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The Green Ribbon and Wissahickon Trail follows Wissahickon Creek for about twelve miles through Montgomery County, from Parkside Place Park in Upper Gwynedd Township downstream to Stenton Avenue at the Philadelphia line. It is a creekside greenway, not a rail corridor. The upper ten miles are the Green Ribbon Trail, a narrow foot path on hard-packed dirt with stretches of gravel, mowed grass, and wooden footbridges; bikes are not permitted there. Below Skippack Pike the route becomes the Wissahickon Trail through Fort Washington State Park, a wider multi-use path that carries bikes toward Forbidden Drive. The whole way is nearly flat and stays close to the water, passing the Evans-Mumbower Mill, Penllyn Woods, and the Four Mills Nature Reserve.
Green Ribbon & Wissahickon Trail
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Green Ribbon & Wissahickon Trail has about 115 to 160 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as hiking, dog walking, e-biking, running, birding, biking, and walking, with April, May, and October the best months.
Hourly comfort scores for the next 15 days of weather, tuned to your activity and your own thresholds.
Plan your visit to this trail. Get the best windows for a comfortable outing.
Enjoy the Green Ribbon & Wissahickon Trail!
In half of past years, color along the Green Ribbon & Wissahickon Trail peaks October 29 to November 8, typically around November 3. The trail has 35% deciduous coverage, with the majority being yellow-poplar, white ash, red maple, white oak, and black walnut.
Wissahickon Creek turned mill wheels for two centuries before anyone thought of it as a trail. Thomas Evans took up a land grant on the creek in 1698, and his grandson Abraham built a saw mill there in 1744. John and Elisa Keefe rebuilt it in stone in 1835. Henry Mumbower bought the mill in 1856, his son David ran it after him, and the wheel stopped in 1930. Farther down, the Whitemarsh hills above the creek held Washington's army for six weeks in late 1777, and Pennsylvania militia camped on the rise now called Militia Hill. No railroad ever ran this valley floor; the corridor is the creek itself. On April 20, 1955, nine residents met to address flooding along the Wissahickon. In 1957 they formed the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association, the group now called Wissahickon Trails. Over the next fifty years the association assembled creekside land piece by piece until the Green Ribbon Trail ran the length of the valley through six townships and two boroughs. It took ownership of the collapsing Evans-Mumbower Mill in 1987 and restored it. Montgomery County took up the lower end as the Wissahickon Trail, widening two miles inside Fort Washington State Park to twelve feet and paving a half mile along Northwestern Avenue in 2008. In 2022 the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Planning Association named the Green Ribbon Trail and Preserve a Great Place in Pennsylvania.
Forbidden DriveCross County TrailLiberty Bell Trail
