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Walker's
Landing
Walker's Landing
is a 60 acre parcel along the east side of French Creek in
West Mead Township, Crawford County, immediately north of
the Meadville, PA city limits. The property is bounded on
the east by Terrace Street extension, on the north by the
Josephine -Stan property and on the west by French Creek.
The land is triangular; its southern apex is at the confluence
of a canal on the west side of the line below Terrace Street
and the river.
Within the Walker's
Landing property, 5 management units can be defined. These
are the central meadow, which shows evidence of being under
agriculture as recently as the 1980s, the riparian forest
along French Creek, the riparian swamp forest at the distal
or southern end of the property, the gallery forest along
the canal and the upland Appalachian oak forest on the slope
along and below Terrace Street.
The Walker's Landing
property was donated to the Conneaut Lake/French Creek Valley
Conservancy by Robert Gill Walker et ux, and Laurene Walker
Schumacher (the widow of Lewis Walker) et ux on December 2,
1993. The Walkers, through the maternal Gill line, descended
from David Mead, founder of the city of Meadville.
The general area
of the Walker's Landing parcel is of historic and prehistoric
significance. The Troyer land just up river has been an important
locale for Indian artifacts. An early white settlement was
immediately north, probably on the Stan farm. Some of the
riparian floodplain apparently was open prairieland (by virtue
of Indian agriculture?) when the first Europeans settled here.
A portion of the Walker's Landing site is elevated sufficiently
above the lower floodplain of the river to have been suitable
for settlement, as well as agriculture.
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