SNP's Snead Farm: an Easy Day Hike

Frequent readers know that I’ve set an informal goal of hiking all of routes described in the “Best Easy Day Hikes – Shenandoah National Park” book, a Falcon Guide written by Bert and Jane Gilbert (Amazon link below). Mary, Chris and I have done 10 of the 26 in this book already (check the label “Day Hikes: Easy” for many of the reviews, we’ve done a few of them more than once). Over the weekend, facing writer’s block on a proposal I have been trying to finish for a few days, I decided to go out and take in one or two more of the hikes.

This will be the first of two posts on the hikes, which I combined with a drive up to Front Royal (lunch at Spelunkers) and also to check on the used equipment for sale at the Front Royal Canoe company, an outfitter up in that area.

At first, I was only going to do the 1.4 mile Snead Farm hike, with the option of extending it to 3.2 miles by taking some side trails and fire roads. Part of the route was a bit over grown with summer brush; having plucked off my share of ticks already this year, rather than trekking through the long grass, I came back and regrouped, deciding instead to combine this one with Lands Run Falls, an easy 1.2 mile out-and-back.

The description of the Snead Farm hike begins with the note that this is a relatively new addition to the Park – the 200-acre plot was procured in 1962. As such, there are a couple of buildings still standing to take a look at once you reach the farmstead – the old barn and the root cellar. There is also a stone foundation from the old bunkhouse back there.

For some of the SNP hike posts, I also like to pull material from the old Heatwole guide to the Park (on the web at http://www.ajheatwole.com/guide/ ). Here is an excerpt from the guide about this little hike:
…the house has been torn down, but the barn is in fairly good condition. The small structure in back may have been a root cellar.

The road continues beyond the barn to the site of the Snead house, on the right, where a wall and steps still remain. As you might guess, the owners of this property were not typical mountaineers. Originally it belonged to the Garter family, who were farmers and fruit growers in comfortable circumstances. They owned extensive orchards; and the land now occupied by the Visitor Center was, in 1930, Carter's cornfield. This property is now called the Snead place, although Snead, a Rappahannock County judge, owned it for only a few years. The Park bought the 200-acre property in 1962, in order to develop and protect the Dickey Ridge water supply.”

Both the Snead Farm route and the Lands Run Falls route follow fire roads, so they definitely qualify as easy ones. Along the road into the farmstead, there are three forks in the road, so hikers have to be careful to take the right ones – left, right left, like the old military cadence. I did make a wrong turn, and found myself at a dead end. The grass was mowed there (there’s some electrical infrastructure in this area) into the shape of a cul-de-sac, and there was a campfire ring in the middle (with ubiquitous beer cans, I might add).

After pondering, “this can’t be it” for a moment, I backtracked to the last fork and sure enough had taken a wrong turn, adding about a half mile to my little walk.

At that fork, there is a little spring that has been stoned in, the water trickles under the road through a conduit. There is enough of a flow to make a pleasant spattering where it comes out – but I was destined to see a really nice, real waterfall, later this day. Also, there is the trace of an old stone wall that follows the old farm road, marking the way. Much of this stone is the igneous rock that you find in the Park, it’s piled in places in addition to the trace of the old wall.

Although the Park was crowded, I didn’t run into a lot of folks on this trail, except for a family with two young daughters and two dogs. This was a cheerful group out having a good time – I ran into them again at the Dickey’s Ridge Welcome Center, and again on the Lands Run Falls Hike.

I’d really like to come back and redo the Snead Farm hike in the fall, with the foliage down and some of the grasses having died off, so it would be easier to get a perspective of the place.

SNP Best Easy Day Hikes