Let’s Talk About Parks: Pittsburgh’s High Points

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pittsburgh’s topography gives its city parks some of the most beautifully varied terrain of any major metropolitan park system in the United States. The golden triangle — Pittsburgh’s downtown region that spans from the fountain at Point State Park to the Hill District — sits in a valley that is surrounded by the steep slopes of Mount Washington on one side and North Hills on the other. Glaciers are often the cause of dramatic topography, and while they didn’t directly cause our city’s hilly terrain, they did play a significant role. During the Pleistocene Epoch — perhaps better known as the Ice Age — massive continent-size ice masses moved southward from Canada, reaching as far as Moraine State Park in nearby Butler County. As the glaciers melted, large chunks of ice carried rocks with them as they flowed down rivers, carving new paths and causing flooding and erosion that created the topography of the Pittsburgh we know today... Read the full article