Access to the park is through four separate areas:

• Chuckery from Cuyahoga Street at Peck Road
• Overlook from Sackett Avenue
• Oxbow from Cuyahoga Street
• Schumacher Valley Area from Cuyahoga Street at Northhampton Road

Each area has several trails that provide for quality birding, from flat to challenging.

This park is a reliable location for Wood Thrush, Baltimore Oriole, Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, Eastern Towhee, and many migrating warbler species. Since 2015, there is a Bank Swallow nesting colony at the end of the flat Overlook Trail on a bank overhanging the river about .25 miles from the parking lot.

In 1833, the hydraulic engineer and entrepreneur Eliakim Crosby built the Cascade Race, a waterway that powered the mills and businesses along the Ohio & Erie Canal. The Cascade Race helped transform Akron into a boomtown. Years later, Crosby built the failed Chuckery Race; traces of it can still be seen in this Metro Park.

Today, fish here are prey for belted kingfishers and great blue or green-backed herons. Beautiful white trillium grows in the floodplain woods each spring beside wild ginger and several types of violets. Summer and fall wildflowers also flourish, illuminating the landscape.

Several rare and unique natural features can be found within the Chuckery Area. South of the entrance drive, near the intersection of the Chuckery Trail, is a meadow that harbors many unusual plants and several species of showy wildflowers. Just up the hill from the meadow is a prairie, where wild lupines bloom about mid-May. Other rare species can be found individually throughout the park, including butternut trees – a species surviving despite the butternut canker disease threatening their range. Less conspicuous, but no less rare, are crinkled hair grass, satin brome, and southern hairy rock cress.

Cascade Valley Metro Park has several trails:
Celebration Trail - 1.6 miles
Chuckery Trail - 2.4 miles
Overlook Trail - 0.5 mile
Oxbow Trail - 1.2 miles
Schumacher Trail - 1.2 miles
Valley Link Trail - 2.8 miles
Highbridge Trail - 3.2 miles