Frick Park: Simply the Best

This is it—the absolute best time to be in Frick Park. Not too hot, not too cold, not too muddy, and resplendent in color.

There are nearly seven billion people who don’t live within walking distance of Frick Park, but you do. And Frick Park is probably one of the reasons you chose to live here.

The 561-acre natural wonder, now wearing its Autumnal riot of sumptuous colors, plays an integral role in the lives of folks throughout the East End, providing an ideal place for recreation, education, adventure, discovery, exercise, competitive sports and calm contemplation.

Deer, ducks, the occasional heron, foxes and a rich variety of smaller wildlife appreciate that Frick Park is central to a huge green zone, hooking up with the 200-acre Homewood Cemetery to the north, and stretching south along Nine Mile Run through Duck Hollow, all the way to Monongahela River.

Frick Park was born on the whim of a teenage debutante. Helen Clay Frick was the daughter of Henry Clay Frick, the 19th-Century millionaire industrialist and business partner of Andrew Carnegie in the world-leading steel industry. Young Helen grew up in a house named “Clayton” that still stands in Point Breeze and has become the Clayton art and history complex. Modern marketers have dubbed it “The Frick.”

It is said that little Helen was fond of the untamed woodlands around their home and that she rode the property on a mare named Patricia, accompanied by a dog named Fido. Then in 1908, her father planned a debut to present Helen to socialites in New York City. Invitations went out to the wealthiest families in the country. But Helen would have none of it.

She escaped her calculating father's plans and took a train to Pittsburgh. Her mother Adelaide joined in the rebellion and accompanied her daughter back to Clayton. Once in Pittsburgh, Helen devised her own coming-out party and scheduled it on her mother's birthday, December 16, 1908. It was during this family celebration that the idea for Frick Park originated. 

Helen, the story goes, asked her father if he still held to his promise of granting her any one wish. When he said yes, she asked him to give Pittsburgh a park. When old man Frick had his will written in 1915, among many other charitable donations he gave the people of Pittsburgh 150 acres along with a $2 million trust for long-term maintenance of what would become Frick Park. When the capitalist died in 1919, the park passed into the hands of the city.

Frick Park did not open until 1927, when additional land was acquired. Most recently, 106 acres were annexed as part of the process that created the fancy Summerset at Frick Park housing development on the area’s 100-year-old slag heaps that old Frick and Carnegie helped to pile up with the waste products of their mills.

Renowned for its extensive trails through steep valleys and wooded slopes, Frick Park is an ideal escape from urban noise. Birding enthusiasts flock to Clayton Hill. Children love the Blue Slide Playground on Beechwood Boulevard and the sister playground at Forbes and Braddock. Kids learn about nature with classes and exhibits at the Frick Environmental Center. The park also features clay tennis courts, several lighted ball fields with concession stands, and the only public lawn bowling green in Pennsylvania.

Having done it myself, I can assure you that it's a grand place to raise a child. Aside from all the built and planned facilities, perhaps its greatest charm is the simple wealth of deep, dark woods where little ones like my Jason learned to run around and climb and hide in that delightful, natural, crazy way they have that develops in them balance, daring and confidence.

Now if, like me, you’re huddled in a small apartment, it’s hard to imagine somebody having a spare 150 acres to donate in the heart of such a deluxe neighborhood. But H.C. Frick wasn’t in our league.

Of course, it’s not like the neighborhood benefited as if by magic from the Frick family’s generosity. After all, the Fricks didn’t create the wilderness, it had always been there—and in pretty much the same condition that it exists today. But their establishment of an official park made possible the building and maintenance of trails, bridges, picnic shelters, playgrounds and all the other amenities East Enders enjoy today.

Something few people know is that there once was a golf course in Frick Park. The history is murky, but it apparently was a nine-hole affair in the vicinity of Beechwood Boulevard. If you go to the Blue Slide and scan the grassy areas to the east and south, you can see flat, raised, regularly shaped bits of land that had been the course’s tees and greens. That same sloping area was for generations one of the East End’s pre-eminent winter sled-riding sites—until the nanny state decided that was unsafe, and prohibited sledding.

Because it is a true wilderness, Frick Park requires lots of maintenance. Heavy rains cascade through the hollows and ravines, often washing away trails where folks hike, run and ride bicycles. Gigantic trees routinely topple over, often with the entire root system failing to hold on rain-eroded hillsides. Faithful to nature, park authorities allow fallen trees to decay unless they disturb a trail or other man-made features. Then city workers spring into action with chainsaws and shovels to put things right, usually the next day.

City workers get a boost from a remarkable volunteer group that operates in Frick Park and throughout Western Pennsylvania to repair and improve park trails. Founded in 2001, the purpose of the Pittsburgh Trails Advocacy Group (PTAG), they say, is “to protect and encourage shared-use trail access in Western Pennsylvania.” The group especially is concerned with single track trails used by mountain bikers, hikers and equestrians. Volunteers work with the authorities and private landowners to ensure that trails are constructed and maintained to International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) standards, with minimal impact on the environment.

Nine Mile Run, formerly a drainage ditch, is a creek that arises in the eastern suburbs of Allegheny County and flows mostly through underground channels until it spills into Frick Park, right at the Braddock Avenue entrance. In the park, it flows down to Commercial Street, where it passes beneath the road, then continues above-ground through wilderness to join the Mon at Duck Hollow. One way or another, most all the rain that falls on Frick Park eventually meanders through man-made and natural channels into Nine Mile Run.

Traditionally a dead, stinking stream clogged with sewage and trash, the run has improved dramatically in recent years because of the efforts of the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association (NMRWA), established in 2001. Although the water itself is bereft of fish and most wildlife—because of municipal sewage deficiencies upstream —things continue to improve.

Frick Park is mostly rugged and hilly, but a small, little-known level portion of the land juts into a fine residential area adjacent to the Frick estate, around Dunfermline and Ben Hur streets. This part of the park during the 1930s was deemed by the neighborhood aristocrats to be an ideal location for some type of recreation that might be popular and at the same time provide landscape value in beautifying the community.

They determined that a bowling green would be ideal, and the Frick Park Bowling Green was planned. Work started in 1935 under the auspices of the Frick Park Lawn Bowling Club of Pittsburgh. The first game was played on Saturday afternoon, May 15, 1938. The club then had 33 members.

In its grandeur, Frick Park gives the appearance of being ancient. But that’s only because the land itself is ancient. In fact, geologists tell us that the park’s Tranquil and Falls Ravine trails eons ago formed the river bed of the Monongahela River, whose waters scoured out the land that plunges hundreds of feet from the top of Clayton Hill to the base of Fern Hollow.

The park itself is a mere, spry 84 years young. On any given Sunday there are more than a few enthusiasts hoofing along the trails who were there on opening day.