Lutherlyn – A Sense of Place

Lutherlyn is located in an exceptional part of the world.  It is part of one of the most biologically diverse regions of North America and reflects an intriguing human and geologic history.

The sandstone boulders and outcroppings that dot the upper reaches of Lutherlyn’s stream valleys reveal the presence of an ancient sea that once covered western Pennsylvania and Ohio.  At that time, rivers emptying into this sea carried large amounts of clay, sand, and gravel from areas that are now eastern PA, New Jersey, and Delaware.  The subsequent uplift of the Appalachian Mountains brought to an end the age of this sea and exposed the geology that had been forming underneath the waters.  Over time the erosion of this landscape created the hills and valleys of western Pennsylvania.

The forest that eventually grew in this landscape contains one of the most diverse communities on the planet.  The Mixed Mesophytic or Mixed Appalachian Forest extends from central Alabama to the Oil City area, approximately 50 miles northeast of Lutherlyn.  It supports over 130 types of trees and 7 distinct forest communities.  The forest at Lutherlyn primarily falls into the Oak-Hickory Forest community and contains red maple, black cherry, cucumber magnolia, and white ash, as well as the many dominant species of oaks and hickories.  These trees provide habitat for wild turkeys, white-tailed deer, squirrels (gray, fox, and flying), eastern chipmunks, gray foxes, blue jays, scarlet tanagers, ruffed grouse, 7 species of salamanders, 7 species of frogs, and 8 species of reptiles.  The forest wildflowers erupt in the spring with trillium, wild ginseng, spring beauties, mayapples, violets, bluets, and jack-in-the pulpit blossoms.



Brewerton Spearpoint from 3000 BC



The forest has also provided habitat for humans.  Artifacts have provided evidence of people dating back to the Archaic period, when atlatls (or spearthrowers) were used to hunt prey animals.  As time passed, this land sat very close to the intersection of two very important Native American trails, the Venango Trail passes right through Lutherlyn and ran from Lake Erie to Pittsburgh. The Kuskusky Path, which is roughly the route of Highway 422, intersects the Venango Trail near Prospect and continued eastward to Kittanning and then, as the Great Shamokin Path, through the mountains and into eastern PA.

Old Mill Dam at Trinity Pines

These same trails were used by people of European descent as they came to the frontier in the late 1700s.  The area that Lutherlyn occupies not only included frontier homesteads but the streams also supported a saw mill and a grist (flour) mill.  In the late 1800s, the millers began mining the coal that formed in the wetlands that surrounded the ancient sea, to power steam engines.  In the mid-1900s the vision of several Lutheran pastors brought Lutherlyn into being as a place apart to build community, train Christian leaders, explore the beauty of God’s creation, and provide life-changing adventures in faith.