Rockford Park

Hey everybody! I know I missed a post last month, but it was for a good reason! I was moving on the 21st of March and so I figured it would be better to move this post to the 7th of April. I have some good stuff coming for the 21st of April and the 7th of May. Thankfully I have a large enough collection of photos so I don’t have to violate the stay at home order.

Rockford Park has everything you could possibly need in a park. It has baseball fields, tennis courts, open green space to play in, hiking trails, and even a dog park. It is also home to the Rockford Tower, a 75-foot-tall water tower with an observation deck on the top. The best features, however, are the boulders and small cliffs that lead you down to the Brandywine River.

 

This park is one of the oldest parks in the city of Wilmington. In 1889, William Poole Bancroft donated 59 acres of land to form the park and he convinced the du Pont family to donate another 9 acres. In 1901, the Rockford Tower was constructed to serve as a water tower and observation deck to look out over Wilmington and the Brandywine River.

From the parking lot of the Tower down to the banks of the Brandywine, is a 100-foot change in elevation. It flattens out for a bit around 15 feet off the river, but then it drops sharply one more time to get you down to the bottom. While you don’t have to scale the boulders and small cliffs to access the Brandywine River, I certainly recommend it, solely because of how much more fun it is. If you park at the top by the tower you can climb over the foot high stone wall and from there you go down the boulders. There is no set path down, just climb! The other way down is a path that connects to the intersection of Rising Sun Lane and Main Street.

Do not wear normal sneakers or tennis shoes and especially do not wear flip flops or other open toe shoes. The rocks and leaves here can be slippery and sharp. Boots are really the only type of shoe that you should be wearing here. This is a good place to practice social distancing, so get out and go explore!

Beaver Valley

Hidden away on the state line between Pennsylvania and Delaware, lies a spectacular park called Beaver Valley. Owned by the National Park Service, it has 1,100 acres of pastures, fields, forested hills and stream valleys. That’s simply too much land to cover so today, we will be talking about the section known as the Woodlawn Short Loop.

The Woodlawn Short Loop is home to many cool things. It has a stream running through it that provides juxtaposition to the forest around it. That stream starts out small and simple on the east end and becomes a series of rapids and waterfalls on the west end. At around the 12 O’clock section of the trail sits some English Quaker ruins that are from the 19th century.

 

This section sits just north of Brandywine Creek State Park in the area right behind Hy-Point Dairy Farms. The easiest parking lot to access the Quaker ruins and waterfalls is on Beaver Valley Road across the road from Cloverleaf Stables. There will be a National Park Service sign to let you know exactly where but the sign is on the wrong side of the road.

This is not the hardest area to hike. I’d say the only difficult thing about hiking here is the fact that none of the creek crossings have bridges. You have to either rock hop or get your feet wet. The streams are only about 6 inches to a foot deep, so it is nothing crazy. With the high number of stables and farms in the region, you do have to watch out for horses and horse excrement. You should also keep your eye out for cyclists and other hikers as well.

Beaver Valley was recommended to me about 2 weeks ago and although I have only been a handful of times, I really want to go back. From the moment I set foot on the trail, I knew this area was unlike any place in Delaware that I had been to before. There is a feeling to this place that cannot be named. The best description of that feeling is a sense of discovery, like there’s something to find around each bend and valley.

For more information on Woodlawn Short Loop, check out the AllTrails page. For more information on Beaver Valley, here is the National Park Service’s website.