The final volunteer workday of 2025 is shaping up to be a real capstone to a terrific year on the Cresheim Trail. It’s happening on Sunday, December 7th.
We’re looking forward to partnering with Wissahickon East Park Friends to establish a new connection between the Cresheim Rail Trail and the southwestern corner of Wissahickon East Park. We’ll be joined by David Bower and the Q-Team from Friends of the Wissahickon, as well as Chestnut Hill Conservancy, who’s held an easement on the Wissahickon East parcel since before it became part of the Philadelphia park system in 2014.
Over the summer, as SEPTA carried out their Chestnut Hill East Line bridge rehabilitation project, they constructed a temporary ramp for trucks and equipment to reach the railroad tracks from the rail trail. In cleaning up the area upon the project’s completion, the previous trail connection — which was steep, slippery, and unsustainable — was wiped out, and the hillside replanted. It presented an opportunity for FOCT and WEP Friends to collaborate and create something more appropriate and more sustainable. So we’ll be doing that, and installing the remaining trail posts in the rail trail corridor, among other tasks.
We’ll meet at 9am on Sunday, December 7th at the Wissahickon East Park trailhead, at Anderson Street and Woodbrook Lane in East Mt. Airy. (MAP.) There’s plenty of parking on Woodbrook Lane, or if you’re coming on foot or on your bike, you can use the rail trail to the northern connection into Wissahickon East (since the southern one won’t exist until we’re done building it!)