Pawnee Road. At the end, we turned right on Tamenend Avenue. This took us around another corner where we turned left again on Sioux Road. We followed that only shortly to Keeley Ave.

Pine Valley Covered Bridge

We turned left and followed the road downhill. It changed names to Iron Hill Road.
Soon, we came upon the Pine Valley Covered Bridge, also known as Iron Hill Covered Bridge.

Pine Valley Covered Bridge

The bridge was built in 1842 by David Sutton. It is 81 feet long and built in Town Lattice style. There is a park and a trail connection through the Covered Bridge Park to the right, but that will have to be the focus of another hike route. There’s definitely more to do here.
We passed through the covered bridge and then began heading up hill on Iron Hill Road. This took us across Ferry Road, and then further up as the road started to get a bit narrower. Near the peak of the hill, the sun was starting to set with a beautiful old farmstead on the left in the distance. It was modernized with many new buildings and vehicles parked, but I could see that the home was historic.

Old farm sunset

We started heading gradually downhill from here, and Lake Galena started coming into view.

Lake Galena

Lake Galena was dammed by Bucks County in 1972. There used to be a little settlement below where the lake is today known as New Galena. It takes its name from the mineral Galena which is the most valuable part of lead. There was this bit of mining, but it was predominantly an agricultural community.
The lake was created I understand as a need for a local drinking water source just below on the North Branch of the Neshaminy Creek which is its main tributary.

Sunset at Peace Valley Park

The recreation area around it opened as Peace Valley Park in 1974.
I had heard about this place constantly over the years, but for whatever reason never got together a hike through it or anything even connecting to it.

Lake Galena

When I first joined Appalachian Mountain Club in 2004, I would see the trip postings and there would regularly be hikes around the perimeter of it. Participants on my hikes would tell me they’d sign up for them, do the entire perimeter, and feel it wasn’t long enough so they’d turn back and do it again.

I can understand the attraction. It was quite a beautiful place.
We reached the intersection with Creek Road, and there was an open field across down to the shore of the lake. I could see people walking on the trail around the perimeter from there, so we just went straight across through the field to reach it more quickly.

Along the Neshaminy

The trail was paved, and we turned to the left on it. The sun was setting right down the middle of it.

Along the Neshaminy

We passed the first parking area, and then headed up hill slightly to the main dam. The trail crosses the dam, and there is also one that goes down below it to connect to another trail. We crossed it, and the moon started to rise from the southeast. The sunset just kept getting prettier, but unfortunately my phone died while we were on the dam and I had no battery power left in either my portable charger or the phone itself.
We turned right at the end of the dam into a slightly more wooded area and the trail continued along the shore.

The Neshaminy

We passed the first parking area and a park ranger was going by as we were approaching. He probably thought we were parked at that one. We continued into another wooded swath and walked out onto a nice dock that provided for an even better view of the sunset.
A little beyond that, we passed the first parking lot we had met at before moving cars to the next one. Across the lake, we could see the park ranger put his light bar on chasing people out. He was speaking audibly through his speaker but we could not hear exactly what he was saying from that distance.

An odd Sycamore

We soon reached the 24 hour lot we had parked at to finish out the hike, only just a little after dark. It had actually gone very well.

Moon rise

I think of this one as a bit of a milestone in this extensive series. We’ve seen a lot of this creek starting at the Delaware, and this time we got to where its main two tributaries came together, and started to follow those. It’s sort of like the winding down of the series, although we still have a lot more to do on it honestly. We still have a good distance left on the Little Neshaminy Creek, we still have several other smaller tributaries further down closer to the Delaware, and we still have the remainder of the north and west branches.

Peace Valley Park

The North Branch, from where we left off, just doing the perimeter trails we hadn’t already done in Peace Valley Park is already over seven more miles; a half of an entire hike worth.
The West Branch will take us out as far as around Hatfield and would make up the bulk of yet another hike, and we still have the rest of the stuff all around Doylestown, as we have not yet even walked into the middle of town, which is also something I plan to do along with the rest of the Doylestown area trail system spawning from Central Park.

Lake Galena

There are still so many different series going on, I’m not sure when I’ll get around to doing the next one in this series, but I’m sure after a few weeks I’ll be jonesing to get back out there and see what’s around those next corners.