Meadowood Special Recreation Management Area

The Meadowood Special Recreation Management Area (SRMA) offers 13.4 miles of hiking trails, 7 miles of horseback riding trails and 6.6 miles of mountain biking trails. It is the site of 2 fishing ponds, (one of which is universally accessible), 800 acres of forest and meadows, environmental education programs, equestrian facilities, geocaching, and bird watching.

This landscape mosaic contains a variety of terrains and vegetation types. These include gently sloping open meadows, mature hardwood forests along steep slopes and floodplains, and riparian areas, freshwater ponds and streams. Red and white oak, beech, sweet gum, Virginia pine, and persimmon, which are common sights in mid-Atlantic woodlands, appear throughout the forests at Meadowood. The ponds, streams and riparian areas in the SRMA host a wide variety of insects, fish and other wildlife.

BLM and the State of Virginia survey the population in the fishing ponds periodically, and restock them when needed. Grass-eating carp are among the species stocked in the ponds; they cannot reproduce, and they eat invasive aquatic weeds, which would otherwise overwhelm small ponds. In addition to stocked species, the American eel appears in the area’s ponds and streams and serves as attractants to the local Bald eagles. Migrating waterfowl such as various ducks species, Canada geese, and herons commonly occur at water features. Dragonflies and butterflies are abundant at near not only the ponds and meadows, but within the myriad acres of edge habitat. Whitetail deer, Fox squirrels, and even Red fox abound throughout Meadowood. Moreover, the North American beaver makes the occasional appearance in the floodplains of Thompson Creek, Giles Run and South Branch as well as at Enchanted Pond.