Soon, a trail for bicyclists and hikers that was first imagined over a century ago and revived decades later might be transformed.
The Pittsburgh City Council gave its approval last month to move a homeless veteran housing project off South Front Street next to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation headquarters into the construction stage. When the Tunnel to Towers Veterans Village is finished next year, it is anticipated that it would shelter up to 84 veterans.
A portion of the Capital Area Greenbelt must be permanently redirected as part of the project. When work on another housing project for homeless veterans on South Front Street started last year, it was temporarily moved up Sycamore Street and down Cameron Street.
This map shows the existing state of Harrisburg’s south end of the Capital Area Greenbelt along with the plans for three homeless housing developments that are supposed to be built there. Four plots are represented by the pink outline. The greenbelt’s existing route through the land is shown by the black dashed line. The intended buildings’ footprints are represented by the green outlines. The red line, which represents one potential reroute for the greenbelt that was discussed at recent Harrisburg City Council sessions, was added to this graphic by PennLive.The Capital Area Greenbelt Association provided the image.
In order to assist pay for the permanent rerouting, the council also approved applying for a $1 million state grant. No new path has been chosen.
The 20-mile greenbelt trail winds through and surrounding Susquehanna Township, Swatara Township, Harrisburg, Paxtang, and Penbrook. Here is the history of this capital region institution.
Riverfront Park and Front Street in Harrisburg are shown around 1913 in the heyday of the City Beautiful movement.The PennLive file
Ring around the city
The concept of encircling the city with a greenbelt of parks dates back to the turn of the century. In the early 1900s, a civic improvement campaign known as theCity Beautiful movementtransformed Harrisburg into a modern city.
One of the most significant aspects of this transformation, in addition to sanitation, paving and architecture, was Harisburg s parks.
Harrisburg leaders enlisted Boston landscape architect Warren H. Manning to recommend improvements to the city s parks. In November 1901, Manning, who had been trained by American landscape architecture pioneer Frederick Law Olmsted, issued a report.
His recommendations included turning the riverfront into a single park, expanding Reservoir Park, turning Wetzel s Swamp todayWildwood Parkinto a landscape park and creating a boulevard around the city that would connect the large parks.
This last recommendation, which would become the greenbelt, was influenced by Olmsted s work in Boston and Buffalo, New York.
In 1902, Harrisburg voters overwhelmingly approved a $1.09 million bond issue to implement City Beautiful improvements, and they elected Vance McCormick, owner of The Patriot and a City Beautiful booster, as mayor.
The implementation of City Beautiful ideas could begin.
That year also saw the creation of the Harrisburg Park Commission, which began to execute Manning s vision, hiring the landscape architect as a consultant.
Park acreage grew from 46 in 1902, historianWilliam H. Wilson writes, to 958 in 1915.
Among the changes to the city park system in this period, according to Wilson and newspaper articles at the time:
The park system is a subject that never tires a real Harrisburger, The Patriot said in 1919. He has seen it grow from almost nothing to great expanses of beautiful parklands, dotted with flowers, streams, woodland, bridges, monuments, driveways, lakes, playgrounds, fountains, a golf course and the whole of it encircled by a magnificent driveway.
Because of erosion and a deteriorating roadway, the city of Harrisburg closed the Paxtang Parkway to traffic in 1982.The PennLive file
Decline of City Beautiful
But the driveway, or greenbelt, was not completed.
Over time, Wilson writes, the City Beautiful fervor faded.
And then with the Great Depression, World War II and the postwarsuburbansurge, Harrisburg had other things to worry about and less money for maintenance.
City parks fell into neglect. By midcentury, part ofWildwood had become a dump. Trash marred other parks, too.
The (Cameron) parkway increasingly is being used as a dumping ground, The Patriot said in 1962.
Still, Manning s plan for a parkway encircling the city echoed through the decades.
The 14-mile Harrisburg Bikeway, established in 1974 during a time ofgrowing environmental awarenesslocally and nationally, followed much of Manning s route.
In April 1982, when the Harrisburg parks director closed the deteriorating Paxtang Parkway to traffic, The Patriot-News saw an opportunity that would have appealed to City Beautiful sensibilities.
Rather than worry about scraping up enough money to reopen the parkway to traffic, The Patriot said in an editorial, Harrisburg officials would be better advised to direct their attentions to putting it to a more suitable use, as a footpath or bicycle route.
That would take a few years.
Bob Diethorn, Janet Flynn and Norman Lacasse dig holes for trees at state Route 441 and Cameron Parkway for the Capital Area Greenbelt in 1991.PennLive file
Resurrecting the greenbelt
In 1989, Norman Lacasse and Ellen Roane of the state Bureau of Forestry were conducting a street-tree inventory for the borough of Paxtang when they came upon the Paxtang Parkway.
Lacasse and Roane were interested in what they had discovered and investigated further, ahistoryon the Capital Area Greenbelt Association s website says. They envisioned the land as part of a greenbelt to be used … for recreation by area residents.
Out of that came the formation of the nonprofit Capital Area Greenbelt Association in 1990 and the effort to resurrect and build upon Manning s idea of a park loop around the city.
A memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Capital Area Greenbelt in Swatara Township was dedicated in 2007.Joe McClure, Advance Local
Aided by federal and state grants, a master plan, local and state governments, community groups and volunteers, CAGA has reclaimed, built and maintained the greenbelt.
Features such as the Five Senses Garden, consisting of plants that appeal to each of the senses, a Martin Luther King Jr. monument, a pedestrian bridge under Interstate 83 and Dock Woods, named for City Beautiful leader Mira Lloyd Dock, dot the trail.
A bicyclist rides the Capital Area Greenbelt extension at Industrial and Linglestown roads, near Wildwood Park, after it opened in July 2020. (Dan Gleiter, PennLive)
In recent years, a2-mile additionconnecting the northern part of the trail at Wildwood Park to Fort Hunter Park was completed. And CAGA and the city of Harrisburg are currently partnering on making upgrades to the Paxtang Parkway.
The greenbelt has faced abandonment, apathy, rediscovery, rebirth and expansion in the nearly 125 years since Manning came up with the idea. Now the belt looping around Harrisburg needs a bit of adjustment. Rerouting the portion in south Harrisburg is just the latest challenge from a growing city.
Joe McClure is a news editor for The Patriot-News. Follow him on Instagram:@jmcclure5nine. He has done volunteer work for the Capital Area Greenbelt Association.
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