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…

The Furnace at Winfield

I woke up much earlier than usual. I had the day off and was hoping to get some photos of the warm colors from the “Golden Hour”, the time right after the sun rises. I did see a little bit of reddish-orange near the eastern horizon but it quickly disappeared, turning into the grey that was in the sky for the rest of the day.  I was on my way to the ghost town of West Winfield located in Winfield Township. 

 

1874 Map

                Located not far from Saxonburg and Cabot, at one time it was a booming town but now it is nothing more than a meeting of a couple roads. A limestone plant operates here but other than that, most all of the houses and buildings have been torn down. A few steps along the road remain and in the summertime, piles of bricks show where houses once stood.  What was drawing me up here was to see the remains of the Winfield Furnace.

An aerial view of West Winfield in 1938

All the houses and buildings are now gone except for the plant at the top

West Winfield in 2021

                The snow from a day or two ago had mostly been plowed from the roads but it was rather high along the sides.  I found a spot wide enough to pull over, slung my camera bag across my shoulder and worked my way in towards the furnace.  I would guess the furnace was only about a 1/4 of a mile from where I parked. The 5 or 6 inches of snow slowed me down a little. I could hear ice beneath me cracking at times as I crossed over puddles. The only prints other than my own were rabbits and deer. It was cold, the temperature according to the car thermometer was 21 degrees.

 The hills on the sides of the valley showed cliffs and big rocks breaking through the snow. There were limestone mine openings on the hills though I’ve never been to them and couldn’t see them.  It didn’t take long before I could see the outline of the furnace through the shrubs and thin tree trunks. I navigated between the high shrubs to get to it.

                I used to come to this area in the 70-80’s. Friends and I would come up to a swimming hole on the near-by Buffalo Creek called 40 Foot. It was about a mile or two beyond West Winfield. We never visited the furnace. There were still houses in the town then, abandoned but still standing. 

               When we first started coming up we were able to drive our cars back to the “beach”, crossing the stream a couple times in the process.  We’d light a fire, drink beer and swim. We weren’t the only ones to use it and it ended up where the only way in would be with a four wheel drive. Some people didn’t realize that there wasn’t a janitor to clean up after them and they’d leave their bottles and cans behind.  The swimming hole lost its appeal.

                The furnace was built in 1847 and operated for 17 years. It produced 40 tons of iron a week which was shipped to Freeport by wagon (about ten or fifteen miles) and then shipped to Pittsburgh by barge down the Allegheny River. The land I was walking on to get to the furnace was once a railroad bed which went to the limestone company. In the summer you can still see a few ties near the furnace. The line was originally a branch of the Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburgh Railroad.

                I didn’t visit the furnace until the late 1990’s. There is a geocache hidden there and that brought Ann Marie and me back in 2008. The houses and buildings had all been bulldozed by then.

The Furnace site 1.19.2008

                In 2008 the area had been cleaned up, all the vegetation had been chopped down. Now the plants have returned and are slowly retaking what they once owned. In the summer there are lots of vines and prickly bushes to deal with. It is much easier to get there in the winter, you only have the snow and the cold to deal with!

The furnace is showing its age. Still, it looks good for being 147 years old. The top layer has been removed, the inner chimney is gone, stones are falling inside and roots and grasses are widening the gaps between the blocks. As with almost all old iron furnaces, every building that once surrounded them which supported their industry, are gone.

                I spent about 15-20 minutes taking some pictures and looking around before the cold sent me back to the warmth of the car. With the vents blowing on my hands, (yes, I did wear gloves!) I headed back towards home, taking the back roads and enjoying the views of farms covered in snow. I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again,

 “Pennsylvania sure is a beautiful state! You never know what you might find in it!”