Revised April 25, 2001

Location, History, and General Information

The Horse-Shoe Trail is located in southeastern Pennsylvania, running from Valley Forge National Park in suburban Philadelphia to the Appalachian Trail north of Harrisburg and Hershey. At the Philadelphia end, the trail begins on the south side of PA Route 23 at the bridge crossing Valley Creek, immediately west of the intersection with PA Route 252. Parking is available in Valley Forge National Park, at Washington's Headquarters off Route 23, 0.2 mile east of Route 252. The trail covers a distance of 139.9 miles through five counties, and there are numerous access points. Detailed information about the Horse-Shoe Trail is found in the trail guide, which is the source of the information in the following paragraph. In addition to trail directions including mileage, descriptions, and topo maps, the guide describes road access, points of interest, camping and lodging, stables, and groceries. Additional information is available from: Horse-Shoe Trail Club, Inc., P.O. Box 182, Birchrunville, PA 19421-0182.

The Horse-Shoe Trail is a public trail for hiking and horseback riding. It begins at Valley Forge and continues westward for over 130 miles to its junction with the Appalachian Trail on the crest of Stony Mountain north of Hershey. It is marked by painted yellow blazes. The history of the trail area is closely related to the development of the iron industry in this part of Pennsylvania during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

NOTE: The trail guide described on our pages is the Twentieth Edition, August, 1996, an 80+ page booklet with a yellow paperback cover. The mileages and routes we describe are based on this trail guide, and may not match current information as the trail is rerouted from time to time. The Club described above always has current information.  The most recent guide (of which we know) is the 21st edition (1999).

Our Hiking Experiences

Our first encounter with the Horse-Shoe Trail occurred on a visit to Valley Forge National Park in Spring, 1992. We were participating in a park program in which a ranger led a short walk in the vicinity of Valley Creek, and we passed the marker indicating the beginning of the trail and actually hiked along a short segment of it. Mike had seen the trail indicated on an official state road map but did not realize this was the actual location where it began. On three other occasions later that year, we hiked segments of the trail covering the first four miles in Chester County, as far as Howell Road.  For the next few years, we concentrated on hiking the Loyalsock Trail in north central Pennsylvania. The next time we hiked the Horse-Shoe Trail was as a family of three, with our one-year-old daughter Maria, in October, 1996. After completing the Loyalsock Trail in November, 1996, Aimee bought trail guides for the Black Forest Trail and Horse-Shoe Trail to put in Mike's Christmas stocking that year.  In early 1997, we continued hiking segments of the Horse-Shoe Trail in the vicinity of French Creek State Park, near the border of Chester and Berks Counties, and by the spring of 1998, we had worked our way back through Chester County to Howell Road. This meant we had completed a 40-mile connected segment of the trail in Chester and Berks Counties, and we had completed an additional mile in western Lancaster County as part of another hiking trip.  Unfortunately, from the standpoint of completing the trail, we moved from Pennsylvania to Indiana in July, 1998. Although it is unlikely we will be able to hike many additional segments of the trail in the near future, much less complete it, the 41 miles we did complete are only exceeded by our hiking mileage in Michigan's Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, and on the Loyalsock and Black Forest Trails in north central Pennsylvania and the Knobstone Trail in southeastern Indiana, all of which we have completed. As we complete this site, we will be adding pages to describe our experiences along individual segments of the trail. Please return to follow our progress.

Mike and Maria just after crossing Six Penny Creek, at Berks County mile 7.9, on February 2, 1997. Being natives of the upper Midwest, we found the southeastern Pennsylvania climate to be relatively moderate, and many of our Horse-Shoe Trail hikes took place during the winter. Hiking weather was quite a bit warmer in June, 1997, when we completed a segment from French Creek State Park just across the county line into Chester County. Not quite two-year-old Maria is apparently showing Dad where to go, using the state park map. This photo is not a fluke -- our main home page shows a nearly identical scene on the Loyalsock Trail taken almost exactly a year earlier, when Maria was only 11 1/2 months old!