American Travel Journal: Cuyahoga Valley National Park

In my opinion, one of the great innovations at Cuyahoga Valley National Park is the availability of free single-page flyers with detailed maps of sections of the park. Flyers are posted at most trailhead kiosks and are also available in the pamphlet racks at Boston Store Visitor Center. Many of these maps are also available online. From these maps, we found several short trails to explore.

Blue Hen Falls

Blue Hen Falls is accessible via a one-half mile trail from the small parking lot off of Boston Mills Road. While there wasn't much water flowing, it was still a very picturesque fifteen foot drop in Spring Creek. The round trip was about one-half mile.

Spring Creek from trail bridge

Blue Hen Falls

Indigo Lake

While we could have parked at Indigo Station, we chose to walk south along the towpath from Hunt Farm Visitor Information Center and then west on the trail to Indigo Station and the lake. The side trail skirts some private property that includes a well-kept trailer park. The round trip was less than two miles

Indigo Lake looking south

Indigo Lake looking southwest

Everett Road Covered Bridge

This is the only remaining covered bridge in Summit County. The bridge is normally only open to horse and foot traffic. While we were there, some maintenance work was being performed that occasionally closed the bridge completely. Near the bridge is a memorial to the people that had the vision to preserve the Cuyahoga Valley for future generations by creating the park. The bridge spans Furnace Run which has flooded enough to damage or destroy both the Everett Road bridge and the Ohio & Erie Canal aqueduct on multiple occasions. The bridge was likely originally built in the late 1860s. The current bridge is a historically accurate reproduction built in 1986. The round trip walking distance from the parking area is about one-half mile.

Northeast end of the bridge

Covered Bridge from the Founders Wayside exhibit

Founders Wayside

Horseshoe Lake and Tree Farm Trail

One evening, we chose to take a ranger-led hike along the Tree Farm Trail. Since we arrived a bit early, I took the opportunity to explore a short trail that I found on the site map. It begins as a paved trail from the parking lot down to a viewing platform on Horseshoe Lake and then continues as a paved trail to a boardwalk through the woods before turning into an ADA-accessible packed gravel trail to a picnic shelter with a view of the lake. The total distance was about a quarter-mile. Since the ranger-led hike began near dusk and explored the old Christmas tree farm, photographic opportunities were very limited. Even though Major Road is within sight of the trail in a couple of locations, we learned about nurse trees, numerous wildflowers and the sounds and fragrances of the forest. While there is very little elevation change, this trail is through the woods with many opportunities to stumble on the numerous roots. I would suggest taking this trail earlier in the day or using a flashlight. At 2.75 miles, this really isn't a short hiking loop, but it is flat enough that it doesn't seem that long.

Accessible trail

Picnic shelter

Horseshoe Lake from picnic area

Wildflowers on the Tree Farm Trail

Haskell Run Trail

The one half mile loop hike along a portion of Haskell Run begins at the parking lot across West Streetsboro Road (Ohio Rte 303) from Happy Days Lodge in the Virginia Kendall Unit of the park. It proceeds to pass under the road by way of a tunnel and then climbs some steps to the entrance driveway. The lodge was the last and largest structure built in this area by Company 567 of the CCC in the 1930s. It was named after FDR's 1932 campaign song "Happy Days Are Here Again". We kept walking past the lodge to find the trail head at the edge of the woods behind the rear parking area. An available trail booklet is keyed to numbered posts along the trail. Although the booklet has not been updated since the area was a National Recreation Area, it still provides quite a bit of information about the geology, geography, flora and fauna of the area. After passing a cemetery on the left, the trail winds down toward the creek by means of an old gravel road. The temperature drop was noticeable as we descended the seventy feet or so to the creek.