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Smock
Donation
The "Smock
parcel" was gifted to the Conneaut Lake/French Creek
Valley Conservancy by Charles Smock in late summer of 1998.
The land, formerly owned by Smock Plumbing was donated in
honor of Mr. Smocks parents and conditioned to be kept forever
as open space, and used for park purposes. The site has been
determined to be an undevelopable floodplain.
The Smock donation
is a linear parcel along French Creek in the Fifth Ward of
Meadville. Its acreage is uncertain because of issue of ownership
of an island in French Creek, but is in the range of 6 to
8 acres. It is flat bluffland failing at its edge steeply
down into French Creek. Gravel dredged from the river by the
city of Meadville is stockpiled in several ????? piles onsite,
two quite large. A great deal of construction debris has been
dumped on the parcel through time. This includes concrete
sewer. pipe and large standpipe, and paving material. The
Conservancy built a linear trail along the top of the bluff
as part of a future greenway bordering French Creek through
Meadville. The debris were removed, or where feasible, used
as part of the trail infrastructure.
The 1973 USDA Soil
Conservation Service Crawford County Soil Survey delineates
the parcel as being underlain by Pope loam, deep, well-drained
alluvium characteristic on the floodplains of major streams.
The Survey notes that these sites are prone to flooding. The
older, 1939 Survey delineates the portion of the property
adjacent to the bordering street, Wadsworth Avenue, as being
underlain by Kerrtown silt loam, along with the rest of Fifth
Ward. As discussed elsewhere in the forest stewardship plan,
Kerrtown soil has been documented as prairie soil; much of
Meadville was originally settled on natural prairieland along
French Creek. The present survey acknowledges the presence
of "a thick, dark brown surface layer" 'in the Pope
soil deposits in the vicinity of Meadville, but does not discuss
the original vegetation on these.
In the field, visible
soils on the mainland were silty, with no rocks exposed, except
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