In Forest Hill, The Ma & Pa Trail Was Never Supposed To Dead-End At Melrose Lane

If you've walked the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail out of Friends Community Park more than a few times, you already know the rhythm. Down past the pond, over the little bridge to the island where the turtles sun themselves, onto the gravel railbed, and 1.7 miles later you're standing at Melrose Lane, at the edge of Blakes Venture Park, with nowhere left to go but back the way you came. That turnaround has been the entire Forest Hill experience of this trail for as long as most residents can remember.

Here's the detail that gives that dead end away: the trail's own mile markers don't agree with it. On the Forest Hill side, the quarter-mile posts count up from Melrose Lane starting at 5.0, as if the trail already continues past that point into Bel Air. It doesn't, not yet, but the numbering has treated the two pieces as one continuous route for years, arranged that way on purpose by the nonprofit that maintains the trail. Forest Hill has been walking a path that was numbered for a trip it couldn't actually take.

That's finally changing this year.

The Gap Between The Numbers And The Pavement

The Ma & Pa Heritage Trail runs on the old bed of the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad, the line that reached Forest Hill in 1880 and helped turn a rural crossroads into the small town whose historic district, roughly 60 late-19th and early-20th century properties, still anchors the village center today. When the railroad shut down freight service through the area decades later, a community effort eventually turned the abandoned grade into a trail. But it grew as two separate projects: a 3.3-mile stretch in Bel Air, with spurs out to the Liriodendron Mansion and the Bel Air Post Office, and a 1.7-mile stretch in Forest Hill running from the Blakes Venture trailhead on Melrose Lane to the pond at Friends Community Park. For decades, nothing physically joined them.

That's the gap the county has spent the last two years closing. According to the trail nonprofit's own site, construction on the final connector segment began in the fall of 2024 with an 18-month build window, a timeline that lands squarely in the year the organization is now pointing to for completion. By spring 2025, crews were already installing a prefabricated bridge near the Bel Air Bypass, work that Harford County Parks and Recreation project manager Angela Hoover described at the time as bringing "a 30-year vision to fruition." The final piece is a 1.5-mile connector linking the North Avenue trailhead in Bel Air to the Melrose Lane trailhead at Blakes Venture Park, the exact seam that's kept Forest Hill's segment an island since the trail was built.

Here's what that actually means for the walk out of Friends Community Park:

The distance itself isn't the interesting part. Plenty of Forest Hill residents already drive to Bel Air's side of the trail on weekends to get a longer walk in, or run the full 3.3 miles there and back. What changes is that the two halves of your Saturday, the short loop from your own neighborhood and the longer one you used to have to drive to, become the same walk.

What's Still True At The Trailhead, Connector Or Not

None of this touches what's already good about starting from Friends Community Park at 37 East Jarrettsville Road, which is worth knowing on its own terms. The pond there, with its small footbridge out to an island, sits at what's actually the beginning of Bynum Run, the creek that winds south through the county before joining the Bush River past Abingdon. Long before the trail existed, the site was home to the Forest Meeting, a Quaker meeting house established sometime after 1815 under the care of the Little Falls Friends Meeting. The meeting house itself is long gone, but the small walled cemetery it left behind is still maintained on the edge of the park grounds, the source of the park's name.

The park's more recent additions are the ones families use most: a train-themed playground with a climbing wall and slide, a picnic pavilion, and restrooms that run on a seasonal schedule, open from April 1 through November 15, the same window as the trail's water fountains at Melrose Lane, Tollgate Road, and Annie's Playground. The trail surface itself is gravel with a few short, steep climbs where it crosses old railroad cuts, fine for walking, running, biking, and dog walking, but not one the trail's own managers recommend for wheelchair use.

None of that required a construction crew. It's simply the part of the Forest Hill routine that's been there the whole time, and it's still there while the connector work finishes up.

Where To Go Before Or After

The stretch of village center near the trailhead does double duty as a place to grab dinner before or after a longer walk becomes routine. Fisherman's Catch on Maurice Drive surprises first-time visitors because it operates inside a bowling alley, but the seafood and sandwiches have built a following on their own merits. A few doors down, Tutto Fresco on Bynum Road has become a go-to for scratch-made Italian food, and ChopStix on Rock Spring Road covers Japanese standards along with a dim sum menu that regulars specifically seek out. Enotria and China Delight round out the same small cluster of storefronts, close enough together that picking a place usually comes down to what you're in the mood for rather than how far you have to drive.

For the walk itself, or the days you'd rather cook, Grand View Farm on High Point Road runs a farm store with hours built around the same weekend rhythm as the trail: Thursday from 1 to 5, Friday 1 to 6, and Saturday 9 to 4. It's a pasture-based operation selling its own grass-fed beef, pastured pork, poultry, and eggs alongside bread, cheese, and honey from other local producers, the kind of stop that turns a Saturday walk into a Saturday errand without much extra driving.

The Weekend This Sets Up

Put together, none of these pieces are new to Forest Hill. The park, the cemetery, the restaurants, the farm store, all of it has been part of daily life here for years. What's new is that the trail connecting them to Bel Air is finally catching up to what its own mile markers have claimed all along. For residents who've treated Melrose Lane as the edge of the map, that's the thing worth watching for this year, not because it changes anything about where you live, but because it changes what a Saturday morning out your front door can actually cover.

If you're weighing a move within Forest Hill or want a clearer read on how a specific street or property here compares to what else is on the market, that's a conversation Erin Kelly is glad to have. You can also browse the Forest Hill neighborhood guide or take a look at Bel Air, now just a finished trail segment away. Let's Build Your Strategy.