Into the Woods: Hiking Spring Hollow in Hampton Hills

Hiking the Spring Hollow Trail at Hampton Hills Metro Park offers one of the more rugged woodland hikes in the Akron area. The 2-mile Summit Metro Parks loop winds through the scenic Adam Run Valley, climbing steep hills and passing wooded ravines beneath a mature hardwood forest. Along the way, hikers experience a landscape shaped by ancient glaciers, seasonal wildflowers, and the beauty of one of Summit County’s most underrated parks.

Trail Info

Length 2 miles

Elevation gain 205 feet

Route Loop

Permit required No

Dogs allowed On leash

Trailhead elevation 765'

Water Filterable from creek during the first half mile

Hiking Spring Hollow

The Spring Hollow Trail at Hampton Hills Metro Park winds through one of the more rugged and historically interesting landscapes in Summit Metro Parks. Although the loop is only about 2 miles long, the trail packs plenty into a relatively short hike, descending into the wooded Adam Run Valley before climbing through rolling hills, ravines, mature forest, and terrain shaped thousands of years ago by the last continental glaciers.

Much of what makes Hampton Hills feel surprisingly wild can be traced back to the Ice Age. As glaciers retreated from Northeast Ohio more than 10,000 years ago, they left behind an uneven landscape of hills, valleys, and drainage channels. Over time, streams such as Adam Run continued carving through those deposits, creating the steep slopes and narrow ravines hikers encounter along Spring Hollow today.

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The cool, moist environment surrounding the stream also supports a variety of plant life. Oak, elm, sycamore, and black walnut can be found throughout Hampton Hills, while ferns and wildflowers thrive closer to the valley floor. One of the more unusual plants found here is scouring rush, a primitive relative of the horsetails. Its stems contain silica, giving them an abrasive texture that historically made similar plants useful for scrubbing cookware and polishing objects.

Spring is an especially rewarding time to hike Spring Hollow. Wildflowers emerge across the forest floor before the tree canopy completely fills in, taking advantage of the sunlight that temporarily reaches the ground. The trail has become known as one of the better spring wildflower walks in the Akron area, while summer brings a dense green canopy and fall transforms the surrounding hardwood forest with color.

Long before this land became a Metro Park, however, people were already traveling through the Adam Run Valley. Native peoples inhabited the region before Euro-American settlers began arriving during the early 1800s, after which much of the surrounding landscape was eventually cleared for farms and homesteads.

One of the most important chapters in the property's more recent history began with E. Reginald Adam and his wife, Rhea. Adam was an executive with Akron's Saalfield Publishing Company, which became one of the country's major publishers of children's books. Like several successful Akron businessmen during the city's industrial boom, Adam established a country property away from the increasingly crowded city.

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The Adam property became what was sometimes known as a "gentleman farm"—a working country estate owned by a prosperous businessman whose livelihood did not depend primarily upon farming. The family's property occupied what is now the Top O' the World Area of Hampton Hills, and one of the most visible reminders of that period still survives. A large bank-style barn dating to the 1920s remains on the property, providing a tangible connection to the landscape's agricultural past. The barn can be found along the Adam Run Trail, Hampton Hills signature hiking trail.

The Adam family ultimately played an important role in preserving the land. Beginning in the 1960s, Reginald and Rhea Adam donated more than 160 acres of their property to the park district, helping establish what eventually became Hampton Hills Metro Park. Additional land was acquired over the years, expanding the park to roughly 665 acres.

The landscape surrounding Spring Hollow also provides a fascinating look at how quickly nature can reclaim former farmland. Areas that were once associated with the Adam farm have gradually transitioned into forests and open meadows. Around Top O' the World, former fields now support goldenrod, asters, ironweed, Queen Anne's lace, and other plants, creating habitat for butterflies, bluebirds, wild turkey, woodcock, and red-tailed hawks.

Even Spring Hollow Trail itself has changed considerably over the years. Earlier versions of the route traveled closer to the bottom of the valley, where boardwalks and bridges crossed the wet terrain surrounding Adam Run. Some of those structures were supported by posts placed directly within the stream channel.

Over time, increasingly powerful stormwater flows caused the stream to cut deeper into the valley floor, gradually undermining those structures and making sections of the trail more difficult to maintain. Instead of continually repairing bridges and boardwalks within the changing stream channel, Summit Metro Parks decided to rethink the route altogether.

In 2018, portions of Spring Hollow Trail were rerouted onto more sustainable terrain. The redesigned trail follows the natural contours of the hills more closely and incorporates modern drainage techniques intended to reduce erosion and withstand heavy rainfall. As a result, longtime visitors to Hampton Hills may remember a noticeably different Spring Hollow Trail than the one hikers follow today.

That changing landscape is ultimately part of what makes Spring Hollow so interesting. What initially appears to be a simple walk through the woods is actually a journey across a landscape that has repeatedly reinvented itself. Glaciers shaped the hills and valleys, streams continued carving through them, Native peoples traveled through the region, settlers cleared portions of the forest, and the Adam family transformed part of the land into a country estate and farm.

Today, much of that former farmland has returned to forest and meadow. Seedlings have grown into towering pines, the Adam family's country estate has become protected parkland, and even the trail has moved as Adam Run continues reshaping the hollow below. For hikers willing to look beyond the trees, Spring Hollow offers more than a woodland loop—it provides a glimpse into thousands of years of natural change and more than a century of local history hidden within the hills of Hampton Hills Metro Park.