Friends of the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail Honor Skip Balsley
Longtime trail-keeper, board member, and master planner Skip Balsley was honored on December 15, 2025 for his many years of dedication, leadership and support for the trail. If grass needed mowing or leaves raking, if a tree needed to be cut, or trash picked up, if bylaws needed to be rewritten or meetings chaired, Skip was on it. Along with his partner in trailsmanship, Craig Cardwell, Skip could be counted on for making sure the trail was safe, beautiful, and sustainable for the future. As Skip retires, we can only hope we will find more volunteers to follow in his footsteps!
Fall is a beautiful time to walk the trail! The leaves are gorgeous and the temperatures mild. When the trees start shedding their leaves, we have a great crew of volunteer leaf relocators who make sure you can see the gravel and the orange-marked roots and stones!
Fall Quarterly Meeting!
Friends of the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail
Thursday, October 30, 2025, noon
Wentworth Town Hall, 124 Peachtree Street, Wentworth
Please join us at the next quarterly meeting of folks who love the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail! You'll get updates on upcoming trail projects, events, and change of board members for 2026, plus the latest from the Upper Piedmont Research Station. Give us your observations and suggestions, or sign up to be a trail volunteer! We hope you know that the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail is an amazing experience, even more amazing because it is sustained only by donations and the occasional grant, and is maintained by volunteers.
We hope to see you on October 30 at noon, or at the trail, or on Facebook!
We hope to see you on October 30 at noon, or at the trail, or on Facebook!
Did You Know? How Rain Becomes a River!
When rain falls on the land, the soil absorbs as much as it can. Excess water can collect beneath the earth's surface in pores and crevices of rocks and soil. This is called groundwater. The layers of soil and rock that contain useable quantities of groundwater are called aquifers.
When the water moving underground finds an opening to the land surface and emerges, this is called a spring. Sometimes it’s just a trickle, maybe only after a rain, and sometimes it’s a continuous flow.
If the terrain is not flat, the water will flow downhill, creating a creek. Creeks continue to flow downhill until they merge to form larger streams and eventually rivers.
If the water encounters a bowl-shaped depression in the ground, it may fill the bowl (called a basin) and depending on how big the bowl is, it may become a pond or a lake.
Even if the lake is dammed, water may find a way to flow out and rejoin creeks or streams flowing downhill to rivers and eventually to oceans.
Visitors to the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail will see tiny Carroll Creek at various points along the trail. Carroll Creek is also responsible for Turkey Pond, Little Niagara, Lake Betsy, and Lake Betsy’s waterfall, and is a tributary of Wolf Island Creek, which flows into the Dan River in Pittsylvania County, Virgina.
One branch of Carroll Creek starts about a half mile due west of the trail, coming out of several ponds just north of Wentworth Street. It meanders north and east toward Lake Hazel at the Betsy-Jeff Penn 4H Center.
If you’re walking the trail clockwise from the kiosk, you’ll see a spring at the Spring House, which becomes another small branch that parallels the trail down to the south end of Turkey Pond.
Sometimes the water collects in that area, waiting to drain into Turkey Pond, which is why a boardwalk was finally built there.
Turkey Pond has a dam on the north side, which allows overflow from the pond, and that water rejoins the creek at bridge of the “Hurricane” boardwalk.
It then flows under the Military Bridge and on into Little Niagara on its way into Lake Betsy.
The overflow from Lake Betsy cascades in a waterfall down from the dam to the 4H Center’s stables, where it joins the other branch of Carroll Creek coming out of Lake Hazel.
From there Carroll Creek continues east, passing under NC 14, where it joins Wolf Island Creek coming northeast from Reidsville, on its way up toward the Dan River in Pittsylvania County, Virginia.
When the water moving underground finds an opening to the land surface and emerges, this is called a spring. Sometimes it’s just a trickle, maybe only after a rain, and sometimes it’s a continuous flow.
If the terrain is not flat, the water will flow downhill, creating a creek. Creeks continue to flow downhill until they merge to form larger streams and eventually rivers.
If the water encounters a bowl-shaped depression in the ground, it may fill the bowl (called a basin) and depending on how big the bowl is, it may become a pond or a lake.
Even if the lake is dammed, water may find a way to flow out and rejoin creeks or streams flowing downhill to rivers and eventually to oceans.
Visitors to the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail will see tiny Carroll Creek at various points along the trail. Carroll Creek is also responsible for Turkey Pond, Little Niagara, Lake Betsy, and Lake Betsy’s waterfall, and is a tributary of Wolf Island Creek, which flows into the Dan River in Pittsylvania County, Virgina.
One branch of Carroll Creek starts about a half mile due west of the trail, coming out of several ponds just north of Wentworth Street. It meanders north and east toward Lake Hazel at the Betsy-Jeff Penn 4H Center.
If you’re walking the trail clockwise from the kiosk, you’ll see a spring at the Spring House, which becomes another small branch that parallels the trail down to the south end of Turkey Pond.
Sometimes the water collects in that area, waiting to drain into Turkey Pond, which is why a boardwalk was finally built there.
Turkey Pond has a dam on the north side, which allows overflow from the pond, and that water rejoins the creek at bridge of the “Hurricane” boardwalk.
It then flows under the Military Bridge and on into Little Niagara on its way into Lake Betsy.
The overflow from Lake Betsy cascades in a waterfall down from the dam to the 4H Center’s stables, where it joins the other branch of Carroll Creek coming out of Lake Hazel.
From there Carroll Creek continues east, passing under NC 14, where it joins Wolf Island Creek coming northeast from Reidsville, on its way up toward the Dan River in Pittsylvania County, Virginia.
Quarterly Meeting!
Friends of the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail
Thursday, July 24, 2025, noon
Please join us for the summer Quarterly meeting of the Friends of the Chinqua-Penn Trail, on Thursday, July 24, 2025, at noon at the Wentworth Town Hall, 124 Peachtree Street in Wentworth! If you love this trail, and want to know more about how it is sustained by volunteers for 25 years, we hope you will come to the quarterly meeting. If you have observations or suggestions for the trail, or want to volunteer, this meeting is a great opportunity to share your experience. This is a great opportunity to learn more about this unique environment and the people who help maintain it, and to contribute your "two cents" to the planning for the trail's future.
We hope to see you at the trail, at the meeting, or on Facebook!
We hope to see you at the trail, at the meeting, or on Facebook!
National Trails Day
at the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail!
Saturday, June 7, 2025
Where else to celebrate National Trails Day but at the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail?
National Trails Day is sponsored each year by the American Hiking Society on the first Saturday of June. What a great reminder to leave the trail – and our outdoor community - better than we found it!
Visitors joined us at the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail on Saturday, June 7, 2025 to walk, picnic, meditate, hug a tree, and commune with the cows! Kids and adults alike picked up trash, created their own pieces of art on old slates from the Spring House roof, and discovered relics of the100-year old Chinqua-Penn Plantation within their reach. The scavenger hunt challenged folks to find 25 items, sounds, and smells along the trail. More than 100 bamboo stalks, specially cut by volunteers, went home with guests, to be used as walking sticks, tomato trellises, wind chimes, and fences. We appreciated the generous donations from people who wanted to contribute to keeping the trail and its surroundings safe, clean, and beautiful.
National Trails Day is sponsored each year by the American Hiking Society on the first Saturday of June. What a great reminder to leave the trail – and our outdoor community - better than we found it!
Visitors joined us at the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail on Saturday, June 7, 2025 to walk, picnic, meditate, hug a tree, and commune with the cows! Kids and adults alike picked up trash, created their own pieces of art on old slates from the Spring House roof, and discovered relics of the100-year old Chinqua-Penn Plantation within their reach. The scavenger hunt challenged folks to find 25 items, sounds, and smells along the trail. More than 100 bamboo stalks, specially cut by volunteers, went home with guests, to be used as walking sticks, tomato trellises, wind chimes, and fences. We appreciated the generous donations from people who wanted to contribute to keeping the trail and its surroundings safe, clean, and beautiful.
Volunteers Get It Done!
The trail's volunteers have been busy! The new storage shed behind the kiosk has been taking shape over the past year, the pace of work dictated by volunteer schedules, weather, and bird nests. And the bamboo down by the observation deck at Lake Betsy, planted 100 years ago at Betsy Penn's direction ("wouldn't that look nice?"), would overtake the bridge and the trail if it weren't for the relentless efforts of the bamboo team, chainsaws in hands. Volunteers perform the day-to-day chores of trash and recycling pick-ups, cutting down dead trees, cleaning the lavatory, replacing boards on the boardwalk, wildflower planting, clearing out the drain at the dam, and, in general, looking after the trail, its environment, and the historic structures that speak to us of days gone by.
State Grant Funds Trail Improvements
A state grant, administered by Dan River Basin Association for the benefit of the Chinqua-Penn Walking Trail, has brought several much-needed improvements to the trail in 2024-2025. Our tax dollars at work! The Turkey Pond boardwalk was raised about 8 inches off the ground: enough to keep the marshy water from soaking the boards, but not much more than a reasonable step off. Also added was a bridge with railings over the stream, recreating a similar bridge, an Eagle Scout project, that was destroyed by fallen trees several years ago.
In 2024, the Lake Betsy boardwalk got a new "bump-out" with benches at the little waterfall, an amazing Eagle Scout project. Grant funds then added a ramp at the dam end for a smoother step onto the gravel trail, and two additional bump-outs with benches on the tree side to provide a kind of passing lane.
In 2025, grant funds also provided for new gravel to the trail from the parking lot up to Little Niagara, to replace the gravel that over time gets washed downhill and to the downside by rainwater.
The bridge near Turkey Pond is now high enough that it doesn't get soaked by the creek when it rains.
This renovation of the Lake Betsy boardwalk means a smoother passage from the boardwalk to the gravel trail.
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The Turkey Pond boardwalk covers marshy ground, and raising it up about 8 inches means it's less vulnerable to water damage.
The state grant funded two "bump outs" along the Lake Betsy boardwalk.
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New gravel!
If you want to get reminders about upcoming meetings and events,
contact us at [email protected] and we'll put you on the mailing list.
contact us at [email protected] and we'll put you on the mailing list.
