Go Greene Outdoors
Less widely known than mountain creeks to the east, some Greene County streams offer good trout fishing in early spring when waters stay reliably cold. (Photo by Ben Moyer)
Native people used the Warrior Trail for 5,000 years. It still crosses Greene County east-west for 45 miles, following ridge crests and never crossing a stream. (Photo by Ben Moyer)
The recent Herald-Standard article about the new swimming complex at Ryerson Station State Park near Wind Ridge, Greene County was a pleasant surprise. When my dad was living, we enjoyed fishing the streams at Ryerson for trout, but I haven’t been to the state park in too long a time. Now our granddaughter enjoys swimming, so we are resolved to head west again for a dip.
Ryerson Station is an interesting place for many reasons, but was always best known for Duke Lake, the state park’s centerpiece, enjoyed for its fishing, non-powered boating, and dramatic setting amid wooded hills. The lake is gone now, of course, drained by the Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) after surveys indicated underground mining compromised the dam’s safety. But the marshy former lake-bed, embracing the meandering channel of the North Branch of the Dunkard Fork of Wheeling Creek, presents unique opportunities for recreational and ecological improvements planned by the DCNR Bureau of State Parks. This column intends to report on these plans soon.
The swimming complex will redirect interest to Ryerson Station, but there is more to Greene County outdoors than one appealing state park in the county’s far western reaches.
Outdoors, Greene County gets overshadowed by Fayette County, its neighbor to the east and home to high-profile natural assets like the Youghiogheny River at Ohiopyle, the internationally acclaimed Great Allegheny Passage, forested mountains, and a network of mountain trout streams. Many outdoor enthusiasts are unaware that Greene County has its own bike trail, a long-distance hiking path, a network of paddling streams, good fishing, and three different state game land complexes totaling 16,500 acres in various parts of the county.
First, a little background. Greene County is not mountainous, but it’s not flat. Think of Greene as the western foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, a random sprawl of hills, all cresting at between 1,300 and 1,600 feet above sea level. Though Greene’s topography lacks the obvious high ridge pattern so obvious in Fayette County, less conspicuous ridges snake across the county dividing the watersheds of Tenmile Creek in the north, Wheeling Creek in the west, and Dunkard Creek to the south.
Greene County has changed a lot during my lifetime. A U. S. Forest Service report on my bookshelf states that in 1960, Greene County’s surface was 19 percent forested. Today, it’s around 60 percent woodland, about the same percentage as Pennsylvania statewide. Back in 1960, Greene County was still sheep country, but much former pastureland has been abandoned and reverted to woods.
You can see a lot of those woods from the Greene River Trail, a well-maintained crushed stone surface that flanks the Monongahela River’s west bank around a broad bend from Crucible, downriver for six miles to the confluence of Tenmile Creek at the Washington County border. Several waterfalls veil the steep bluffs along the way. Access the trail at Crucible in Cumberland Township, or at Rices Landing Borough.
It’s an interesting fact that you can hike all the way across Greene County, east to west, without ever crossing a stream. You can do that by hiking the Warrior Trail, an ancient 68-mile path used for 5,000 years by Native people to travel between the Monongahela and Ohio rivers. The path follows ridge-crests from Greensboro on the Mon in Greene County to Moundsville, West Virginia on the Ohio, so it never crosses water. Forty-five miles of the trail are in Greene County. Volunteers with the Warrior Trail Association maintain the trail and mark the way with yellow blazes and red mile-posts. Three Adirondack-style shelters accommodate overnight stays. Nearly the entire trail corridor passes through private land, so it remains open through the respectful behavior of hikers, and the gracious hosting of landowners. Respect private property to keep the Warrior Trail open. For information contact the Warrior Trail Association, P.O. Box 103, Waynesburg, Pa. 15370.
There’s not much challenging whitewater in Greene County, but Dunkard Creek, Tenmile Creek, Wheeling Creek, and parts of Whitely Creek offer miles of secluded paddling by kayak or canoe. Boater access is improving as awareness spreads about this paddling network. A great example is the public canoe/kayak launch built on the South Branch of Tenmile Creek by Morgan Township along Beagle Club Road.
The PA Fish and Boat Commission stocks trout in Whiteley Creek, Brown’s Creek, Enlow Fork and Dunkard forks of Wheeling Creek, and the North and South branches of Dunkard Fork. Enlow Fork offers some nice walk-in fishing on state game lands in country that suggests more mountainous landscapes to the east.
People tend to confuse Dunkard Creek and Dunkard Fork, but they are two different streams. Dunkard Fork flows west to Wheeling Creek and the Ohio. Dunkard Creek flows east directly to the Monongahela. Only Dunkard Fork is stocked with trout. Dunkard Creek, however, is said to be recovering from the mine pollution disaster a decade ago that killed thousands of smallmouth bass and muskellunge.
Greene County’s State Game Lands 223, 179, and 304 deliver good hunting for deer, wild turkey, and stocked ring-necked pheasants at the Game Land 223 complex near Kirby. At the Kirby site a wildlife observation platform built cooperatively by the Game Commission, Izaak Walton League, and Ducks Unlimited provides good views of a wetland complex where birders can see waterfowl and wading birds. Surprisingly, black bears are gaining a foothold in Greene. Hunters tagged one or two bears in each of the last three seasons in Greene County. When I was a kid, hunting with my grandfather, the biggest game we encountered in Greene were fox squirrels. Things have changed outdoors.