Swatara Rail Trail

The Swatara Rail Trail runs 10 miles up the Swatara Creek valley through Swatara State Park, from Lickdale near Interstate 81 Exit 90 to the Suedberg Road trailhead below Pine Grove. The old Reading branch line follows the creek between Blue Mountain and Second Mountain, crossing the creek on rail bridges and passing the 1890 Waterville Bridge, where the Appalachian Trail crosses the water. The grade is rail flat, about 70 feet of change end to end. The surface is crushed stone for most of the length, with a stretch of old paved road and some dirt, so bring wide tires. Canal lock ruins, the Bordner Cabin, and a fossil pit sit within a short walk of the trail.

• The Waterville Bridge at the Appalachian Trail crossing is a 221 foot lenticular truss built in 1890 by the Berlin Iron Bridge Company of East Berlin, Connecticut.
• The bridge originally spanned Little Pine Creek near Waterville in Lycoming County and was dismantled, repaired, and rebuilt over Swatara Creek in the 1980s.
• The Union Canal's Swatara feeder ran about 21.6 miles along Swatara Creek from Water Works to the head of the Pine Grove Basin.
• A 672 acre canal reservoir once sat on park land; the flood of June 1862 washed out its dam and the branch canal never reopened.
• The Suedberg fossil pit near the Swopes Valley trailhead exposes the upper Mahantango Formation, a Middle Devonian seafloor about 375 million years old.
• Visitors may keep the brachiopods, crinoids, and trilobites they find at the fossil pit, as long as they skip crowbars and big hammers and leave some for others.
• Armar Bordner, a local industrial arts teacher, built a log cabin here in 1939, fought the eminent domain acquisition of her property, and was allowed to stay in it for life.
• Kittatinny Ridge, just north of the park, is the largest of the Audubon Important Bird Areas in Pennsylvania, and migrating birds rest in the park's fields below it.
• Swatara State Park was planned around a reservoir for Lebanon's drinking water that was never built, which is why the park stays largely undeveloped.

A June 1862 flood tore out the Union Canal's Swatara feeder, and the Philadelphia and Reading laid rails up the same valley eight years later. The feeder had opened in November 1827, running north from the Water Works Dam along Swatara Creek toward Pine Grove to carry anthracite from the Tremont coalfields down to the main canal near Lebanon. The canal fed a 672 acre reservoir on what is now park land. The 1862 flood took the dam, and neither dam nor canal was rebuilt. In 1870 the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad opened a spur from Lebanon to Pine Grove along the dead canal. The next year the company folded its connecting lines here into the Lebanon and Tremont Branch, hauling coal from the West End of the Schuylkill field to Lebanon. The branch north of Suedberg was abandoned by 1965. Conrail let the rest go between 1978 and 1981, and the roadbed passed to the state. The Commonwealth had begun buying land for a state park in 1971, planning a lake that was never built, and finished acquisition in 1987, when Swatara State Park opened. The old grade stayed a rough path for years. In 2012 DCNR began developing the park in earnest, laying 10 miles of crushed stone on the rail trail and adding parking lots and bridges. The Waterville Bridge, moved here from Lycoming County in the 1980s, now carries the Appalachian Trail over the creek beside the rail trail.

• Lickdale TrailheadMILE 1Directions
• Waterville BridgeMILE 2.5Directions
• Sand Siding Parking LotMILE 5.3Directions
• Swopes Valley TrailheadMILE 8.2Directions

• Pennsylvania DCNR · Swatara Rail Trail
• Pennsylvania DCNR · Horseback Riding at Swatara State Park
• Pennsylvania DCNR · Wildlife Watching at Swatara State Park
• Pennsylvania DCNR · History of Swatara State Park
• Wikipedia · Swatara State Park
• LebTown · Swatara State Park fossil site offers a glimpse into an ancient past
• Wikipedia · Suedberg Fossil Site