Walkin' Into The Past

                With the promise of a beautiful day, AMB and I decided to take a drive. We ended up on the border of Westmoreland and Fayette Counties, along a nice stream called Jacobs Creek.  We parked our car at a gate to the State Game Lands and followed the dirt road downhill to the stream.

                We arrived at the edge of the game lands, about 4-5 miles above the small community of Jacobs Creek around 10:30. The temperature was comfortable but I knew it would be rising as the sun got higher in the sky. We took our hiking poles and some snacks and something to drink along with us. It goes without saying, the camera came along also!

                We met a nice couple coming up the road who had been picking elderberries. We BS’d a bit and then continued on. The road into the valley is about a mile and a half long. DOWNHILL! There was plenty of shade as we strolled along. Butterflies flitted between the wildflowers and grasshoppers flew in front of us as we neared them. The wildflowers were rather scarce; Queen Ann’s Lace, Brown Eyed Susan and some Chicory were the most prevalent. The dried and browned remnants of other flowers showed how the summer was advancing.

                We encountered a set of Railroad tracks and followed them for a ways until we could go under them. A huge iron bridge carried the tracks over the stream below. At the far side of the valley the tracks entered a short tunnel. The hill is appropriately named Tunnel Hill. On the far side of the tunnel is another, even taller iron RR bridge which crosses the Youghiogheny River. We had driven under it on our way up to the Game Lands. It would have been nice if a train had crossed it as we were near-by but none came along. I have yet to see any trains on this section of track in all the times I’ve been here. The tracks are shiny so they are used!

                Underneath the bridge, we passed a portion of road that had fallen away into the valley below. This is probably why the gate remains closed. The first time I had come here I was able to drive all the way down to the stream. Now, we need to use foot power rather than horsepower.

                The road increases its slant for the final section into the valley, luckily it isn’t far. Near the bottom we took a path off to our right which led us to an old road. This might have been made back in the late 1700’s when the valley had been used to make iron. Following the dirt path (I hesitate to call it a road) brought us to an old stone wall. It was the remnants of a charcoal house, a place to store fuel for an iron furnace situated in the valley below it. The wall was over two foot thick, in fact closer to three!  Two walls were still standing,  the back wall was a cliff and the fourth wall was just a pile of stones. The front of the wall was over 15 feet high and surprisingly in quite good shape, considering that the wall had been built over 200 years ago

                Across the path from the charcoal house ruins was a retaining wall built out of the same type of stone. It couldn’t be seen from where we were, it was only after we continued into the valley that it could be seen and appreciated.

                We returned to the dirt road and continued down into the valley bottom. Underneath the stone retention wall, which could just barely be seen through the foliage, was a triangular pile of dirt. Coming around to the stream side of the pile, some of the rectangular stones used to build the furnace came into view. If we hadn’t known the furnace was here, we would have walked right past it!

                This is what was left of the Alliance Furnace. Built on the Fayette County side of the stream, the furnace was first fired up in November of 1789. It was also named The Jacobs Creek Furnace and Turnbull’s Iron Works and Colonel Holker’s Iron Works, depending on who owned it at the time. It was the first iron furnace erected west of the Allegheny Mountains.

(Unknown date)

                Scrambling up to the top, the glazed inner stack is still visible. I find it fascinating to see these structures still standing so many years since they were last used. It was last fired in 1802, thirteen years after its first use. These rocks have been standing here for over two hundred and thirty years!

                While poking around I found a geocache hidden near-by. This was a pleasant surprise. The log had a lot of family names in it and a lot of the loggings mentioned the pandemic and how this was such a nice way of getting their minds onto more positive things! I know that AMB and I enjoyed the hike down to it, we haven’t been out as much as we used to in the pre-covid days.

                The climb back to the car took us a bit longer. The sun was high in the sky and the shade we had walked down in had disappeared. We took our breaks in whatever shade we could find. One foot in front of the other, break, repeat… Eventually we looked up and saw the gate above us. We had cold drinks waiting for us in a cooler, Gatorade never tasted so good!

                We took a different way home, enjoying the beauty of the back roads of Pennsylvania. Before we knew it we had found Rt.79 and were speeding towards home. Surprisingly enough, my knee wasn’t as sore as I thought it would be. It is the power of Peas! I put a bag of frozen peas on it when I got home, that and I took a Tylenol.

                The day was made for a drive and our hike made it even better! Blue skies with puffy white clouds hanging above the beautiful scenery of Western PA! Does it get any better than that?