Trail Guide to Cuyahoga Valley National Park

By Peg Bobel and Cuyahoga Valley Trails Council

Book Overview

The complete trail guide to Ohio's popular national park, written by people who know it best--the volunteers who help build and maintain its trails.

Every trail in Cuyahoga Valley National Park is described in detail, with specifics for hikers, cyclists, skiers, and horseback riders.

Featured are the historic Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath, the Buckeye Trail, and favorite destinations such as Brandywine Gorge and Blue Hen Falls. You'll find many less-traveled trails, too, leading to hidden ponds, oak-canopied brooks, and quiet glades in all corners of the park.

Background information about the plants, animals, geology, and human history of the Cuyahoga Valley will help make your visit to the park more enjoyable--and more memorable. Easy-to-use maps help you plan and follow your route.

This is a fine year-round guide for hikers of all abilities--and great for bird watchers and other nature lovers, too.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1598510401
• ISBN13: 9781598510409
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Gray & Company Publishers
• Length: 245 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

great guidebook

I bought the previous edition of this excellent guide several years ago and have used it a great deal. We live only a few feet from the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and we take advantage of it frequently. I purchased this guide for my brother, who is an even better hiker than I am. The book has helpful information on each trail in the park, telling the length, elevation, and difficulty as well as interesting characteristics of each one. I highly recommend this guidebook.

Encourages one to explore the park

For many years my explorations of Cuyahoga National Park had pretty much been limited to bicycling the excellent towpath. On the few occasions when I had walked one of the many trails, I found their signage a bit sketchy, and the park maps too crude to be of much help where the signs failed me. This book fills in some of those gaps, plus provides descriptions that motivate one to explore the park, help one to choose which trail to hike, and give some informative historical background on the trails and their surrounding terrain. It could be better, though. The drawn maps are only marginally better than enlargements of the near-useless park map. There usually isn't any explanation of major features of the terrain one encounters, like an abandoned bridge foundation I encountered in the middle of one trail, or an extensive series of clearings I found along another, or a long, double line of closely-planted trees that lined a section of a third trail. On a portion of the Buckeye Trail near Boston, only one of the falls is described, even though a well-traveled offshoot of the trail takes you to a second one that in its own way is just as dramatic. In sum, I have found the book helpful in encouraging me to hike the trails, but some readers will feel that it doesn't give enough for the money.

Ridiculously useful

I bought a copy of this book for my boyfriend for Christmas and we use it nearly every time we go out hiking. If you are an outdoor enthusiast in Northern Ohio this is a must. Simply put: an essential guide to one of the region's gems.

Great resource

I'm a volunteer hiker for the NPS, this guide is very helpful on every train in the system, not just the national park, but also the MetroParks that are connected to it. Good directions, excellent information about the trail itself, and helpful in organization.