Union Canal Trail

The Union Canal Trail is a crushed stone path along Tulpehocken Creek on the west side of Reading, Pennsylvania. It follows the old towpath of the Union Canal for about four and a half miles from Stonecliffe Recreation Area to Rebers Bridge, then a connector carries it on toward Blue Marsh Lake. The route strings together a chain of Berks County parks: the Berks Leisure Area, Grings Mill, Red Bridge Park, and the Berks County Heritage Center with Wertz's Covered Bridge. Stone lock walls and mill buildings from the canal era sit right beside the path. The grade is canal flat, the creek is always close, and the Schuylkill River Trail joins at the Reading end.

• The Union Canal was chartered in 1791 and took until 1828 to finish.
• The original canal was only eight and a half feet wide, so its boats could carry no more than 25 tons.
• Boats climbed the Tulpehocken and Swatara valleys through 93 locks, and a 729-foot tunnel was drilled by hand through slate and limestone near Lebanon.
• Anthracite coal from the mountains became the canal's main source of revenue, and lumber rode east with it toward Philadelphia.
• The C. Howard Hiester Canal Center at the Berks County Heritage Center holds the largest private collection of nineteenth century canal memorabilia in the United States.
• Wertz's Covered Bridge, the Red Bridge, was built in 1867 at 204 feet and is the largest single span covered bridge in Pennsylvania.
• The Red Bridge closed to vehicles in 1959, and a maternity colony of little brown bats now summers inside it.
• Tulpehocken means Land of Turtles in the language of the Lenni Lenape, the valley's first inhabitants.
• The Tulpehocken Creek watershed drains 352 square miles, and the Blue Marsh dam that holds it back is 1,775 feet long and 98 feet high.

Mules towed canal boats along Tulpehocken Creek here for more than fifty years, and the path they walked is the trail. The Schuylkill and Susquehanna Navigation Company was chartered in 1791 to join the two rivers. Digging began in 1792, then money ran out, and the reorganized Union Canal Company did not finish the line until 1828. The finished canal ran about 80 miles from Reading on the Schuylkill to Middletown on the Susquehanna, climbing the Tulpehocken valley through stone lift locks to a summit near Lebanon. It was built narrow, eight and a half feet wide, so boats were small. Anthracite coal from the mountains became its main cargo, with lumber bound east for Philadelphia. From 1841 to 1858 the company widened the channel to 17 feet and rebuilt the locks larger. The Lebanon Valley Railroad opened in 1857 and took the traffic, and a June 1862 flood on Swatara Creek wrecked the western end. The canal shut down in the 1880s. Grist mills such as David Gring's stayed on beside the empty channel. Berks County later turned the surviving towpath between Stonecliffe and Rebers Bridge into the Union Canal Bicycle and Walking Trail, linking its creekside parks and the Heritage Center. The trail is a designated National Recreation Trail, and a connector now carries it on to the Blue Marsh Lake trail system.

• Stonecliffe Recreation AreaMILE 0Directions
• Grings Mill Recreation AreaMILE 1.4Directions
• Berks County Heritage CenterMILE 2.5Directions
• Rebers BridgeMILE 4.4Directions
• Swiftwater Lane ParkingMILE 5.3Directions

• Berks County Parks and Recreation · Union Canal Towpath Trail
• Pennsylvania DCNR · Union Canal Trail
• ExplorePAhistory · Union Canal Towpath
• Wikipedia · Union Canal (Pennsylvania)
• Pennsylvania's Americana Region (Experience Berks) · The Union Canal in Berks County, Pennsylvania
• Wikipedia · Wertz's Covered Bridge
• Berks Nature · Tulpehocken Creek Watershed Association