Our Holiday Jaunt

 

A yearly thing Ann Marie and I do is to take a trip down into the Strip District during the week before Christmas. We do some shopping, stop at a few of our favorite stores and then, after getting a couple cookies at Enrico Biscotti, we go over to La Prima Espresso for some good coffee and then sit outside and people watch. Most of the time it is crowded, and people are happy and courteous. People are saying Merry Christmas to strangers and everyone is smiling. We enjoy watching the families that bring their children down to help them shop, the kids eyes wide open, trying to take it all in. These are memories being made! It is a great way to get into the Christmas spirit.

    We went down on Thursday, three days before Christmas Eve. With our steaming cups of java sitting in front of us and crumbs gathering on the table, we talked, watched and enjoyed the morning. The scenery was continuously changing. While we were there, a young man came up and asked about my camera. (I was shooting film that day.) He was a “film shooter” also and we spent a few minutes discussing cameras before wishing each other a happy holiday and parting ways. After the Strip, we went to visit our favorite bookstore, City Books and spent a little time with Arlan, the owner.

    From there, we headed north. Beyond Zelienople we stopped to find a couple caches and to take some photos of the scenery. Further north, we came into the outskirts of Mercer. The snow coverage was more prevalent here as compared to Pittsburgh where everything had melted. We turned towards the west and eventually ended up on the road we were searching for. We pulled over beside a dirt drive with signs all over the place warning about trespassing and that we were on camera.

    Despite the signs, we got out and walked up and down the road, peering into the woods. A small pile of what looked like dirt and trees looked like what we were searching for, another iron furnace. The Iron City Furnace!

    I guess the cameras worked because the owner of the land stopped by. When we told him what we were doing he was kind enough to allow us to visit the pile, and what was left of the furnace. The owner and I shared our knowledge of it, unfortunately neither of us knew very much. He was interested in learning more about it. We exchanged contact info and wished each other Merry Christmas. He was definitely a nice guy!

    The furnace has mostly fallen in on itself. From the road you wouldn't even realize what it was, in fact, when walking around it, it was tough to picture what it once was. Looking closer, there were a few places where rows of stones could be seen. Forcing my way to the top, through the sharp and thorny branches I was able to glimpse the bricks forming the round edge of the inner bosh. A small, dark opening on the side was the top of one of the furnace arches, allowing a glimpse down into the furnace. This was where the best-looking stones were, still nice and straight and all in line. The area in front of it was wet and swampy.

    My hands and legs will be complaining for the next couple days. I got at least 3 thorns stuck in me. Blood was flowing! All around the ruins were those thorny trees and bushes which seem to proliferate around iron furnaces; Honey Locust, Japanese Bayberry and Roses.  Anyone who has hunted or hiked in the Pennsylvania woods is familiar with these plants. The Locust thorns go straight in and then break off, usually getting infected a day later. While driving home I kept finding new thorns that were stuck in my pants!

    After taking some pictures we returned to the main roads and searched for a restaurant for some dinner. A nice Mexican place in Zelienople fit the bill and then it was back towards home.

   One more geocache waited for us and Ann Marie found it almost as soon as she got out of the car. It was hidden in a golf ball! Our first find was hidden inside a rock and the last inside a golf ball! Nice hides! Earlier, while we were looking for another cache, the car was sitting alongside the road with the flashers on. A truck pulled over and a gentleman got out, looking a lot like Santa, complete with a white beard. He asked us if we needed any help. After Ann Marie told him what we were doing, he wished us both a Merry Christmas and continued on his way! A little bit of country caring! There were two other guys who watched us search for a different cache from a parking lot across the street. They must’ve known where it was because when we finally found it, they tooted their horns and gave us a “thumbs up”. Yes, it seemed like everyone was in a good mood!

    We returned home 8 hours after we left, and then relaxed by playing a game of Scrabble. It was a high scoring game for both of us, our final scores within a couple points of each other.

    Later while doing some research on the furnace, I found out that there was another Iron City Furnace close to this one, a bit further north. We will visit it on a future date. I also discovered that I had been to this furnace before, in 2009, surprisingly enough, to find a geocache. The cache is no longer active or there.

    You might wonder why we search for these piles of rock. It is because they are our history; they are part of our past, part of the way we advanced our civilization. It is exciting, to us at least, to see these rocks and stones which were piled in these sites a hundred or more years ago. It is another hobby and, we have to do something to keep us off the street corners!

    It was another perfect day, we met lots of nice people, it was evident that the holidays were working their magic!  It was truly another happy Holiday Jaunt.

Mark the Date!

 We are already past the middle of December. Christmas will be here in less than a week and one week after that, we will be starting a new year! I thought we just did this…

    One of the usual things I do, often on the 2^nd or 3^rd day of the New Year is to get a couple new calendars. One to be hung in the kitchen and one that will set on the desk upstairs. Not long afterwards, I’ll start the process of marking all the important dates onto the new calendars.

    When I was working I had three calendars. I needed one for inside my toolbox. How else would I be able to remind my co-workers which day was Johnny Appleseed’s (John Chapman) birthday? (September 26, 1774) That's no longer needed.

    I wish I could remember all the important anniversaries there are. Of course, some are much more important than others. There are some that I don't want to miss! Sadly my memory doesn’t work as well as I wish it did, the ability to remember seems to fade a bit more each year. I’m just guessing that all the fun and excitement of my younger life may have helped that skill to diminish.

    I have been making notes for myself for decades. The idea was that if I write it down, it will become engrained in my memory banks. Unfortunately, it just clutters my desk with scraps of paper. They lay scattered at random across the surface, under the laptop and stuck in books as bookmarks. The problem with “notes” is that not all of them need saved for the same amount of time. I often find packing lists from trips taken months ago alongside lists of quotes meant to be saved. I don’t spend enough time separating and sorting them all. The calendars definitely help in this regard.

    Looking back at all the notes on my calendar, I see doctor’s appointments, auto service dates, birthdays, death anniversaries and notes about past explorations and other important memories.

    The notations remain pretty constant. I add much more as compared to the ones I eliminate, so my notations increase yearly. 

    Calendars have been around for what seems like forever and there are many different types. Stonehenge is a solar calendar. There are Lunar calendars, Hebrew, Chinese, Islamic and Aztec to name just a few. They reside on our computers and phones. We use the Gregorian calendar ourselves. This went into effect in October of 1582, a replacement for the Julian calendar which most of the world used until then.

    Marking my new calendars is a process that usually takes 3-5 days, depending on how busy I am. This year I am getting a head start on things having bought a couple during a recent shopping trip. I actually enjoy copying down all these dates. I often come across things which make me smile, (My grandson Mateo’s first library card 10/30/22) and also things which bring back sad memories. (Big Red RIP- 12/19/21) I remember times spent with co-workers and remember fun trips taken years ago (Crossing the White Mountains with Ann Marie 5/18/08).

    Some may think it’s foolish to spend all this time “writing” down all these events but I enjoy it. It is a trip down memory lane, a street I often have difficulty finding!

    Here are a couple bits of calendar trivia;

·        This coming year, 2024, is a leap year, having 366 days.

·        Italy and England didn’t start the new year on Jan. 1^st until 1750

·        There was no year 0, there are 999 years between 500BC and 500AD

·        If you save your 2023 calendar, you can reuse it in 2034, 2045 and 2051

·        If you still have one hanging around, you can use the calendars from 1940, 1968 and 1996 next year.

 So, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and of course, Happy New Year a week or so early! I know it will be a good one; we get an extra day to enjoy this year! Let's make the most of it!

A Ghost Town in Southeastern Butler

A ghost town is a place that once was an active community but has since been abandoned by all or nearly all of its residents. Buildings, ruins and sometimes only roads remain. Ghost towns can be found on every continent.

    Friday morning I met two other photographer/explorers and we headed north into Butler County. Getting up early, I was able to see the planet Venus and the moon high in the sky as I packed my car. It was looking good for the day ahead!

    Franko, Bob and I got off rt.28 near Freeport and headed east to Winfield Road. We passed through farmland and eventually dropped off of the top of the hills and entered into the valley. A huge cement plant sits at the bottom of the hill, right beside our destination, West Winfield.

    Making a turn, we entered what used to be the main street of the community. Today, there is nothing there. Houses lined both sides of the road for about a ½ mile or so. There was a plant which processed limestone from the mines across the stream. A railroad ran into the town and further down the road, a brick plant used to operate. Earlier in the town’s history, an iron furnace produced pig iron which was ferried by mules down to Freeport along what would later become the rail line.

    For a while the town was known as Winfield Furnace before becoming West Winfield. Interestingly, West Winfield sits on the eastern edge of Winfield Township. (There is another Winfield in Pennsylvania, about 50-60 miles north of Harrisburg. It had an iron furnace in it also. Could this be why it is called “West” Winfield?) The town was a “company town”. The houses were for the miners and workers who processed the limestone dug out of the hills around it.

    The town was rather big, it had stores, a school, a Roman Catholic Church, (St. Mary’s) and a Protestant Church, a Post Office and railroad station and of course, lots of jobs. One of the stores was run by the limestone company and you could get your pay there, and have your purchases taken right out of it. Houses and buildings lined the road.

    The town was divided by the railroad tracks, most of the people living above the tracks were of European ancestry while the newer immigrants (?) lived below the tracks. (On the wrong side of the tracks?) Why the town disappeared isn’t known to me, maybe because the jobs were no longer there. The railroad tracks were removed in the early 80’s and the houses were torn down around the same time, give or take a decade or two.

    We started out on the far side of town. We looked along the old RR path looking for anything exciting. We came across an old coupler near where we think an incline might have been. We found a slew of bricks, none of which were interesting to the brick-collector of the bunch.

    In our group, we had one guy looking for old and interesting bricks, another who was photographing the streams, waterfalls and trees and me, who was mostly excited about re-visiting the Winfield Furnace. An odd group but we worked well together!

    We gradually worked our way back into the main section of what used to be the town. A small level spot in the road marks where the tracks used to cross it. Following this track we passed where a train station used to stand. There is nothing to suggest that any buildings ever stood there. It is a short walk to where the stack stands. High tree-like shrubs hide it from view. Piles of asphalt and a few pieces of metal machinery sit in what used to be the rail yard. 

If you are looking for the furnace you’d find it, if you were just walking through, you might pass it without ever realizing it.

    The furnace was built in 1847 and produced iron for 17 years, going out of blast in 1864. The stack is still standing tall but parts of it have collapsed into the center. Some of the stones have cracked and there are plants growing on it but all-in-all, it looks pretty good! There are various things painted on the stones but none are recent and they are slowly eroding away, like the furnace. I’ve said it before, it is sad that we as a people choose to degrade things to enable our being remembered. I’ve never understood the urge to put graffiti on old structures or buildings. (This could be another blog completely!)

    One of the men I was with told me that there was a pit near the furnace in which a railroad turntable had sat. In the picture above which was taken after a flood in 1904, both the furnace and the turntable can be seen. It supposedly spanned 60’. The turntable can also be seen in the first picture in this blog, in the bottom left, right above the word “birdseye”.

    I didn’t remember ever seeing it before and was excited when he pointed out where it was. I needed to work my way through some rather thick brush to get to it and I couldn’t really see it until I was actually inside it. It was filled with dirt and debris on one side and there were lots of things growing in it, obscuring the view. 

    Once I saw the wall, about 2-3 feet high, I could see the radius, the curve of it. Once I had seen that, I could picture it. I had walked over some stones from the wall on my way in and hadn't realized it. I would love to see what it would look like cleared out. Is there a center still in it? I’ll have to bring a small shovel with me on my next visit! 

    I have been to this site at least 12 times now. I took the picture above sometime in the late 70’s, you can see that the railroad was still there. I believe it was my first time to see the furnace. I think I first found out about it while reading A Guide to Historic Western Pennsylvania, a book that is still in my collection and used often.

    We all enjoyed the day and returned with a lot of pictures. Along with pictures I came home with some questions…why did the town disappear? Did the people just drift away as jobs became scarce? Does the cement/limestone company still own the area? Why did they bulldoze all the houses? Were they vandalized or was the company worried about fire or lawsuits? Hardly anything is left. Nature is taking it all back. Luckily, there are some records of the town along with a few pictures.

    West Winfield, stop by and visit it, a bit of Butler County history that is slowly fading away…

A Visit to Mount Vernon

 

With tints of orange and pink decorating the eastern sky I loaded my car and went to pick up Jim. We stopped for Ann Marie and then headed south. It was a beautiful morning and we were hoping for clear skies for our trip.

    We were off to visit Mount Vernon, not the one in Virginia, home to our first president but the one in Bullskin Township, just a little closer. There is a connection to the president though!  Not far from the city of Mount Pleasant in Westmoreland County, just across the Fayette County line, lies what used to be a small community called Mount Vernon.

    With our usual breakfast snacks and cups of coffee we were ready to traverse the countryside. We followed rt.66 south, avoiding the “new” toll section, eventually driving through Greensburg, the county seat of Westmoreland County.

    As you come into the main section of this town, you crest a hill and the dome of the courthouse can be seen ahead. You have to pay attention as you drive through the city, the arrows on the roads change lanes in each block. It is a beautiful town with lots of impressive old buildings. Ann Marie and I will be returning one of these days to do a “walk about”.

    Passing through the town we eventually came to the edge of New Stanton, where rt. 66 intersects with rt.119 and the turnpike. We merged onto 119 and soon were coming into the Mount Pleasant area.

    Driving towards the east the sunshine on the windshield made us turn down the heater. Outside, the temperatures were close to freezing. We drove across hilltops with views of farms stretching out to the hills in the distance. A few animals were in the fields making the scenery even more spectacular, worthy of a calendar! Best thing of all was that there were no other cars on the narrow roads, we could take our time and enjoy the views.

    It didn’t take long to reach Woodsdale and the Mount Vernon Park. The first thing we did was to go outside, braving the cold…to get a couple geocaches. They were quick and easy finds and once found, we could go to what it was that brought us here, the Mount Vernon Iron Furnace.

    Even though this is an extremely old furnace, built in 1798, nearly 229 years ago, it sure doesn’t look like it! It has been re-built at least two times. It’s first re-do was in 1801 after an explosion destroyed part of the furnace, along with killing some of the workers in the process. More recently it was redone in 2006 by the Bullskin Township Historical Society, a process that has taken well over 10 years.

    The furnace worked for 32 years, finally being blown out in 1830. A small town named Mount Vernon surrounded the furnace, containing a schoolhouse, stores and houses for the workers. They are all gone now, all that remains of this community is the stack.

    The man who built it and owned it, Isaac Meason, named it in honor of his friend, George Washington. Meason owned four other furnaces in the area, his house still stands a bit further south in Dunbar Township.

 

    Bullskin Township started cleaning up the furnace and the area around it in 2006, the work continued on through 2016. They have succeeded in making a wonderful exhibit showing what iron furnaces made and how they did it. The destructive trees and plants have been removed from the stones which will help it survive much longer. The area has been cleaned up, a local man made a water wheel to add to the site, a casting shed has been added along with signage that help explain the process of making iron.

    It was definitely worth the time to drive down here to see this! Since we were so near, we decided to visit another Pennsylvania historic site. Just about 8 miles away sits the town of Kecksburg.

    On December 9^th, 1965, reports were made of a mysterious object flashing across the sky. It was seen from 6 states and Canada. In Kecksburg, people reported seeing blue smoke, feeling vibrations and hearing a loud “thump”. Apparently, something had landed in the woods near-by. State police and the Army sealed the area, keeping people away. Some residents said they saw an Army flatbed truck leaving the area with something covered with tarpaulins. Officials said that nothing was found.

    All sorts of tales arose afterwards. Some said it was a Soviet satellite, others said it was an American spy satellite while others think it came from another planet. Years later, NASA supposedly said that pieces picked up at the scene were from a spacecraft originating in Soviet Russia. When asked for documents, they said that the paperwork was surprisingly, missing! 

Witnesses said they saw weird hieroglyphic writing on it and that it looked like an acorn.

    What happened that night is still unknown and is up to speculation. It is up to the individuals reading and hearing the multitude of stories and reports about the incident to decide for themselves. A yearly UFO festival is held in the town. There is a museum and a gift shop across the street from the replica the town mounted on a hillside. Sadly, they weren’t open when we visited.

    All I can say is that here in Kecksburg, less than ten miles away from the now non-existent town of Mount Vernon, history was somehow made back in 1965. With this last bit of history in our minds we turned the car around and returned back to Pittsburgh, happy to have soaked up a little more of what Pennsylvania has to offer.