The Land We Share
by Kevin Stairiker
[Originally published in the Fall 2026 issue of Mount Gretna Magazine. View the complete issue to experience this story in its original design, along with additional photographs and content.]
From the first step ever taken upon the fertile soil of Mount Gretna, the land has been marked by a push and pull between the humans who enjoy its lush exterior and the ever-evolving landscape itself. For every innovation or leap forward, we get that much further away from the area described in a 1900 pamphlet by Civil War veteran Capt. Charles McIlvaine:
“The charm of Mount Gretna is its primitiveness … Mountain climber or oarsman, wheelman or pedestrian, scientist, preacher, literateur, poet can each day find that which invigorates, inspires, instructs and with all, health-giving air and water.”
A history forged in iron
Most of modern Mount Gretna history dates to early iron magnate Peter Grubb, who opened what would become the Cornwall Iron Furnace in 1742. For a furnace that would eventually come to burn an acre of trees a day just for the charcoal in which to power it, the furnace was well-situated in a high-density forest of oak and chestnut trees.
In 1796, a slave with the honorific “Governor” Dick escaped after working most of his adult life at the furnace. Ads from the time suggested that he decamped back to his home state of Maryland. Mount Gretna archival researcher Kathy Lindert recently came across documents suggesting that the hill that bears his name was dedicated before his escape, making it one of the few locales in the entire country named for an enslaved individual who was still around to see it.
The Cornwall Iron Furnace would see great advancements over the next many decades under ownership from the Coleman family, first with Robert Coleman and eventually great-grandson Robert H. Coleman.
Wanting to unite the initial furnace with others that had by that point come under his control in 1881 (after first inheriting his father’s fortune with his sister, Anne, at the age of 9 in 1864), Coleman funded work on what would become the Cornwall and Lebanon Railroad. It was more commonly known as the “C & L” in 1883. This decade proved crucial for the century that followed, marking the end of the Cornwall Iron Furnace and the beginning of what would become a 50-year encampment of the Pennsylvania National Guard.
By 1890, Mount Gretna not only had its name, but it had also become a hot spot for merriment for tens of thousands coming to visit. Another railroad line, the Mount Gretna Narrow Gauge Railway, operated between 1889 and 1915. Both now live as part of the basis of the greater Lebanon Valley Rail Trail.
While the next 75 years would be defined by the various groups coming to stake a claim on the land, including the Pennsylvania Chautauqua, United Brethren Campmeeting, and others hoping to own a little piece of paradise, the Mount Gretna area itself also continued its subtle ecological changes over time.
Stories told in the landscape
The American chestnut trees that once fueled the very furnaces that helped pay for Gretna’s expansion rapidly began disappearing not only in Lebanon County, but also across the country due to the planting of chestnut trees from Asia in New York Zoological Park, now known as the Bronx Zoo.
First planted around 1895, the overseas chestnut trees brought with them a previously unknown fungal infection that was not discovered until nearly a decade later. Throughout the 1910s, efforts to save the American chestnut boiled down to simply destroying all diseased trees in blighted areas. However, blight spores picked up by wind and birds made the effort doomed from the start, and by 1920, every American chestnut in Mount Gretna and beyond was gone.
Perhaps Mount Joy resident and philanthropist Clarence Schock was inspired by the slow, tragic death of these trees. Between 1936 and 1941, Schock acquired 1,105 acres of land, including the hill named for Governor Dick all those years ago. In 1954, Schock and his wife Evetta deeded the land to the Mount Joy School District, later renamed the Donegal School District. He stipulated that the land “shall be maintained and preserved forever as a playground and public park,” a monument to the great outdoors that still serves many daily.
All of Mount Gretna’s history, that told above and much more eschewed through time and space, is of course but a millisecond on the timeline of our planet. This is still an area marked by its outdoor spaces, but much of even the most deeply wooded areas would look foreign to residents of the 19th century.
From the neighborhoods to the parkland, non-native plants, such as standard-issue mile-a-minute, stilt grass, and privet, have edged out native plants to overtake much of the local ecosystem.
It’s not just plants, either. A surplus of white-tailed deer feeds so vociferously on native plants that year-round fencing is utilized by residents and Clarence Schock Memorial Park rangers alike to protect them. Estimates say there are anywhere from 20 to 150 white-tailed deer per square mile at any one time, and they’re hungry.
The deer and non-native plants form a powerful tag-team against restoration efforts, but all is not lost. Every forest has an ecological memory, and naturalist Wilson Alvarez, a certified permaculture designer, tracker, and nature-awareness instructor, describes Mount Gretna’s forest as strong, albeit young at roughly 75 to 85 years old. A few areas are nearing the century mark, despite long periods of clear-cutting and logging.
Within that soil is the DNA for plants such as bloodroots, mayapples, and other spring ephemerals; they rarely get a chance to grow to their potential.
While some seek to hack away at any non-natives in sight, Wilson says that it is important to remember that in nearly every case, they will eventually grow back. The challenge lies in figuring out the relationship within this ecosystem we all share.
Conserving Mount Gretna’s ecological community
However varied restoration efforts have looked in the past, the modern era has been marked by grand conservation efforts by groups based right here. In recent years, the Army Corps of Engineers has returned to the old military training grounds to search for potential live rounds.
Ryan Fretz, president of the Friends of Governor Dick, says that the group planted trees in those clearings, with the military funding an additional 1,500 to 2,500 seedlings for more planting later this year. Similarly, at Soldiers Field, the wildflower restoration project is several seasons in now.
Frank Gentile of the Gretna Gardeners group describes volunteers performing backbreaking work in the sun for hours just raking before a single seed was planted. In that meadow’s soil could
be found common yarrow, little bluestem, and others dating back to when it was indeed still primarily a soldiers’ field. Planted in 2024 and 2025, the meadow plants are currently establishing networks below our feet, waiting to bloom.
Trees that were once felled and sold now remain on the forest floor to complete the three stages of a tree’s life — the living tree, the standing dead tree, and the fallen dead tree, each of which contributes to vital forest functions.
The forest as described by Capt. McIlvaine, with its “health-giving air and water,” is thankfully not yet just a memory. However, we can only work toward what we remember, and the further we get from that idyllic past, the harder it will become to preserve it for all who will come later.
Kevin Stairiker is a writer in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Gracious help for this article was provided by Wilson Alvarez, Ryan Fretz, Frank Gentile, Elyse Jurgen, Deb Simpson, Doug Tallamy, and Jack Bitner’s work Mt. Gretna: A Coleman Legacy. Kevin dedicates this story to the memory of Ad Crable — the journalist and outdoorsman originally assigned to it — a friend to Mount Gretna and the Pennsylvania wilderness.
