Hike #1460; 12/12/21 Tuscarora Trail; Sylvan to Licking Creek/C&O Canal with Professor John DiFiore, Jennifer Tull, Diane Reider, and David Adams
This next one would be the final hike in my northern Tuscarora Trail series.
Of course, it is not the entire trail, just the north half that I focused on. I would absolutely love to do the entire thing, but that will involve overnight trips that I'm not able to take on at this time because of how far away it is.
I decided because I'd been working on the series on the 911 National Memorial Trail that I wanted to try to do all of the trails that connect in between the giant triangle, which goes from New York City to Shanksville PA, then down to Washington DC and back to NY City again.
I'd already finished the entire Horse-Shoe Trail, the Conestoga Trail, the Mid State Trail, Standing Stone Trail, and others, but I wanted to fill in more. Standing Stone was pretty much the farthest west connector that I was concerned about doing at this point, and the rest would get closer to home.
I still haven't finished from Johnstown through Shanksville to Garrett, but that will require overnight trips as well, and I haven't done any of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal from Cumberland east, but this hike would at least take us to the C&O Canal where we'll be. The Tuscarora Trail follows the C&O for several miles to the west of our end point this time.
I could potentially do one more Tuscarora Trail hike from Hancock MD south as a day trip, but that's pushing it kind of far. I probably will at some point.
This time, I was looking forward to the easiest section of the Tuscarora yet. There was one more bit of ridge top I had not yet done, but the rest of it was a lot of dirt roads and back roads.
We met at the Licking Creek trail head, which is right between the C&O Canal below to the south, and the Western Maryland Rail Trail barely to the north. I'm really looking forward to those sections because they can be loops I'll do with my son in the stroller, if I can ever get around to it.
This is very close to where the Licking Creek enters the Potomac River.
From here, we shuttled to the north, to the same spot we had started the last Tuscarora hike, just to the north of Sylvan in the Cove Valley.
We pulled off alongside the road just like we had done that previous time, and then walked the woods road adjacent to fields and up to the trail that ascends the Tuscarora Ridge. There were some nice old stone farm buildings across from us I hadn't really noticed the previous time out there.
The last time we went up, from the parking area we took the yellow trail more steeply to the top. This time, I decided since the rest of the hike after the ridge was easy and we should make better time, we would walk the longer but more gradual blue trail to the top of the mountain.
When we got on the bit of old woods road that the trail followed, and yellow went straight, we turned left across a little creek and then ascended a bit to a knoll on the blue trail, in State Game Lands 124.
After the first little knoll, we went slightly back down again, and then started gradually making our way up the mountain on the woods road. We rejoined the yellow trail on the right nearly to the top, and then regrouped when we got up there where I enjoyed a Kolms Russian Imperial Stout.
Like the section on this ridge to the north of here, this section started out quite nice with only slightly undulating terrain, constant seasonal and open views, and lots of beautiful rock outcroppings.
Propert boundaries sometimes made the trail dip down to the left off of the edge of the ridge over some more unsure footing than in other places, but overall it wasn't too bad. It had not been given the weed whacked treatment like some of the sections to the north had, but it still wasn't too terrible.
We went over some really nice sort of knife edge sections, sometimes right on the top of it by the edge, and sometimes below the jutting rocks.
The section of the trail is referred to in the guide book as "The Lockings". This refers to a place where the Dickey Mountain, a parallel smaller ridge to the west, joins with the Tuscarora Mountain.
I knew when we were coming upon The Lockings because there was a bit of a saddle in the ridge, and a steep section ahead of it with higher elevation. To the right, there was a side trail with a view back to the northwest where the Dickey Ridge could be seen parallel with and coming up to touch the Tuscarora Ridge. We took a short break at that overlook, but the wind was getting to be a bit brutal. The climbing and undulating terrain wasn't terrible, but it definitely helped to keep us warmer.
We continued on ahead along the ridge from this westbound view, and then came to some really wide open flatter rocks with a great eastbound view. There were a few more spots with views to the west as well, but the last really great ones were from this slanted rock that jutted out to the east.
The rocks started changing to a very interesting, channeled erosion style before we turned slightly left and started to descend from the ridge through sparse tree cover.
The trail switched back to the north and got extremely steep, with one tough spot with combination of leaves on the trail as well as steep rocks.
We hit a dry wash area after a switch back to north, then trned back to south again. We switched back to the right again and continued the more gradual descent, which soon was along a little spring, flowing beautifully over big rocks. As I recall, I drank some of it. Much of the section along the spring was part of a very old road.
We continued down from here to reach a more prominent woods road to to take the remainer of the descent toward Fort Davis area.
We skirted a field to the right as we got closer to the bottom, and the dirt road became more passable to vehicle with more improved surface. We continued out this until we came to the intersection with Fort Davis Road, where the trail turned right.
The road was unpaved, so it made it that much nicer, almost like not walking a road at all. We continued a short bit, and then turned left on Furnace Road. This road too was unpaved, so it was quite a joy to walk as well.
As we walked, a spectacular view of Cove Mountain was straight ahead of us, and there were beautiful farm views to the right.
The road eventually came out to Little Cove Road. Straight across was Forge Road, and that was until very recently the route of the Tuscarora Trail. Landowners down that way have recently closed it off. The road used to continue through but no longer does, and it was necessary to ford the Little Cove Creek. I had been looking forward to that, but there was nothing I could do about it. The trail officially follows Little Cove Road to the right now. Fortunately, the road walk was pretty and had some good farmland views on it as well.
The trail now turns left on Mill Drive, with more nice farm views, and crosses over the Little Cove Creek on a modern highway bridge. The modern bridge replaced an 1888 pony truss bridge.
At the bridge site to the north is the historic Yeakle Mill on Little Cove Creek.
Yeakle Mill was built 1840-41 by John Myers, who died before the mill opened. It replaced an earlier mill or mills that operated on or close to this site.
The mill name comes from the Yeakle family that operated it in the coming years. The Fritz and Yeakle families intermarried, and the mill operated until 1955.
The trail continued on along the road a little further with good farm land views until Kuhns Ridge Road on the right, which does not look to be open to traffic and passes through private land. The trail follows it down hill, fords a small stream, and then continues to climb on the old road.
We skirted a field on the right, and then made our way into a little hollow where a spring flows down. The trail ascended to the right side, then crossed over a ways up and continued to climb. There was a bit of a view to the north from a power line clearing as we headed up hill toward the state line.
There was a sign and gate at the line, and we crossed over into Maryland. Just after that line, the road became open to traffic and passed a small home and some stuff on the right.
Just after the house, we entered Indian Springs Wildlife Management Area. The road remained unpaved and very pleasant, and it was the trail route the entire length of the property.
The road traveled along a somewhat narrow ridge mostly as it headed south, and then descended gradually until we reached paved Pectonville Road, where we went straight, heading somewhat uphill.
After a wide open section of some nice fields, the road turned hard to the right, and there was an abandoned older road parallel with it that went closer to the Licking Creek as we approached. The trail was blazed on the paved road, but I walked on the old road route because it was nicer. We then got back on the main road and crossed over the Licking Creek on a deck bridge and started going slightly uphill again.
There were some rocks in the creek as we crossed that might have been footings for a predecessor bridge.
There was an abandoned house on the right as we made our way up a bit more into farm lands, followed by another abandoned building on the right.
We skirted Camp Harding Park on the left as we headed south, and the trail just stayed on the road route, but we could have walked further into the park I suppose.
The road paralleled Licking Creek again just ahead, and there was another abandoned house on the left. We continued on Pecktonville Road to the left when Galilee Road went right, went down into a little hollow with a few homes, then climbed to a height of land again with some views to the left.
It seemed like in this section every single home had a great deal of smoke coming from it. I figure they all must use fire wood to hear their homes to some degree. It was just a whole lot more smoke than I'm used to seeing just going down a road anywhere.
The road took us out to Route 40, the Old National Road, or National Pike, just ahead.
The National Pike was the first federally funded US highway, also known as the Cumberland Turnpike and several other variations. It follows natural opening in the mountains through this area and out to Cumberland. George Washington had interests in this area as a young surveyor, and in later years had an Ohio Company for the western expansion of the transportation system. He pushed for the expansion of the canals westward during his presidency.
It was not until 1806 that Congress under Thomas Jefferson funded the construction of the National Pike, which began in 1811 to connect the Potomac and Ohio Rivers. Construction began in Cumberland MD. Expansion was stalled during the Financial Panic of 1837, and work ceased at Vandalia, Illinois, which was then the edge of the Illinois Territory. Eventually, improvements and rebuildings completed the route between Baltimore and the Missouri border. During the rebuilding of the 1830s, the National Pike became the second Macadam highway in the US. The word actually comes from its' inventor, who's last name was McAdam.
The Tuscarora Trail turns left to follow the highway for a bit, because there is no other way to get across Interstate 70 ahead.
Just before the highway crossed over the Licking Creek, the trail turns hard right onto a road without a road sign, but actually called Mile Marker Road. There was a good view of the bridge from the road.
The Licking Creek Bridge on the National Pike (Rt 40), is a 300 foot triple span Weichert cantilever deck truss completed in 1938 as part of a major highway upgrade.
The odd combination of truss and girder style bridge was created by E. M. Weichert in 1930 and is referred to as cantilevered because it relies on diagonal rather than vertical bracing.
We continued down the road and passed beneath the two modern spans that carry Route 70 over the Licking Creek and the road, and then the deck girder bridge of the former Western Maryland Railroad came into view where it too crossed the Licking Creek ahead.
The trail followed the road ahead and across the Western Maryland Rail Trail. I was kind of surprised that the trail wasn't moved onto the rail bed from here to the parking lot rather than the Mile Marker Road, but it was still blazed on the road. I wonder if that was because just ahead, there was an old cemetery to the right, and it was cool to see it.
Pretty soon, we reached the parking lot, just as the brightness of the moon starting showing. We had enough daylight left, but not a whole lot. It was great to be finished basically with the entire north half of the trail.
The only bit in Maryland I still have to walk is the part that follows the C&O Canal, and I'm not worried about doing that any time soon because I'm going to do it as part of the series on that canal anyway.
So this was another personal milestone we met, which I'd stalled on years ago after one hike on it. We were able to finish the segments I wanted to in only six more hikes after that. I lent my guide book to Dave I think at this point so he could go back and finish the segments he had missed in the series, and we were off.
At this point, I was ready to shift over and begin doing some of the other trails including the Pennsylvania Highlands Trail system again, and finally finishing the Mason-Dixon Trail.
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