What a year! Friends of the Cresheim Trail extends our sincere gratitude to all our partners, supporters, and most especially you, for helping make 2024 a milestone in the trail’s growth.
In the past 12 months, we’ve added nearly a mile of new trail, we’ve planted over 170 trees and shrubs, and in spite of three weather cancellations, we still completed 9 workdays with 273 volunteers who performed 819 hours of service. And, along with our partners at the Philadelphia Streets Department, we won a $100K grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources that will match an existing grant from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. Time to get to work.
In 2025, we’ll begin official planning and design for Cresheim’s first rail trail phase — the section we opened in March of this year as a “rough draft.” The scope of this work will cover roughly one mile of former rail bed from just south of Germantown Avenue north to Stenton Avenue. This work will happen concurrent to SEPTA’s project to rehabilitate the old railroad trestle over Germantown Ave, the result of which will offer shared use for SEPTA and trail users.
When completed, this segment will be part of the Circuit Trails network, as will all remaining Cresheim Trail segments to Fort Washington State Park. We’re already talking with folks in Springfield Township, Cheltenham Township, PECO, and Montgomery County about next steps.
Help us start 2025 off on the right foot with a year-end, tax-deductible donation HERE.
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CT on the Map
This updated map, by our consultants at NV5, shows key points in the progress of the Cresheim Trail. (Click to enlarge.) The meandering trail on the left, in orange, shows the existing natural surface trail built over the last decade with connections into Wissahickon Valley Park. The pink line roughly shows the Germantown-to-Stenton segment opened as a rough draft in 2024 and the area of planning and design scope in 2025. The purple line shows the trail’s next phases, in Montgomery County.
ALSO: For the latest trail map information, FOCT recommends using OpenStreetMap. All updated trail alignments, including the rough draft and Friends Loop, are published on OpenStreetMap, which AllTrails draws its data from too.
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Save the Dates for 2025
Above are the dates we’ve penciled in for volunteer workdays in the new year. We’ve again included several Sunday options, we’ll partake in Love Your Park spring and fall festivities as usual, and we’ll do our two customary cleanups of Cresheim Valley Drive.
FOCT will also be at all the usual community events, we’ll host a new public meeting as our planning and design come into sight, and we’re planning a fundraiser to help us get to all of the above. All details to come. Follow us on Instagram/Facebook for the latest info.
Thanks so much for your support, and all the best for a happy new year!
