A resident of Solebury who wants an outdoor hour on a July Saturday usually names one place. The towpath, or Bowman's Hill, or maybe the loop around what used to be Aquetong Lake. Each of those answers was correct ten years ago and is still correct today. What has changed is that they are no longer separate answers.
Over the last decade and a half, the township has been assembling a connected outdoor network across Route 202, one grant and one land acquisition at a time. The pieces are on the ground now. What is still missing is the habit of using them as a system.
The Park That Used to Be a Lake
Aquetong Spring Park sits at the corner of Route 202 and Lower Mountain Road on a 48-acre site the township bought from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 2009. The spring itself flows at roughly 2,000 gallons per minute, historically enough to power the mill complex that operated along Aquetong Creek. A Civil-War-era dam had backed the water up into Aquetong Lake since about 1870. The Solebury Township Historical Society has been documenting the removal of that dam and the return of the creek to its pre-1870 channel through the old lakebed.
That history matters for one practical reason. The trail names on the park map are not decorative. The Hidden Springs Trail traces the spring's original outflow. The Old Lakebed Loop crosses the newly exposed meadow the water used to cover. The Overlook path climbs to the ridge that gave the mill owners their sightline down the valley. A walk here is a walk through the sequence of land use, in the order it happened.
The park layers a lower and an upper section connected by grass trails, with parking at both ends. Route 202 traffic is loud along the west edge and quiet everywhere else, a detail worth knowing before you set expectations.
The 13 Acres Nobody Talks About
In 2020, Solebury Township purchased a 13-acre property on Route 202 immediately next to HG Pizza. The township named it Solebury Green. It is a large open meadow surrounded by woodland, with direct access to Aquetong Creek where the creek runs south of the park.
Solebury Green is worth mentioning here because it is the piece most residents drive past without registering. There is no formal parking lot, no marked trailhead, no signboard the way Aquetong Spring Park has. What it provides is contiguity. The stretch of Route 202 between the two parcels is now township-controlled open land on both sides of the creek. When the township refers to a "cross-county trail" plan, this is one of the parcels that plan runs across.
What Actually Connects to What
The Solebury Trail begins at 40 North Sugan Road, next to the Eagle Fire Company building. That trailhead is a five-minute drive from the center of New Hope and, more usefully, a walkable distance from the athletic fields at New Hope-Solebury High School. The township's stated plan is for the Solebury Trail to eventually connect three destinations most residents currently drive between.
- The high school fields, north
- Canal Park at 2520 River Road, east
- Magill's Hill Park, south along River Road
Canal Park is the pivot point. It has an access bridge over the Delaware Canal that lands directly on the towpath. The Delaware Canal State Park towpath runs 60 miles as a National Historic Hiking Trail, linking Washington Crossing Historic Park to the south with Virginia Forrest State Park and the village of Lumberville to the north. It passes directly through the middle of New Hope on the way.
The upshot is that a resident starting on Sugan Road can, in principle, walk or bike to the river without a car. The formal ADA-paved sections are still being built out. The Route 202 trail segment alongside Aquetong Spring Park is funded in part by a $1 million grant from Pennsylvania's Transportation Alternatives Set-Aside program, part of a roughly $1.6 million project. Segments open in phases rather than at a single ribbon cutting, which is part of why the network feels less finished than it is.
Bowman's Hill Sits at the Other End
Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve occupies 134 acres inside Washington Crossing Historic Park, which places it at the southern end of the same corridor. It is the only accredited botanical museum in the country dedicated to native plants, with more than 700 of Pennsylvania's roughly 2,000 native species growing in place. The Preserve is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with last gate admission at 4 p.m. so every visitor has at least an hour on the trails.
Bowman's Tower, the 110-foot stone observation tower built in 1930 to commemorate the Revolutionary War lookout point, sits above the Preserve. On a clear July afternoon the view runs across Solebury Township all the way back toward the ridge above Aquetong Spring. This is easier to appreciate once you have walked the ground you are looking down at.
The Thursday-Through-Sunday Farm
Solebury Orchards at 3325 Creamery Road covers roughly 80 acres and is open Thursday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., from late June through October. That schedule is the single most useful fact for organizing a summer week around outdoor time in the township. If the orchard is closed Monday through Wednesday, then Thursday morning is the earliest the full weekly rhythm reopens.
As of the week of July 16 through July 19, 2026, the orchard's pick-your-own report lists blueberry picking as continuing to be good. Blackberries and the cutting garden are also in season. Apples arrive later, with weekend wagon rides through the orchard in September and October. Fruit is priced by the pound.
The farm is not on the trail network. It sits west of Route 202 on Creamery Road, about ten minutes from Aquetong Spring Park by car. It functions as the anchor at the beginning or end of a morning outside, not the middle of one.
A Saturday That Uses the Map
The point of connecting these pieces is that a resident who thinks of them as one system gets a different kind of day than a resident who thinks of them as five different destinations. A workable version, in order:
- Blueberries at Solebury Orchards on Creamery Road, first hour after the 9 a.m. opening, before the parking lot fills.
- A short drive south on Route 202 to the Aquetong Spring Park lower lot, then a loop of the Hidden Springs Trail and the Old Lakebed Loop.
- A pass by Solebury Green on the return, mostly to see what a 13-acre meadow inside a working township looks like before it is formally programmed.
- Continue south to Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve, timed to arrive well before the 4 p.m. last-admission cutoff.
- Optional: descend to the towpath at Washington Crossing and walk north as far as time allows, knowing the same path continues past New Hope and up to Lumberville.
That is a morning and an afternoon. It uses four Solebury properties, one state park, and one working farm without repeating a trail. Most residents currently use one of the six on a given Saturday.
What the Township Is Actually Building
The township's phrase for what it wants Aquetong Spring Park to become is "an extensive trail system with ADA-compliant and natural mulched walking paths, picnic areas, a living classroom." That is aspirational language for a park that already has most of those elements in early form. The more accurate description of what Solebury has assembled since 2009 is a working outdoor network across Route 202 that is being finished in public, one segment at a time.
Residents who already live here have the advantage of noticing the changes as they happen. The reason to notice is that the character of a place is set partly by how much of it its own residents actually use.
If you own land in Solebury and want a considered read on how the township's investments in parks, trails, and open space are shaping value for distinctive properties in the area, the team at Addison Wolfe Real Estate works this market with the same attention we bring to every part of Bucks County and the Delaware River Valley. Contact Us for a conversation grounded in what is actually happening here.
