Hiking in Phoenixville, PA

Schuylkill River Trail | Black Rock Sanctuary | French Creek Trail | Perkiomen Trail | Phoenixville, PA | April 2025

While visiting King of Prussia over the last couple of years, we had heard good things about nearby Phoenixville, but never made the effort to drive over there. Because we were staying closer by in Collegeville this year, we finally had more opportunities to visit. The Main Street through town looks like a lively place with lots of shops and restaurants, but our focus while here was mainly around the trails in the area.

On one of our first evenings in Collegeville, we drove over to go for a sunset walk on the Schulylkill River Trail. We started at the trailhead at the end of Tow Path Road and near one of the locks on the Schulykill Canal, following the River trail North for about a mile. As we walked, we reminisced about the last time we had walked along this river, which was near Port Clinton last year when leaving King of Prussia. Besides there being a lot of people out walking tonight, it was a peaceful and lovely way to end the day. We especially enjoyed the tall rocky cliffs along the trail, bird watching, and admiring the small waterfall created by the dam.

A week later, we returned to Phoenixville to check out a couple of other parks in the area. We started out across the river from where we had walked previously, on the Black Rock Sanctuary trail system. Starting from the South end, we meandered our way down to the lake, then followed the trail that loops around the lake, with small view points of both the lake and the river. This is supposedly a good bird watching area, but we didn’t see much this morning besides geese. When we were most of the way around the lake and nearing the parking lot, Charlotte suddenly decided that we needed to turn around and go back, so we ended up basically making two loops around the lake. We certainly weren’t complaining, it was a beautiful morning and most of the trail was shaded.

Next, we drove a little further East to the French Creek where we saw the Rapps Dam Covered Bridge, a historic mill, and went for another long walk following the French Creek to the South. We really didn’t expect much from Charlotte, but she led us almost to the next road down! Curtis was able to look for another letterbox, and we enjoyed seeing more wildflowers and enjoying the peaceful sound of the creek flowing and birds chirping.

Besides these two trails, another one that we frequented was the Perkiomen Trail, which follows the Perkiomen Creek through Collegeville and beyond. This trail was pretty heavily used by walkers, joggers, and bikers, and was an easy spot for us to get to after a long day of work for Curtis. We’ve come to appreciate these wider, easier trails more and more these days as they’re the easiest for Charlotte to navigate and feel comfortable walking, so much so that she can keep up a pretty fast pace – at least when she wants to!

While we loved exploring all these trails and getting to know a new-to-us area, we still always found it difficult to escape the ever-present sound of traffic and city noise in these greater Philadelphia area suburbs. It’s a place we don’t mind coming back to, but we wouldn’t ever want to spend an extended amount of time here. All we can do is appreciate these nature filled spots in between where we can go and try to reclaim a bit of our sanity.