More Ultrarunning at Breezewood at the Abandoned PA Turnpike

(Photo by Gary)

Here's some additional detail about a side run I like along a trail just off (south of) the abandoned Turnpike.  You go up a marked trail called the Railroad Arch Trail, signed along Oregon Road just west of where it crosses under the old Turnpike.  It's a pleasant trail and an easy run on good footing.  After perhaps half a mile all of a sudden you come upon a culvert containing a stream some 10' wide.  The culvert is about 200' long, obviously old and carefully made of cut stone.  It's intact--you can see from end to end and even walk through it if you don't mind wet feet.

Here's the official PA Department of Natural Resources blurb:

The Oregon Road area also includes a stone aqueduct built in the 1880s by masons brought from Sicily for an aborted railroad project. The aqueduct is 15 feet high, 10 feet wide, and 199 feet long and is easily accessible from Oregon Road on Railroad Arch Trail. Built with native stone without mortar, the Sicilian masons created a structure that is as solid today as the day it was built. The South Penn Railroad project also created the nearby tunnels that were used by the PA Turnpike before being abandoned in 1970. The tunnels can be reached by walking the abandoned turnpike, which is open to hiking and biking. A parking lot on Oregon Road is adjacent to the abandoned turnpike.

This culvert is a WAY cool bit of construction...but it is WAY out of place sitting here in the woods, with no clue as to why.

It took a return trip when the leaves were off the trees to figure out this engineering puzzle.  See, this little stream flows down a wide ravine that is pretty much north-south, with the uphill end to the south and the downhill end towards the north (where the abandoned Turnpike is).  The culvert runs parallel to the ravine.  The unfinished South Penn Railroad that once was planned to occupy this route had to cross the ravine at right angles (i.e., east-west).  Rather than build a trestle across, they were going to fill the ravine to build the embankment up to the height of the existing grade...which you can see when the leaves are off  on the ravine's east side.  The grade is above you some 30'? 40'? Maybe even 50', I can't recall.

But basically the culvert, some 200' long, would have been the width of the fill at the base.  The fill would have tapered up like a trapezoid in cross-section, rising the 30' to 50' needed to reach grade level at appropriate railroad track width (maybe 20' or so wide?).

When you climb up and stand at on the east side of the ravine you can look down on the culvert and it all becomes pretty clear.  You can imagine the grade where you are standing extending across the ravine at the same level, which would have been some big fill job.  You can see the culvert that would have been buried in the bottom of the fill to carry the stream under the fill (else you have just a big earthen dam).  You can also follow the old RR grade back east towards the abandoned Sideling Hill tunnel to where it's obliterated by the grading of the Turnpike.

The way this would have been solved today in railroad or highway engineering would be to install a 10' diameter pipe in lieu of all that stone work.  Then just fill over it.  Done.

But I like the stone arch and the forgotten Italian hands that crafted it.

 

PA Turnpike, Father’s Day…and Ultrarunning

Image credit here.

This near-real time blogging, triggered by my road trip on Tuesday (21^st), from my home in Chambersburg, PA, along the PA Turnpike to  the Alleghany Valley interchange (Rt 28).  Purpose was to participate in a meeting with one of our R&D contractors.

The PA Turnpike is legendary, America’s original superhighway.  Portions opened in 1940 with the full mainline across the state completed in 1949.  If you’ve ever traversed the state, chances are you traveled on the PA Turnpike (currently designated as Interstate 76).  By modern standards, the highway is somewhat primitive, but as the road enters its 8^th decade, major rebuilding projects have upgraded it to contemporary standards. 

My  personal connection is that my father was an over-the-road trucker in the 1950s, hauling ne automobiles from Detroit to New York City.  I like to say I got the “Teamster gene” from him (so-named for his strong union connections), and I love me some road trip.  Give me maps, coffee, the radio (now Sirius XM!) and a destination, and I’m there.  The lure and mystique of the road, not a known journey to a fixed place, but rather a flexible and infinitely variable adventure awaits.

There is a 12-mile stretch of the Turnpike near Breezewood, now abandoned, that  contains 2 tunnels.  The original road, 4 lanes (2 each way) narrowed to 2 lanes (1 each way) at the Sideling Hill and Rays Mountain Tunnels.  As traffic increased, bottlenecks developed, so a bypass was constructed and opened in 1968.  The abandoned section, with tunnels, sits there quietly in the woods, slowly deteriorating.  A rails-to-trails type groups now owns it and permits recreational use by pedestrians and bikers, to include tunnel access.

Oh, and the connection to Ultrarunning: I have run there several times, and it’s a Twilight Zone-like trip.  It’s like being in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust and you are the only person left, alone along this abandoned roadway.  I feel particularly eerie knowing that I can now stand right where my father, a half century ago, rumbled through with his car-carrier.

This post has kinda morphed from an account of a road trip, to PA Turnpike history, to fathers.  My dad was flawed but always did the best he could do for his family, and I love and honor him for that.  That’s all that any of the men in my life who fulfill the father role can do, and they all do it well.