Jax Stumpes: Glen Providence Park (9/15/2019)

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Glen Providence Park (9/15/2019)

Sunday, September 15, 2019
We are revisiting Glen Providence Park in Media, PA.

Main entrance on State Street just past where it
branches off from Baltimore Pike on the west side of town

Looking down from the entrance, we thought the open space
was all there was to Glen Providence Park

However, there are 33 acres in the wooded valley of Broomall's Run. George and Eleanor Butler donated the land for Glen Providence Park in 1935, making it Delaware County’s first park. They dedicated the park as a Bird Sanctuary and Arboretum, as they wished it to be maintained in its natural state. The Works Progress Administration/WPA created many of the features of the park.

The former "comfort station," built by the WPA

The WPA Stage (1937), where the first concert was
performed by the Delaware County WPA Orchestra

A left at the bottom of the sledding hill brings
you to Mountain Laurel Trail

Here also was the site of Stokes Guard House. James Stokes was the Park Supervisor with whom children under the age of 16 could register to fish throughout the summer.

Hmm, it looks like they channeled a water run-off
to follow in the trail itself

Viburnum acerifolium/Mapleleaf Viburnum

Kalmia latifolia/Mountain Laurel did not appear
until the eastern end of the trail

We saw a couple woodpeckers on this trail; a small one with a bit of red on its head and a medium-size one.

The banks of a much shrunken Broomall's Run
is littered with rotten fallen trees

The trail "cut" through a large trunk; Kent

Pavilion, built by the WPA

A beachball-sized boulder of quartz

Scroggies Pond, formerly Mirror Lake, was created by the WPA in 1936
and was the site of fishing derbies for children in the summer

A "boardwalk" along the Shingle Mill Trail

Shingle Mill Trail and Shortcut marker

Later we thought we had lost the Shingle Mill Trail as we walked through "wetlands" at the edge of a creek, where no waterway was shown on the map.

These Symplocarpus foetidus/Skunk Cabbage sprouts think it is Spring!

The former Shingle Mill (producing wooden shingles) site was somewhere along this part of Broomall's Run.

The Shingle Mill Trail followed the very edge of the creek,
around the wetlands and crossing another water run-off

Now heading uphill, Kent manages
a minor obstacle

Being a bit larger and paler than one we saw on Cornucopia Trail,
this must be a female Anaxyrus americanus/Eastern American Toad

From the Shingle Mill Trail, we climbed The Switchback up the other side of the valley.

Scouts Loop Trail marker

Scouts Loop was a wide easy trail

Park entrance at Kirk Lane and Third Street

We thought we would follow Third Street east across Broomall's Run, and then find the Ice House Trail, but...

Third Street was closed where is crossed water!

So back to take The Switchback down ...

... to cross Broomall's Run (was this the Shingle Mill race,
since it appears man-made?)

Ice House Trail marker

We passed the 1941 Trail that leads
back to the main entrance

A stone wall formation seems to be slipping into the creek;
is this part of the former ice house or a footbridge foundation?

The breached dam and waterfall where Third Street is supposed to cross

Oh, it looks like a lake resort building; the clubhouse
of the Broomall's Lake Country Club

Broomall Dam was originally built in the early 1880s as a reservoir and source of ice for ice boxes in family homes. It was also used for recreational swimming and boating. Since 1980 the dam was deemed unsafe, and the road was closed to vehicles. In 2017 the dam was breached; the upper part of the dam was removed to lessen the threat of the dam failure. Now there is no pedestrian crossing, and to me, it looks like the dam was totally destroyed. The former Broomall's Lake now looks like wetlands.