A Couple Furnaces, a Few Geocaches and Some History

 The day was looking good, clear skies above and the temperature was warm enough to need only a sweatshirt. No rain, no sleet, no graupel. (A word I’ve only recently come across, a type of snow)

    Ann Marie and I were going “on the road” for awhile. We started our tour by heading north on Route 8, towards Butler. We had a list with us with a couple different sites we were going to attempt to find.

    These sites came from a book I was paging through called A Guide To Historic Western Pennsylvania, by Smith & Swetnam. (1991 edition) The book is formatted by counties. We were searching for sites in Butler County for the main part.

    One of the problems with using a book this old, 31 years, is that the information in it may no longer be accurate. The sprawl of mankind often destroys places of historic significance. Our thoughts deal more with the present and future rather than the past. We often forget that it is important to remember the past, our roots as a society!

(1958 Butler map)

    Dropping back in time about 100 years, our first quest was south of Butler. The North Star Inn was a brick tavern used as a stage coach stop. It was located .2 of a mile north of Airport Road, alongside Rt8. This would put it right about where the Dollar General is located. Without going down any driveways or going onto anyone’s property, we didn’t see it. It might still be there, perhaps we will find it some other day, or maybe it’s under the Dollar store.

    In downtown Butler we stopped and walked over to the Little Brick School House. Built in 1838, it was the first public school house built in Butler. Over time it has been used as a meeting house, an office, a center for the Red Cross during WWII and a public library! (Love those libraries!) Now it is a museum.

    There are a couple nice wall paintings in Butler, this one is just a block away from the schoolhouse. There is a nice 3 dimensional look to the one on the left, the shadows painted on the wall matched the shadows on the streets.

    Going further north on Rt8, we turned towards the east on Rt58 in Harrisville. This would take us over to our next item on our list, the Marion Iron Furnace.

    While we traveled we did a few geocaches. The first two were guardrail hides, quick and easy, but still fun to search for! During the day, we found all four of the hides we looked for.

    A little over a ¼ mile away from one of the caches, we got out and tromped through the woods for awhile, looking for the ruins of the iron furnace. We met Todd and his boys, Dylan and Carson fishing in the near-by stream. Explaining to them what we were looking for, they helped us locate the ruins.

    The ruins of the Marion Furnace is a rather large pile of rocks, covered with moss and leaves. Built in 1848, it was used for about 12 years. It produced about 18 tons of iron a week! One of the openings of the furnace is still visible, the stones in it are still sharp and in line after all these years, unlike the rest of the furnace. Not far upstream are the remains of a dam and the planes of several roads can be seen in the woods around the furnace. Rocks  on top of the pile show the curvature of the stack.

    We spent a short time talking with the guys before headed on our way. It is always fun meeting new friends and sharing our similar interests. 

    We stopped in Mercer at the Public Library to search for another cache. While we were there, we met the owner of the cache who works at the library. Mathew came out and watched us as we searched. I have to say it was well hidden, it was right in front of me and I didn’t see it!

    We did another cache near Slippery Rock Creek and while we were there, we visited the Wilroy Iron Furnace.  This was built in1854 and lasted 23 years before being shut down. It is one of the better preserved furnaces in Western PA. 

    In the community of Harmony, we visited Rapp’s Seat. Father George Rapp was the head of the Harmony Society, founded in the early 1800’s. He would sit in a chair carved into a rock formation high above the town to meditate and also to keep an eye on his flock.

    There is a trail going to the chair, a mere137 steps up a steep hillside. The chair is underneath a cliff overlooking the Connoquenesssing Creek and Rt79 in the distance.

    There are a lot of names carved into the rock, some with dates from the early 1900’s. Sadly some newer names and comments have been added with spray paint. After seeing other places during the day unadulterated, it was sad to see this abuse of a historical site.

    Our final stop was at Minetta Spring. This was built by Harry Etheridge in honor of his mother-in-law, Minetta in 1931.

     The spring is located on busy Rt68 between Harmony and Evans City. We were hoping to find an arch near-by which is a remnant of a grist mill built by the Harmonists. Chances are the mill was built near the stream below the roadway. We couldn’t see anything from the road and eventually decided to head for home. I’ll have to do some more research, if it’s there, I’d like to see it!

    From there we returned to Glenshaw, completing our 130+ mile loop. Like all our trips, it was a good one. We met some nice people, made some good memories, visited some great spots and enjoyed a drive with the windows down. What more could we ask for?

Mental Health Day

 

 

 

 

                “I have a strong desire to go away, to somewhere where I’ll be alone. It doesn’t have to be for a long time, just a few hours perhaps. Away from any distractions, no pressing requirements, maybe to a lake or a hilltop where I can watch the world revolve.

                I know that if I do this, I won’t be satisfied. I’ll be bored and the time will drag. If I bring paper and pens, nothing will get written. Mostly, I’ll just feel sorry for myself. It has happened before.

                Photo trips, backpacking or camping, I’ll wonder why I’m there. What was my need to come? The answer I was looking for won’t be there.

                I know I should ignore this desire, remove it from my thoughts!

                Instead it gains importance, it requires fulfillment. I should know better but instead I start mentally scanning my maps, thinking about where, where would the perfect place be…”

                It got the best of me, I couldn’t resist. The next day, I took a mental relaxation day from work and after lunch (and a few chores around the house) I got in the car and headed north. My idea was to go and see some countryside, drive through some farmland, find a place to stop and relax and enjoy the scenery.

                On the drive I got tangled up in the commercialism of the North Hills. Store after store, fast food joints and car dealer after car dealer. Then there are the doctors and their offices. They all became a blur, I had to get away. This isn't what I wanted!

                By the time I got to Wexford, I was ready to pull what little hair I have, out! I didn’t want to do it but I jumped on RT79 and increased my speed, leaving all this clutter behind.  In another 15 minutes I was in Portersville and driving past farms and fields.

                A lot of this area was strip mined and is now nicely reforested. The trees are still young but the land is looking much better than it did in the 70’s. I can remember driving up to Moraine State Park and looking at the manmade hills along RT79, so obvious in those days. You can still see the hand of man on the hills and valleys, but it looks rather nice now days.

                My first stop was at a lookout called Cleland Rock, a rarely visited part of McConnells Mill State Park. It overlooks the valley that Slippery Rock Creek flows. Two large Turkey Vultures met me when I pulled up, they were gracious enough to fly away and leave me alone with the view. Perhaps in the fall or the winter I might have been able to see the stream but today the trees hid it nicely.  I sat for a while and wrote a little bit before leaving to go further north. I had gotten an idea.

                A year or so ago on a nice snowy day, Ann Marie and I had attempted to visit an old stone blast furnace. Called the Wilroy Furnace, it is situated just below a campground. We had stopped at the office to inquire if we could go down and photograph the furnace. The lady we talked to was elderly and seemed very protective of the site. She told us that it would be too dangerous to go to it when there was snow and ice on the ground. “Perhaps some other time.”

 The campground now looked deserted.  The grass was well over a foot high. The office windows were dirty and the patio had leaves and dirt blown into its corners. I walked around the office, looking up at the upstairs windows but I saw nothing. There was no car to be seen. The pool was filled with greenish water and weeds climbed up the fence. The place looked abandoned.

                I followed a slight path through the overgrown grass that led down the hill. Large branches from the trees lay in the grass.  At the bottom of the slope was a wide flat area. Some rusted picnic tables were scattered around, the wood on them was broken and laying half off their supports. The wood was covered with leaves and had mold and moss growing on it.

 

                The hillside dropped off dramatically behind the tables and there below them was the furnace.  Looking like a pyramid or an ancient temple it sat at the bottom of the hill. Long grass and a few saplings were growing out of the cracks. It has 3 setbacks, each about 10-12 inches wide.  There were no fallen stones, the three arches were in pristine shape. A pond of stagnant water was situated in front of the furnace, possibly a result of flooding from the stream. The stream could be seen 30-40 yards away.

                At one time, when it was in operation a bridge would have been built from where the picnic tables were over to the top of the furnace. This bridge, called a charging bridge, was used to fuel the furnace and to add the ingredients used to make the iron. The molten iron was removed from the furnace through one of the arches at the bottom. It would flow out through paths cut in the dirt and allowed to cool into ingots, called pigs. These would then be shipped to other places which would re-form them into usable products.

                Someone had been doing some pruning in the past couple months. Several trees had been cut down and there were a few piles of brush around the front of the furnace. It was almost as if the furnace had been put on display. I took some shots from various spots around the furnace and then left.

 

                I drove over to the opposite side of the stream. There are a lot of paths that fishermen use on this side.  I came to a spot where the furnace could be seen easily. The last time I had been here, I could just barely see it through the trees and weeds.

                I can’t help but wonder who owns it now. It is on the National Register of Historical Places. I wonder if it is on the campground property. I saw a couple stakes with pink ribbons on them, maybe it’s being sold or maybe it is being taken over by the state. I can only hope that it will continue to be protected. There is no graffiti on it except for a couple chiseled names, from the 1800’s!

                According to Myron Sharp and William Thomas who wrote a book titled “A Guide to the Old Stone Blast Furnaces in Western Pennsylvania” , the furnace was built around 1854 and went out of blast before 1877.  So, approximately 20 years of service, not bad.  Most furnaces went out of blast because of a lack of iron ore or trees. The trees were used to fuel the furnaces and once they were gone, that spelled the end of the furnace. The town surrounding it usually disappeared soon after, leaving only the stone furnaces and maybe some walls or channels to give any evidence that a community once thrived there.

                Happy with the experience of visiting the furnace site, I pointed my car south and started back towards home. I was thinking about the furnace as I drove along RT19, past farms and meadows. Many of these fields were the product of the strip mining that used to be here. They have changed a lot since the 70’s when I first started coming up here.  A lot has changed as the years go by. I see it every time I go on a trip. I’ll pass an old farm and maybe stop and take a picture of the barn, the ivy growing out of the top of the silo, and think what a nice photogenic scene it is. The next time I go by, a neighborhood of cookie cutter homes has risen in its place.

                I saw it again on this very trip. Coming into Evans City, (I left RT19 in Zelienople to avoid the commercialism ahead) I saw a farm I had always wanted to visit. A bulldozer sat on top of what was left of the barn and the house had all the windows boarded up. Soon it will be a cleared spot of land, probably with a for sale sign posted beside the road.  Another cookie cutter community with some sort of cute name will have taken its place.

                On my drive I passed ten or twenty new neighborhoods, the signs usually from the same developing company. I drove past a field that had been remolded by bulldozers, fresh asphalt roads were being laid across it. The land is just waiting for the throng of carpenters to descend on it to bring another instant neighborhood to life. I know people need a place to live but I hate to see the farms of Pennsylvania disappear because of it. According to an article in Time Magazine, the nation has lost 12,000 farms in the year between 2017 and 2018. Sadly there is more profit in the land than the products the farm grows. Like the iron furnaces, the farms are slowly disappearing also.

                Returning home, I felt refreshed. The Mental Health Day had helped. I got lots of fresh air, looked out over some nice wooded hills, walked through a cool stream and took some nice pictures of old, forgotten industry. Yeah, I did a little bit of bitchin’ and moanin’ on the way but really, it helped. I’m refreshed and ready for whatever the world wants to throw at me next!