On a map, it looks like a big blank space between Millvale, Reserve and Shaler, with roads dead-ending there. It’s 155 acres of green space and the Allegheny Land Trust wants to keep it that way forever.
It’s inviting the public to help buy the land so it can be preserved and protected. The land conservation nonprofit will hold a virtual public information session about the project at 5 p.m. Monday via Zoom and Facebook due to COVID-19.
People have already donated more than half of the $40,000 that the trust wants to raise from the community to encourage other donations and grants. That happened even before the trust mailed fundraising letters this week, said Lindsay Dill, the trust’s marketing communications director.
The project was launched via Zoom and Facebook on Earth Day, April 22, when the Allegheny Land Trust was joined by Millvale Community Development Corp., Millvale Community Library, New Sun Rising, Girty's Run Watershed Association and Triboro Ecodistrict, which support the project.
The Millvale CDC already was working with the landowner, C&S Management, to preserve the parcel before the trust joined the effort late last year. The trust has a formal agreement to buy the parcel for $600,000, pending a site assessment and fundraising. The trust aims to raise $725,000 to cover other costs. Its deadline is March 2021.
Trails criss-cross these steep woods, which are home to a diverse variety of animals and plants as well as a family of cell phone towers. The undeveloped forest is important for absorbing rainwater that would overrun Girty’s Run, which flows through Millvale’s business district to the Allegheny River and has caused epic flooding there.
The creek, like the woods, is named for the family of Simon Girty, a controversial figure during the Revolutionary War because he fought for the British alongside the indigenous people who raised him. There is a state historical marker about him where he once lived in what’s now Greenfield. The creek is named for his brother, Thomas Girty, who owned land in the area.
One of their descendants is Danielle Spinola, who runs Tupelo Honey Teas on Millvale’s Grant Avenue. She’s been helping the Girty’s Woods community campaign by offering a weekly fresh tea with ingredients foraged from the woods and donating $1 from every sale. A recent tea was a made from fresh flat-top goldenrod, blackberry leaf and bee balm. The current one is made with spicebush, tulsi and blackberry leaves.
“I think I have to wait until the berries turn red,” she said last week after a short hike into the woods to a stand of spicebush. “This is where I check my books,” she said, and looked it up. Then she snipped a handful of small branches from multiple bushes.
A little farther along the trail, she pointed out a spot where neighbors have set up their own maple sugaring camp to turn sap into syrup.
“The things you find in the woods,” she said with a laugh. “Moonshine’s next. I’m sure the Girtys were involved in that.”
Ms. Spinola, who now lives in Hampton, grew up in Millvale next to another part of these tree-covered slopes, which she knows were clear-cut back in the days when coal was mined here. She’s no fan of the logging that happened here more recently, but as she climbs a muddy road left by that, she said, “Maybe it’s a good start to a trail.”
She paused at an open area beneath power lines to pick ripe blackberries and leaves, and occasionally to pick up a beer can or other piece of trash to carry out. She continued on to the flat open expanse on top, where kids ride motorbikes and ATVs. A little farther along, she showed a reporter and photographer the grassy area where the antennas are. It offers epic views of the tops of Pittsburgh’s skyscrapers one way and, the other, farmland in Reserve.
“This property, when it gets turned around, it’s going to be wonderful,” she said, imagining benches where visitors can rest and markers to identify plants.. The place is pretty wonderful now — quiet but for the sound of crickets.
Ms. Spinola has been involved in one fundraising event and is helping with an upcoming spaghetti dinner. There will be more information sessions down the road.
In addition to the thousands of people who live within walking distance of Girty’s Woods, the Allegheny Land Trust points out that it is accessible by a Port Authority bus route as well as the Three Rivers Heritage Trail system. Explorers would be able to hike to scenic overlooks, through fields and even small cattail-filled wetlands. The area is about one-quarter the size of Pittsburgh’s Frick Park.
Since 1993, the Allegheny Land Trust has preserved more than 2,700 acres of green space in 30 municipalities in Allegheny and Washington counties that are “of significant value to our region’s unique scenic landscape, biodiversity and water quality.” Allegheny County loses 2,000 acres of green space every year, Ms. Dill said.
The group realizes that some people may not be able to donate to this project right now, so it’s asking them to at least indicate their support by checking a box on the fundraiser envelope.
“It’s something we’ve never done before,” Ms. Dill said. “This project is still for you if you want to see it happen.”
For more information and to donate, visit alleghenylandtrust.org/girtyswoods.
Bob Batz Jr.: bbatz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1930 and on Twitter @bobbatzjr.
First Published: July 24, 2020, 3:52 p.m.
