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The Hamburg segment is the upriver end of the Schuylkill River Trail, about 8 miles of crushed stone from Auburn in Schuylkill County down through Port Clinton to the State Street Trailhead in Hamburg. It follows an old railroad bed along the river through the gap where the Schuylkill cuts through Blue Mountain, crosses the Appalachian Trail near Port Clinton, and passes the Kernsville Dam and its recreation area on the way into Hamburg. The grade is rail flat and the canopy is dense and nearly continuous, with the river always close. A rehabilitated railroad bridge at Auburn closed the last gap in 2023. The Reading segment lies well downriver; there is no trail yet between Hamburg and Reading.
Schuylkill River Trail: Hamburg
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Schuylkill River Trail: Hamburg has about 114 to 160 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as hiking, dog walking, birding, e-biking, running, 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 Schuylkill River Trail: Hamburg!
In half of past years, color along the Schuylkill River Trail: Hamburg peaks October 21 to 31, typically around October 25. The trail has 47% deciduous coverage, with the majority being chestnut oak, red maple, northern red oak, sweet birch, and yellow-poplar.
The Schuylkill Navigation Company was chartered in 1815, and its canal began floating anthracite down the valley in 1825. The finished waterway ran 108 miles and used 92 lift locks to drop 588 feet. In 1859, its peak year, the canal moved 1.7 million tons of cargo. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad opened along the same river in 1841. Within four years it hauled three times the canal's anthracite. In 1870 the navigation company leased its waterway to the Reading for 999 years. After 1913 only an occasional boat passed. The Pennsylvania Railroad answered the Reading with its own line up the valley, the Pennsylvania Schuylkill Valley Railroad, which reached Reading in 1884. Conrail's formation in 1976 closed that branch north of Manayunk. Between 1947 and 1979 the state filled most of the old canal with the coal silt it dredged from the river. In 1974 a group of Reading-area citizens founded the Schuylkill River Greenway Association. They won scenic river designation in 1978 and began the Schuylkill River Trail in 1979 on the old towpaths and railroad beds. More than 80 miles of a planned 120 are open today. This segment is the corridor's upriver frontier: an old railroad bed from Hamburg through the water gap at Port Clinton, the canal's head of navigation from 1888, to Auburn, where a rehabilitated Pennsylvania Railroad bridge closed the last gap in November 2023.
Appalachian Trail
