A visit to Ohio Amish Country via the Holmes County Trail

Holmes County Ohio is the site of the second largest Amish settlement in the world.  With a reported June 2016 population of 34,190 Amish in 263 church districts it closely rivals the more famous and older Lancaster County PA settlement, which had a reported population of 35,070 but only 210 church districts.

I recently hiked a rail-trail route through the heart of the Lancaster settlement, called the Enola Low Grade Rail Trail.  That trail is very much a work in progress, some of it undeveloped, none of it paved or suitable for horses.  But the route took me beside dozens of Amish farms and raised my awareness and interest in that distinctive community; so now that I'm hiking east central Ohio, just fifty or so miles from Berlin, Ohio, the unofficial capital of Ohio 'Amish Country', I wanted to take time to check that settlement and make comparisons.

First thing I did was get on the internet; and there I found a pleasant surprise.  Holmes County also has a rail trail through the heart of its Amish region called simply the Holmes County Trail.  Here the trail is a paved bike greenway.  Though there are sections that remain unfinished, it's part of the 320 mile Ohio to Erie Trail that runs from Cincinnati to Cleveland; and best of all, it's the first (and only, as far as I know) public non-motorized trail that welcomes Amish buggies.

In fact, the trail goes right by a Wal-Mart store south of the county seat, Millersburg, which hosts an official trailhead access point, and which accommodates Amish buggies with a roofed hitching post area.

I had time to hike only a few miles this sunny, icy day.  But in that short hike I was passed by three other buggies beside the two-horse rig shown above, including a family that had just been shopping at Wal-Mart, an elderly couple, and two young ladies in this buggy.

The section of trail I hiked did not take me past any Amish farms.  It was passing through a wetland area and was parallel to noisy highway US 62.  But its tree lined corridor offered its own special beauty.

Old Order Amish buggies here in the Holmes settlement are painted black, compared with gray in Lancaster.  That is evidence of a slightly more conservative Ordnung, their unwritten system of guiding rules, in Holmes.

Lancaster Amish tend to place more emphasis on perfection/neatness/cleanliness of visual appearance of their farms and homes.  From what I could see, the Holmes farms tend to de-emphasize outward appearance so that they don't really stand out from non-Amish farms the way they do in Lancaster.

In fact, Holmes County is home to an ultra-conservative affiliation called the Swartzentruber Amish, whose farms are said to be deliberately 'unkempt'.  They don't allow use of gravel on their driveways, so they tend to be muddy and rutty.  This group prohibits ever riding in automobiles except for emergencies.  They don't even allow the orange reflective 'slow-moving vehicle' triangles on their buggies, considering them too worldly, and they do not use battery operated lighting on their buggies either, sticking to the traditional lanterns.  In my short time in the area I did not notice any buggies of this sort.

A distinctive feature of the Holmes County settlement is that Holmes may soon become the first Amish majority county in the US.  At present Amish comprise 42 percent of the county's population, and since Amish tend to have more children than non-Amish (Swartzentruber affiliation families average 9.3 children), that percentage is steadily rising.

Here, for the sake of completeness, is the GPS track of my brief walk along the 'Amish Highway'.

Split Personality - The Enola Low Grade Rail Trail

View upriver to Wrightsville from Turkey Hill gets my vote as the best of many great Susquehanna River views that are accessible only by foot.  This viewpoint is reached from the Turkey Hill Trail, which is a footpath that parallels the multi-use Enola rail trail for three and a half miles of its northern-most segment.

The Enola Low Grade Rail Trail is thirty miles long.  It is named for the very gently sloped rail line designed to transport heavy freight across this rolling country with a slope (grade) everywhere less than one percent.  It runs through half a dozen townships in Lancaster County PA from the Susquehanna River east to the borough of Atglen.  Each township is in charge of developing and maintaining its section of the trail.  There is no central authority.  Some of the townships have fully developed their length of trail, with fine packed gravel surface and fully developed trailheads.  In other townships the trail is just a weedy muddy track where nothing has been done since they ripped out the rails and ties back in the late 80's.

A summary might go like this:  Low grades for the east, high grades for the west.  But it's not really that simple.

The east end of the trail has a setting that is wonderfully distinctive.

It runs through the very heart of rural Lancaster County - gently rolling, rich soil, well drained but moist - perfect for farming.  Here, along the trail, virtually every farm is Amish owned.  Well kept boxy homes with no power lines, neat, clean barns and outbuildings, clotheslines strung on a pulley rope from house to high on the side of a barn or to the top of a pole.  Beside the barns sit tractors with big steel wheels, never taken to the fields.  I saw two little boys in blue shirts, black pants with suspenders, flat brimmed straw hats climbing on the fence of a brown-egg-laying chicken's pen.  Every farm has well tended vegetable gardens, dairy cattle browsing the fields, and of course the boxy gray-painted Lancaster County settlement's horse-drawn buggies going to and fro, hauling kids to the one-room Amish schools or parked at a local hardware and feed store.  It's an idyllic setting, but the trail through here is not ready for prime time.

In contrast, the western part of this trail runs along the Susquehanna River.  To maintain the gentle grade they blasted its steep sided bluffs.  The views are at times spectacular, and there are designated rock climbing areas that show signs of frequent use.

But this section of trail is severed by a significant gap.  The long high trestle over the Conestoga River beside Safe Harbor Dam has not yet been opened.

I hiked this unique trail in five day hikes.  The two western hikes covered the two sections along the river, separated by the off-limits trestle bridge.  A smaller but still impressive trestle over Pequea Creek has recently been reconstructed.  I already showed you this trestle from below, as seen from the Conestoga Trail.

Now here's the perspective from the Enola Rail trail.

From this trestle west is where you'll find the breathtaking scenery.

My three day hikes in the east were rural and quaint, as described, except where the trail passes through the town of Quarryville and where it merges with the active Amtrak rail line and peters out, becoming weedy and unused as it approaches the planned eastern trailhead in Atglen.

Now, since I was doing out-and-back day hikes, I had the chance to do a loop hike that included the Turkey Hill Trail, which climbs high above the Enola Rail Trail and roughly parallels it for three and a half miles.  Apart from the Turkey Hill viewpoint featured in the headline photo, the trail passes two giant windmills.

On the other side of this hill is the Turkey Hill dairy's manufacturing plant, and, enigmatically, between the creamery and the windmills is a huge active landfill.  On the day I passed, there was a breeze coming off the dump.  Not pleasant.  Fortunately the stench lasted only half a mile.

Near the south end of the Turkey Hill Trail are two more spectacular, even scary cliff-top views.

The drop from this latter viewpoint was so sheer, and the exposure so treacherous from the jagged rock that I was afraid to stand.

I crawled out on the most out-jutting rock on my belly, like a snake, and reached my camera out to get this shot straight down.

For perspective here is how that frightening viewpoint looks from directly beneath it on the Enola Trail.

The odd sluice-like structure in the view from above carries the runoff from a stream, and bridges over the lower railroad track, which is still in use.  There were three such structures along the trail.  Here's a look at another one, where Mann's Run drains into the river.

Mann's Run was a pretty spot, showcasing some lingering fall color.

Finally, here are the five GPS track maps of this trail, in geographic order from west to east.  If you want to do just one of these five hikes, beyond question the best is the Turkey Hill/Enola loop hike from the huge paved Turkey Hill Trailhead, the first of the five maps below.

The little 'tail' in the middle of this track is the connecting road from the Conestoga Trail route to a nice trailhead parking area on the Enola Trail.  It's just a quarter mile between the two.

The north-south segment of this track is a road walk along Pumping Station Road, part of a planned twelve mile connecting road walk to my Mom's villa in Oxford, PA

Susquehanna Sweet Spot - the Conestoga Trail

Looking northwest from Pinnacle Overlook

Views, views, views.  Each meeting its proverbial quota -- worthy of a thousand superlative words.  So I'll shut up and let the pictures talk.

Looking south from House Rock

Norman Wood Bridge

Holtwood Dam from Face Rock Observatory site

Every one of these views is to be had on a twelve-mile section of the Conestoga trail.  It's a one-day, one way, strenuous hike that I can heartily recommend.

Find a fit friend with a car.  Have him or her follow you in your car to the Lock 12 Parking Lot just off to the north side of PA 372 at the west end of the Norman Wood Bridge.  Park one car there and drive the other to the public boat launch ramp at Pequea, PA, at the end of PA 324 where Pequea Creek empties into the Susquehanna River.  Pick up the orange blazes at the Pequea Yacht Club, formerly the Arrowhead Marina and before long you're plunging into the woods.

For the rest of the hike you're off the roads, usually deep in the woods, following ravines with tumbling noisy streams, and climbing high onto rocky bluffs overlooking the Susquehanna Gorge.  You'll be climbing and descending most of the time, sometimes steeply.  But the payoff is well worth it.  "No pain, no gain," as they say.

Here are a couple of the finest ravine views, Kelly's Run and Tuquan Glen.  Fall color a bonus.

At the end you'll be crossing the river on the Norman Wood Bridge.

This is Amish Country, with luck you'll be passed by a buggy or two.  On the Sunday morning that I came across, I counted four.  There are two in this view, though the distant one is just a dark blur.

Take some time to check out the interpretive signs at Historic Lock Twelve of the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal, which runs some forty miles from the Chesapeake Bay up to Wrightsville.

This hike has a good guide and a decent map, both free online from the Lancaster Hiking Club.

The Conestoga Trail continues north through Amish Country passing through the city of Lancaster and ending at the Horse Shoe Trail.  A lot of the rest of it is road walking, but northbound from the Pequea Boat Launch parking area there's one further woods walk that is well worth the time.  This is an easy section along Pequea Creek.  It features a covered bridge ...

... and then a few miles hiking deep in the woods, far from any road, and right beside large, noisy Pequea Creek.  This is a very easy walk, no climbs at all.  Fall Color was resplendent as I passed through.

And the witch hazel were in bloom.

The highlight here is Suzy's Hole, a whitewater gauntlet tough enough to warrant posted warning signs upstream.

At the other end of this gorgeous woods walk, just before hitting a long Conestoga Trail road walk, the trail passes under a hundred-year-old Railroad Trestle.

This is an abandoned rail line, and the trestle bed has been rebuilt as part of a rail trail that will be the subject of my next report.  A quarter mile connector road near here links the Conestoga Trail with the oddly named Enola Low Grade Rail Trail.  Though the Conestoga Trail is finished with the Susquehanna River, the Enola trail takes you back north and west to it for more killer views.  Watch this space.

I did this section of the Conestoga Trail in two out-and-back day hikes.  Here are the GPS tracks.

The southern section from Lock 12 to Holtwood Recreation Park I did as a side trip during my Mason-Dixon trail hiking.  For completeness, here's that track.

I hope this report raises awareness of this little-known day hike.  It's one of the most concentrated collection of beauty-spots I've encountered anywhere.