Youngstown’s celebrated Mill Creek Park covers some 2,400 acres as it wends its serpentine course along its namesake creek for about 8 miles from the creek’s mouth at the Mahoning River through Youngstown and into Boardman as far as Western Reserve Road.

This park is unique as an urban retreat for a number of reasons. There are many miles of hiking trails, three lakes, a 36-hole golf course and a par 3 course. Its road system is favored by bicyclists.

One of the park’s most notable qualities is its rampant use of stone in the construction of some of its most outstanding features.

Perhaps the most famed of these is the Parapet Bridge, which spans a ravine on East Glacier Drive above Lake Glacier.

This bridge, with its rows of teeth-like rocks along its top railings above its arched body of yellow stone is an often-photographed site.

In his 430-page book about the park, “The Green Cathedral,” Dr. John C Melnick writes that Bruce Rogers, the brother of the park’s founder, Volney Rogers, had the bridge built as a replica of one he had admired in Italy.

“It is considered by bridge authorities to be one of the best of its type in America,” writes Melnick.

Across from the Parapet Bridge on the west side of two of the park’s lakes, Glacier and Cohasset, there are no fewer than six arched stone bridges built over small streams that feed the two lakes.

All have heavy railings made of stone.

It must have taken a great deal of skill and hard labor to construct these bridges.

They were possibly constructed by immigrants to the area from Eastern Europe or Italy.

Melnick credits a “master stone cutter,” Joseph Bojo, for having cut the Parapet Bridge stone.

Lakes Cohasset and Glacier date to 1897 and 1906 respectively, not long after the park was founded in 1891 through state legislation sponsored by Volney Rogers, “The Father of Mill Creek Park.

Another stone feature, a prime attraction in the park’s north end, is the Rock Garden, which rises above the road that runs along the portion of the creek that connects Lake Glacier with Lake Cohasset.

The rocks, reportedly quarried from within the park itself, form a terraced sloping wall over 300 feet long and more than 50 feet high.

In addition to the structures mentioned above, impressive retaining walls made of quarried stone run along trails bordering the creek in the park’s lower section. Placing these huge blocks and securing them in place was obviously a feat of engineering, particularly given that the work was carried out so many years ago.

But what is probably the park’s most renowned structure, the silver suspension bridge crossing the creek between Lakes Newport and Cohasset, dates to the park’s earliest days. It was constructed in 1895 by the American Bridge Co.

No mention of a bridge in the park could be complete without citing the covered bridge that provides vehicle access to Lanterman’s Mill, a grist mill located off Canfield Road south of Lake Cohasset.

Rock quarried in the park was also used on the construction of the dams creating the park’s three lakes.

The southernmost lake, Newport, constructed in 1928, is the largest, covering some 100 acres, while Glacier and Cohasset cover about 43 and 28 acres respectively.

The levels of all three lakes can be controlled through valves operated from platforms that rise above the inshore edges of the dams.

Mill Creek Park itself is the main component of the Mill Creek Metroparks District, supported by a countywide Mahoning County tax.

Also included in the Metroparks District are a bike path, Yellow Creek Park in Struthers, the park’s farm in Canfield, an equestrian facility and a couple of small preserves.

The park is controlled by a five-member Board of Commissioners. The park’s present superintendent is Aaron Young, hired in 2017. His present salary is $116,743 a year. The park currently employs about 150, including part-time workers.

An Erie, Pa., native, Bob Stanger is a retired area newspaperman. When not in Mill Creek Park, he is apt to be at the family cabin on the Allegheny River. A longtime member of several environmental organizations,

he served on the Ohio

Sierra Club’s Executive Committee.