Silver Creek Park

The 1,008-acre Silver Creek Metro Park is tucked away in a quiet, rural area near Norton. Observant visitors will see traces of the past. Open fields, fence rows, and a stately old barn, part of which dates back to the Civil War, are evidence of the park’s former life as the Harter Dairy Farm. Other park history hides beneath our feet. As coal is an important resource, it was mined in much of this area in the 19th century. Many of these mines closed in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The one-time farm has changed a great deal since Summit Metro Parks acquired the land in 1966. Thousands of trees have been planted, and the bathhouse and 50-acre lake – fed by a spring from an old mine near Wall Road – were built in the early 1990s.