Chadwick Wildlife Preserve (Tour)

This tour was curated by: Rose Valley Environmental Advisory Council

Entries on This Tour

Begin you tour by proceeding up and around the start of Mediation Trail for about 25 yards. You will see a large flat rock outcropping on your left. This is Spy Rock. It faces north, and at one time likely provided a view of Ridley Creek upstream and down, the Minquas Trail going east-west. Long time residents who explored Long Point in their youth called it Spionkop.

2. Chadwick Preserve POI C2 Southern Red Oak Grove

Continue a short way down the Meditation Trail from C1 Spy Rock. You will enter a series of descending switchbacks into a narrow flat area. This is the Southern Red Oak Grove. There are a number of Sothern Red Oak here, identified by light patches in its reddish brown bark and a distinctive three pointed leaf with rounded base. One of the last indigenous stands in Pennsylvania of a state-endangered species, southern red oak, also called Spanish oak or Quercus falcata, occupies the ridgetop of Long Point, alongside trees of at least six other species.

3. Chadwick Preserve POI C3 Seekers After Knowledge Cabin

Proceed a short way down the Meditation Trail from C3 Southern Red Oak Grove. On the north side of a small flat area you will see a restored chimney, the remains of the Seekers After Knowledge Cabin. The fireplace opening appears to be on the wrong side, but the cabin was facing north, built on a stilt foundation and overlooking the hillside. A rope ladder down below provided a means of crossing Ridley Creek from the Old Mill. The origin of the Seekers after Knowledge and the Cabin are both lost to history. No one, even lifelong residents of Rose Valley, appears to know the full story. While the dates of their beginning are unclear, the activities of the Seekers and the Cabin are well documented.

4. Chadwick Preserve POI C4 Deer Impact Monitoring Plots

Continue down the Meditation Trail and switchback until it meets the Long Point Trail. Take a right and proceed approximately 25 yards to the Minquas Trail. Continue forward approximately 20 yards on the Minquas Trail and on your left there will be a large wooden post and fence enclosed area. This is the Deer Impact Monitoring Plots, and you will notice a sign within the fence describing the project. A variety of observations in the roughly 36 acres of wildlife sanctuaries owned and managed by the borough of Rose Valley have long been consistent with ongoing severe forest degradation by the white-tailed deer population, which is far higher than it has ever been due to the extermination of their natural predators, including mountain lions and wolves. To test the hypothesis that deer overpopulation is the cause of the observed degradation, a scientist undertook a rigorous, quantitative approach to isolating and measuring deer impacts separately from all other effects on vegetation.

5. Chadwick Preserve POI C5 Indian Rock

Proceed back on the Minquas Trail from the Deer Impact Monitoring Plots about 20 yards and you will see a large rock formation on your left. This is Indian Rock, named by early Rose Valley residents and featured during a 1998 Minquas Trail Walk. Despite the name, scholars agree that the location, being near the floodplain and entirely exposed, would not have been suitable for a campground.The formation, about 15' X15', is composed primarily of gneiss, a light colored crystalline rock. You can observe the layers (mineral grains) are now vertical, although they were originally horizontal and formed by extreme heat and pressure. The large horizontal fissures and exposed cracks indicate the rock fell from a higher elevation on the ridge and settled here.

6. Chadwick Preserve POI C6 Giant Sycamore

Turn back on the Minquas Trail from C5 Indian Rock and make an immediate left turn on Long Point Trail for about 30 yards. On your left about 15 feet off the path you will see a towering tree. This is the Giant Sycamore. It is an American sycamore, also called buttonwood or Platanus occidentalis, one of the two largest tree species found in the wild in Rose Valley (the other is tuliptree, also called yellow-poplar, prevalent in Saul Preserve).

7. Chadwick Preserve POI C7 Picnic Rock

Proceed about 10 yards down the long Point Trail from C6 Giant Sycamore and then 10 yards to the right by Ridley Creek. The wide rock jutting into the creek is Picnic Rock. It is composed of schist, another metamorphic rock common to the crystalline Piedmont of southeastern Pennsylvania.

8. Chadwick Preserve POI C8 Pawpaw Patch

Proceed on the southeast portion of the Long Point Trail from C7 Picnic Rock for about 20 yards. You will see a large stand of dark green leafed 10' to 14' trees set about 20' to the left of the trail. This is the Pawpaw Patch. The small trees with very large leaves here are northern pawpaw, also called Asimina triloba, whose yellowish-green to brown fruits are the largest edible fruit indigenous to the United States.

9. Chadwick Preserve POI C9 The Great Minquas Path

Continue about 30 yards on the Long Point Trail from C8 Pawpaw Patch until the next crossing signpost. The trail to the left is the Great Minquas Path. The 17th-century Native American trade route crossed Ridley Creek near this point. It ran 80 miles, from the palisaded towns of the Susquehannock Nation along the lower Susquehanna through the Lenape Nation to the Schuylkill near its confluence with the Delaware.

10. Chadwick Preserve POI C10 Meander Point Bars (Cobblestones)

Continue on Long Point Trail past the intersection with The Minquas Path. Further along the creek bed you will see two large expanses of cobblestones leading into Ridley Creek. These are the Meander Point Bars. Long Point is the sharpest meander of Ridley Creek, formed where the flow was diverted millennia ago by the highly resistant rock of the hill across the stream. A point bar is a depositional feature made of sand, gravel, and cobblestones that accumulates on the inside bends of streams and rivers in a crescent shape.

This Tour is a Virtual Museum or Site Tour.

Chadwick Wildlife Preserve

Created by Peter Howell on September 29th 2023, 1:05:25 am.

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Description

Welcome to the Chadwick Wildlife Preserve, a 13-acre wooded community open space in Long Point, part of Rose Valley, Pennsylvania. It is named for E. Wallace Chadwick, a civic minded judge and congressman, who bequeathed the funds for the purchase of the land, completed in 1972. Long Point is so called for the ridge and floodplain surrounded by a 180-degree bend of Ridley Creek. The Preserve has walking trails pictured on a map located in the Preserve trailhead, which you can download to smartphone with a QR code. The Minquas Trail takes you down a wide path to the Ridley Creek Floodplain, the Long Point Trail takes you around the point near Ridley Creek, and the Meditation Trail returns you via a picturesque and meandering ridge route of switchback rises to the beginning.

Entries on This Tour

Chadwick Wildlife Preserve

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