From Forest to Field at Raccoon Creek

A short drive west of Pittsburgh, Raccoon Creek State Park covers a lot of ground, with thousands of acres of second-growth forest, old farm fields, and quiet trail. I went out earlier today with no real plan beyond walking slowly and seeing what mid-June had to offer. It was about 69 degrees and mostly sunny, close to ideal for a walk in the woods.

The park has more history than its quiet trails let on. In the 1930s it was one of five Recreational Demonstration Areas in Pennsylvania, tired farmland that the federal government set aside to recover. Civilian Conservation Corps and WPA crews built it out for the National Park Service between 1934 and 1941, and it later became a state park. Today it covers more than 7,500 acres, which makes it one of the largest state parks in Pennsylvania, with a 100-acre lake near its center.

It is a good place to hike because so many of the trails intersect. You can put together your own route and make the day as short or as long as you want, turning back toward the car or pushing on deeper into the park as you go. The park’s full list of trails is a good place to start planning.

The far side of the park holds a wildflower preserve that I did not reach today. I will save it for a later field note of its own.

My loop ran almost six miles and took about two and a half hours. It is not a difficult path, with around 600 feet of elevation gain spread across the day. I started up the Appaloosa Trail , climbing through hardwoods that were still deep green with early summer. The light under the canopy is cool and filtered, easy to slow down in. Fallen logs are rotting back into the soil, and ferns fill in wherever a little sun gets through. Recent storms had brought down some fresh trees, and a few of them were lying across the trail and took some climbing over.

From there I picked up the Heritage Trail , narrower and grassed over, running between the trees. The full Heritage Trail makes a loop of about twenty miles around the park, with camping shelters roughly halfway along for anyone turning it into an overnight, though I only walked a section of it today. In places the undergrowth crowded in close enough that the path was hard to make out. It is common to have these trails to yourself out here, and today was no exception. It is butterfly and wildflower season, and the edges of the trail were full of both. Fleabane and yarrow in the grass, Deptford pinks on thin wiry stems, and one fritillary that held still long enough for a photo. Where the trail dropped low and opened up around water, the birds changed with the habitat. Red-winged blackbirds called their conk-la-ree from the cattails, and a yellow warbler sang its sweet-sweet-sweet somewhere in the willows.

Then the woods opened onto Doak Field. After a while under the canopy, the open sky was a nice change, a wide meadow running up to a far treeline under a mackerel sky. The field was full of birds. A field sparrow sang its bouncing song from the grass, a common yellowthroat called from the brushy edge, and a gray catbird worked through its medley nearby. An indigo bunting sang from the top of a small tree, bright blue against the sky. I stood there for a while before heading back. It is a good reminder to take these hikes slowly.