Woodville Plantation ~ Neville House

          This is arguably the oldest house in Allegheny County--if you don't include log structures...and maybe even if you do.  The house's name has always been "Woodville Plantation," though you sometimes hear it called Nevillewood.  It was built in 1775 by the aristocratic Neville Family of Virginia.  It dates back to the days when Virginia and Pennsylvania were both laying claims to the land "at the Forks of the Ohio River."  The estate is on Washington Pike between Heidelberg and Bridgeville.  According to the best historical records I can find (i.e., Wikipedia), Washington Pike was one of the first roads carved through the wilderness in 1781 from the town of Washington to Pittsburgh.  Like many early roads, it probably followed older footpaths and horse trails.  (Of course, Washington, PA, is far older than Washington, D.C.)  Today, this stretch of Washington Pike is PA-50, a very busy thoroughfare, but the grounds of the Woodville estate breathe a sacred hush.  

           The Nevilles had a much larger, more magnificent mansion up on Bower Hill, the high land in the upper right corner of this photo.  Both the hill and the mansion were named Bower Hill, but the house was destroyed in the 1790s during the one and only battle of the Whiskey Rebellion.  Now the summit of Bower Hill is occupied by a very large retirement complex known as Providence Point.  Chartiers Creek passes in the unseen space between Woodville and Bower Hill.  I actually know an old woman who lives in that retirement home and gazes out the window at Woodville--which had been her grandparents' house when she was a little girl.

           The Nevilles were a military family who had been appointed to carry out taxation on the whiskey produced by Western Pennsylvania farmers.  In those waning days of the 18th century, the national capital was still at Philadelphia, and farmers in the western marches of the state could only transport their corn, and rye, and wheat crops over the Allegheny Mountains by first distilling them into whiskey.  It's not that everyone here was a drunkard; the local economy relied on the production of whiskey.  The divide between east and west was far deeper in those days than today.  When Hamilton introduced special taxes aimed specifically at whiskey production, westerners took it as just one more attempt by easterners to keep them in grinding poverty.  

          I love few things more than a nice, deep porch.  This one looks across the broad lawn to a little rustic fence that separates Woodville Estate from a deep gorge through which Chartiers Creek passes.  I hope to come back here on a Sunday afternoon, when the house is opened for tours.  Otherwise, it was fun to roam the grounds with no one but my six-year-old daughter...

Alligawi Supi

           The Delaware Indians had a legend about a tribe that inhabited the Allegheny and Monongahela river valleys in ancient times.  The "Allagewi" or the "Alligawi" may have been the original inhabitants of the land.  Some say that the Delawares migrated toward the Atlantic Ocean from the Midwest and destroyed the Alligawi while passing through this region.  Later, in the 1600s, the Erie tribe--which had taken up residence--was also destroyed by the Iroquois.  The truth is lost to history; it's blurrier than this photo that I took at the Kennerdell overlook: a historical placard ruminating over the history of the Allegheny Valley.

           Also at the overlook, there is a reproduction of the old Indian drawings that were once visible at Indian God Rock, on the river five miles south of Franklin.  This ancient Indian site is a mystery, and very few locals know about it.  All my paternal family is from this area, but I've never heard anyone speak about the rock or the petroglyphs.  I hope to go looking for it someday.

          It's easy to forget how recent we are.  I mean, 6,500 years before the birth of Jesus, there were people walking this land.  They hunted, and fished, and made clothing, and sought shelter.  They made love and war.  They lived and died, "and their place remembers them no more."  Even the few petroglyphs they left behind have been erased by the hand of Time.  We forget how novel we are with our iPhones, and our Facebook, and our disposable beverage containers.  We might trace our lineages several generations into the past, but in the end, we don't even know where we come from.

Kennerdell, Clear Creek State Forest

          This is the Allegheny River as seen from the remote "scenic overlook" in the Kennerdell Tract of Clear Creek State Forest.  Most local people don't know about the overlook because it can only be accessed by climbing 480 feet up the steep valley wall from the riverbank.  And the climb can only be made on foot.

           The Kennerdell Tract of the Clear Creek State Forest is a longtime favorite of mine.  It's in Venango County, my birthplace.  Up in those parts, I've always heard the name pronounced "Kennerdale."  (But this is by the same folks--in my wife's family--who call the "KwikFill" gas station "Quickville.")  I feel a deep sense of rootedness when I come here, especially looking out over the river of my life, seeing it from above.

           Of course, it's a long way from Pittsburgh.  The nearest town of any size is Franklin.  But my wife's dad was having his Easter holiday a week late, and I took advantage of the proximity to visit an old haunt.  I always forget just how beautiful this place is.

          Kennerdell itself is a noisy little hamlet of vacation homes, hunting camps, and barking dogs.  The village stands across the wide river from the state forest, and the water carries and amplifies all of its sounds, a chainsaw, a radio playing classic rock, a lawnmower.  And the Kennerdell Tract is heavily used by hikers, rugged campers, and fishers.  Still, it carries a profound sense of Home for me.  There are good trails, one of which passes through a long, dark railroad tunnel.  There are well-maintained footbridges, too.  But I didn't take the trails up to the overlook.  I bushwhacked more than 400 feet up an incredibly steep grade.  The view from the top was worth it, but it was really unwise to scramble through the dead leaves on the forest floor.  I ended up with two deeply embedded deer ticks...in really unpleasant spots.

         To get to the trailheads, find the bridge that crosses the river into Kennerdell, and go to the west bank (opposite the village).  Right at the end of the bridge, there's a parking area with a gated forest road.  Park your car and follow this road on foot.  It runs along the Allegheny River and leads to several very nice trails.

Wild Chartiers Creek

I have a friend who is forever promising me a kayak trip down Chartiers Creek.  He says that it's navigable from his father-in-law's horse farm in Washington County all the way to the Ohio River, at McKees Rocks.  

 In fact, he claims that it passes mainly through woodlands, and I don't doubt it.  When you come upon the creek from the steep, wooded hills in Boyce Mayview Park--Upper St. Clair--you could almost believe that you're the first white man to discover the place (assuming you are a white man...).

 You couldn't make that assumption about Pierre Chartiers, his European-sounding name notwithstanding.  The half French / half Shawnee fur-trader had a post at the mouth of the creek in 1743.  Today, much of the creek valley is suburbanized in the ugliest kind of way.  But the segment that runs alongside the backside of Boyce Mayview Park is protected woodlands.  

This is the infamous Mayview State Hospital, across the water.  It sits derelict, but guarded, above a deep, still section of the creek.  The far side of the water (where the old insane asylum sits) is South Fayette Township, Allegheny County.  It's there that my old farmhouse occupies one of the long, gradual wrinkles of land that descends toward Chartiers Creek.

[UPDATE: 2 May 2013: Sadly, the view from this last photo is now entirely obliterated, as the main buildings of the old hospital have been reduced to rubble.  The company that purchased the land asked South Fayette Twp for an exception to its zoning law that prohibits strip mining.  Happily, the request was denied; otherwise Chartiers Creek would suffer even more pollution from irresponsible coal mining.]

Hiking Near Pittsburgh

~HIKING: HALF AN HOUR FROM PITTSBURGH~

          Below are three of the best hiking destinations within a half hour drive of Pittsburgh.  The three sites are very different from each other, but when I hike, I'm typically looking for solitude and silence, so I've listed them in order of my personal preference.  This write-up was done for outdoorsy friends who moved to the city from out west.  I do feel their pain.  If urban life is your thing, then Pittsburgh is a wonderful place to live.  But if you're a hiker living in Pittsburgh, then you've got to work a little to find the sweet spots.  I moved down here from the wilds of Northern Pennsylvania, where the hiking and kayaking is superb.  But if you learn to appreciate the place for what it is, and if you're willing to lower your expectations, then an outdoors enthusiast can really discover some remarkable spots close to Pittsburgh... (Of course, if you're willing to extend your travel time to one hour, your options improve dramatically.  And if you allow yourself an hour and a half, you've really got some excellent choices, like the pristine and far flung Quebec Run Wild Area of Forbes State Forest.)  

*HILLMAN STATE PARK

Hillman has everything from mixed hardwood forests to broad, grassy fields.    

ABOUT: Hillman is managed by the Game Commission, even though it’s technically a state park.  It has nothing but wild land: no restrooms, no water spigots, no playgrounds.  There are lots of great trails, but none of them are blazed or mapped, so there’s some risk of getting lost until you figure out the lay of the land.  You can still find the remains of old farms in some parts of the park.  Because much of the land was once strip mined, it’s got open grassy areas, undulating topography, and scrubby woods.  To the untrained eye, it just looks like a curious place with lots of small hills, mounds, and sudden dips.  Most people would never know that this land was utterly pillaged sixty years ago.  In fact the rolling country makes Hillman popular with mountain bikers.  The open meadows make it popular with suburbanites who want to let their dogs run (which I hate).  Hillman is big, and it can be roughly divided up into five separate trail zones.  A good place to start is in the southeast corner, which is the easiest part of the park to find.  Later, you can branch out from there. 

GETTING THERE: Good trailheads at Hillman are exactly half an hour from Pittsburgh.

1)      Take I-376 West from the city. 

2)      Take Exit 60-A onto US-22 West.

3)      Go about 10 miles, and take the “Bavington” exit.

4)      Turn RIGHT off the exit, and go a very short distance to a T in the road.

5)      Turn LEFT at the T onto Steubenville Pike.

6)      TO HIKE THE SOUTHEAST, go about two miles (?) from the T and take a sharp RIGHT onto Knowlton Road.  There are parking areas at the trailheads.

7)      TO HIKE THE CENTRAL PARK, go past Knowlton Road to Haul Road, which is the next public lane on the RIGHT.  This is a gravel road with parking and trailheads on the left and right.

*STATE GAME LANDS #117

The countryside at SGL 117--like many of us who go there--is just trying to heal.  It has a strange, stark beauty.

ABOUT: SGL 117 feels like the Australian Outback or maybe the Russian steppes.  There’s some woods, but the place is mainly grassland and scrubby brush.  Most of it was strip mined back in the days when coal companies weren’t required to replace topsoil and replant trees.  Even more than Hillman, SGL 117 bears the scars of its past.  It's wild and lonely, and the look is almost lunar in places.  If it's solitude that you want, this place is not much visited by anyone but hunters.  It makes a good hike.  The game land is three miles across, and the whole expanse (from the parking area on Bavington Road to PA-18) is crossed by a nice old gravel road with gates at both ends, so that vehicles can’t get onto it.  If you stray off the road and into the woods just to the north of it, you can bushwhack to some quiet ponds in deep valleys.  Bushwhacking is easy here, and since there’s so much open space, you don't really need to fear getting lost if you wander off the road. Most serious hunting takes place between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but just to be safe, check the Game Commission website for hunting dates before venturing out.  Sundays are always safe.    

GETTING THERE: SGL 117 is very close to Hillman.  Follow steps 1-5 above, then: 

1)      In the village of Bavington, turn LEFT onto Bavington Road, just before the bar.

2)      Go a few miles on Bavington Road, keeping an eye open for parking areas on the right side of the road.  These usually have Game Commission signs that say things like “Hunt Safely.”  The first parking area is where the gated road is found.  Park there and follow the road into the game lands on foot, then branch off. 

*RACCOON CREEK STATE PARK

Although it gets the most traffic, Raccoon Creek also has the wildest character, the most natural topography, and the densest, most mature forests.

ABOUT: With a 100-acre lake, a nice beach, and an excellent trail system, Raccoon Creek is THE outdoor escape for Pittsburghers.  For that reason, you’re more likely to find other people on the trails here...and their damned, unleashed dogs.  It's prettier than the two hiking destinations named above, but it's also more heavily used.  Raccoon is a very large park with many miles of trackless woods.  Most of this park has never been strip mined, so it’s got a wild character with nice wooded hills and deep stream valleys.  However, it is five or ten minutes further away from the city than Hillman.  Also, because Raccoon Creek has all the modern amenities (camp sites, cabins, a beach, snack bar, organized outdoor events, etc.), it gets downright crowded in the summer.  I prefer to go to Raccoon in the winter, when I have the place mostly to myself. 

Raccoon Creek is one of the biggest state parks in PA; it actually has a 20-mile backpacking loop trail.  There’s a good hiking map of all the trails in the park.  Try to avoid the “mixed use trails” because the horses really tear them up and make them muddy for hiking.  The most crowded trails are in the “Wildflower Reserve” at the easternmost tip of the park.  I like the western half of the park best.  

GETTING THERE: Raccoon Creek State Park is conveniently divided in half by PA-18. 

1)      Again, just as if you were going to Hillman or SGL 117, take I-376 West.

2)      Take Exit 60-A to get onto US-22 West. 

3)      Pass Bavington and go to the very next exit, marked “Florence / Burgettstown.” 

4)      Coming off the exit, get in the far LEFT lane and turn LEFT (north) at the light.

5)      Follow PA-18 through a few villages and into the park.  You’ll see a sign at a parking area on the LEFT that says “Frankfort Mineral Springs Natural and Historical Area.”  There’s a good trailhead here onto the Heritage Trail, into the western part of the park. 

Check out the official park map for the many miles of other trails. 

~TAMER SPOTS / CLOSER TO HOME~

PANHANDLE TRAIL This is a “rail trail” that runs all the way into West Virginia.  It’s fun to bike, especially the westernmost part, beyond Burgettstown.  www.panhandletrail.org 

MONTOUR TRAIL This is also a “rail trail” that runs in a semi-circle around Pittsburgh from the Monongahela Valley to the Ohio Valley.  www.montourtrail.org. 

SETTLER’S CABIN PARK is just south of all the shopping centers in Robinson Township and has some fairly remote trails for a quick hike close to the city. Check out a map.  

BOYCE MAYVIEW PARK in Upper St. Clair has some pretty rugged backcountry trails, believe it or not.  They get better and more remote the closer you get to Chartiers Creek. Here's the map.