Kevin Patrick and the Geography of Pennsylvania’s

Central Pennsylvania Field Trip:

Karst, Caves, and Careening Trains

Friday September 26, 2008 (8am-6pm)

             This trip will cross the backbone of Pennsylvania nearly a half mile above sea level, and then plunge into the bowels of the earth to touch the graves of legends. In between will be the skewed bridges, penetrating tunnels, the tomb of a dead prince, urban dereliction, and massive holes in the ground that spew up and re-consume subterranean rivers; a 400 million year-old vertical stack of rock, the last living elms, a heaping pile of diner food, an underground boat ride, poisonous pyrite, and any number of crazy experiences. Bring a flashlight.

The Central Pennsylvania field trip cut a path from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in Indiana County to Penn's Cave in Centre County, crossing the Pittsburgh Low Plateau Section of the Appalachian Plateau (Pennsylvanian age rocks), dropping over the Allegheny Front (Mississippian age rocks), and pushing into the Appalachian Ridge and Valley Section (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian age rocks).

Mark, Derek, Marc, Shawn, and Eric monking around at the Mount Assisi Friary, Loretto, PA.

 LORETTO

    Set among the dissected hills of the Appalachian Plateau just west of the Allegheny Front, the small town of Loretto was the hometown to two famous Pennsylvanians. Demetrius Gallitzin (1770-1840) was a Russian aristocrat and son to the Russian ambassador to the Netherlands who emigrated to the United States in 1792, and was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1795. Forsaking his inherited wealth and influential position, he came to the Allegheny frontier to establish a Catholic settlement in the wilderness. Prince Gallitzin, as the locals called him, founded Loretto in 1799, centering it on the church of St. Michael the Archangel. Loretto was one of the earliest Catholic settlements in western Pennsylvania, a region that would have more than 10,000 Ctholics by the time of Prince Gallitzin's death in 1840. The current Basilica of St. Michael the Archangel (above right) was completed in 1901 by another Loretto native, Charles M. Schwab. A monument to Prince Gallitzin was erected in front of the basilica that includes a tomb where the Russian priest is interned.

     Charles M. Schwab (1862-1939) grew up in Loretto, and attended St. Francis College before moving on to Pittsburgh to make his fortune in the steel industry. He worked his way up to become the president of Carnegie Steel Company, and then the first president of U.S. Steel when it was formed from Carnegie Steel in 1901. Two years later, he left to found Bethlehem Steel. Schwab built a mansion in Pittsburgh, and then another in New York City, as well as a "summer home" in Loretto (above left). It was this 44-room summer home -Immegrun (Evergreen)- that was sold to the Franciscan Friars of Mount Assisi after Schwab's death in 1939.

In the tomb of Prince Gallitzin.

     A statue in nearby Cresson honors another famous Pennsylvanian, Admiral Robert Peary, discoverer of the North Pole.

Cresson's Admiral Robert Peary Monument is a 1937 Works Progress Administration project containing the high quality stone work associated with such Great Depression make-work projects. The site is bordered by rows and groves of what are now 70-year old Norway spruce planted by the WPA workers (below).

cresson

Cresson, shown above in 1904 (click for larger map), was founded by the Pennsylvania Railroad just west of the Allegheny crest in 1854. The town shares its birth-event with Gallitzin and the world famous Horseshoe Curve. The Pennsylvania Railroad built Horseshoe Curve as the engineering feat that allowed its trains to climb over the backbone of the Alleghenies. Cresson's location at the top of the grade makes it the convenient home for helper engines that are still used to assist freight trains traversing the mountain. Straddling the PRR Main Line, Cresson also became a popular mountain top resort. This started as early as 1854 when the Mountain House, previously located at the the base of the Allegheny Front in Hollidaysburg, was dismantled and rebuilt along the Main Line tracks in Cresson (below). Although the Mountain House was razed in 1916, a number of cottages form that era still survive, including one owned by Andrew Carnegie.

Cresson's Mountain House (left), and the 1887 Bramer Cottage (above).

Westbound Norfolk Southern freight plows through Cresson after topping the Allegheny Front.

Once the largest corporation in the world, the Pennsylvania Railroad, like all American railroads, suffered during the nation's transition to the automobile and publicly funded highways. The PRR merged with its arch rival, the New York Central Railroad in 1967 to form the ill-fated Penn Central, which was taken over in 1976 along with several other bankrupt northeastern railroads by Conrail, a railroad corporation owned by the federal government. After being brought back to profitability, Conrail was sold in 1997 to CSX and Norfolk Southern, the two largest rail corporations in the eastern United States. The agreement to split Conrail's assets gave control of the old Pennsylvania Main Line to Norfolk Southern.

 Allegheny portage railroad

    Before the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Allegheny Mountains were breeched by the state-owned Pennsylvania Main Line of Public Works (above), a complex system of railroads, canals, and inclined planes linking Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Begun in 1826, this was Pennsylvania's answer to New York's Erie Canal, which had opened the year before. Not to be left out of the growing trans-Appalachian trade, Baltimore began building the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal up the Potomac Valley in 1828. Unlike the easier terrain of New York's Hudson-Mohawk Lowland, however, the mountainous back country geography of Pennsylvania and Maryland would make canal-building difficult. It was impractical to build canal locks to surmount the 1,500-foot elevation of the Allegheny Front, and although a 4-mile long tunnel was proposed, it was rejected as being too costly and slow to construct. The Allegheny Portage Railroad (APRR) was the solution. Beginning at the Juniata Division canal basin in Hollidaysburg, the APRR constructed a series of 5 inclined planes and intervening levels to carry freight to the top of the Alleghenies, and 5 more inclined planes and levels to bring it down to the Western Division canal basin in Johnstown. Completed in 1834, the Pennsylvania Main Line of Public Works was instrumental in the economic development of western Pennsylvania, but would ultimately cost more than it ever returned. Trans-state traffic was usurped by the Pennsylvania Railroad upon its completion in 1854, and three years later the entire Main Line of Public Works was purchased by the PRR, and subsequently abandoned. Over the course of its operation from 1834 to 1857, the Allegheny Portage Railroad generated $3.6 million of revenue, and $4.9 million worth of expenses.

Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site Visitors Center (above left), and the reconstructed Engine House at the top of Plane #6 (above right).

The Allegheny Portage Railroad required a time-consuming freight transfer from canal boat to rail car, and back to canal boat on the opposite side of the mountain. To mitigate these break-of-bulk costs, the Reliance Transportation Company developed a sectional canal boat in 1834 that could be transported over the Portage Railroad on specially designed flatcars. As innovative as this was -and despite the popularity of APRR sectional canal boat imagery (above)- only a small percent of the tonnage carried by the Portage Railroad was ever transported this way (4.3% in 1849 according to Chris J. Lewie in Two Generations on the Allegheny Portage Railroad (Shippensburg, PA: Burd Street Press), 2001, p. 48).

The reconstructed Summit Level (above left) shows the tracks of the Portage Railroad bolted into stone sleepers rather than the wooden railroad ties that would become the standard for railroads. The stone sleepers are locally quarried sandstone, like the stone used in the Lemon House (above right).

 Lemon House was a tavern with limited over-night accommodations built at the top of Plane #6 to serve travelers on the Allegheny Portage Railroad.

At the Summit Level on top of the Allegheny Mountains.

The Allegheny Front stands as the east-facing edge of the Appalachian Plateau with no low-level water gaps allowing for an easy traverse of the mountains. The steep, scarp face is nonetheless dissected by eastward flowing streams that provide lower grade ramps to the top of the plateau. These hollows were defined as "gaps," and all of them were eventually surveyed for the best possible routing of the Allegheny Portage Railroad. From the canal basin at Hollidaysburg, the path of the APRR followed Blairs Gap Run up the Front to the top of Blairs Gap. The Huntingdon, Cambria and Indiana Turnpike was built through this gap in 1820, and the two transportation routes intersected at the top of the mountain where the Summit Mansion House was built in what would become the village of Summitville (at 1 on the above 1904 map). The APRR's Lemon House was a short distance to the east at 2. Plane #6 (below left) dropped between 2 and 3. The base of Plane# 6, the APRR constructed a stone skewed arch bridge (below right) to carry the Huntingdon, Cambria and Indiana Turnpike over its tracks. Although requiring a high level of masonry skill, the skew arch allowed the turnpike to cross the tracks at an angle. Prince Gallitzin Spring, said to have quenched the thirst of the prince himself, issues from the hillside farther down the mountain at 4, and a much larger masonry arch spans old US 22 at 5. This bridge is part of the Muleshoe Curve. Not nearly as famous as Horseshoe Curve, Muleshoe Curve is a smaller twin built at the same time to achieve the same purpose: allow trains to climb the mountain over a reduced grade.

     In 1852 the state of Pennsylvania began constructing the New Portage Railroad, a line over the Allegheny Mountains between the canal basins at Hollidaysburg and Johnstown that would bypass the ten expensive and time-consuming inclined planes. This effort to streamline trans-Allegheny freight movements was necessitated by the increased traffic brought by the Pennsylvania Railroad, which originally used the Allegheny Portage railroad to transfer freight across the mountains. By the time the New Portage Railroad opened in 1855, however, the Pennsylvania Railroad had built Horseshoe Curve as part of its own right-of-way over the Alleghenies. With an uninterrupted link between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the Pennsylvania Railroad carried the vast majority of all trans-state freight, reducing the brand new New Portage Railroad to merely being the newest section of the virtually bankrupt Pennsylvania Main Line of Public Works. In 1857, the entire system was sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad, which promptly abandoned the two-year old New Portage Railroad in favor of its own route over Horseshoe Curve. The New Portage railroad's tracks were torn up, and the rail bed left to go to seed until 1904, when the PRR rebuilt the line to handle the vastly increased train traffic going over the Allegheny Ridge.

     Steepness of grade is the challenge the Allegheny Front presents to railroad engineering. Even modern day trains can not easily operate on a grade greater than 2% (2 feet of vertical rise for every 100 feet of horizontal run). The inclined planes had 8-10% grades, allowing the Allegheny Portage Railroad to attack the slope directly. The Pennsylvania Main Line grade over the Allegheny Mountains never exceeds 1.8%. The only way to achieve this lower grade is by stretching the track out over a longer run. The Pennsylvania Railroad and the New Portage Railroad are shown on the above map as mirror images of each other, suggesting that they solved the problem of surmounting the Allegheny Front in the same way. Both railroads crested the Alleghenies at Gallitzin, located at the head of Sugar Run Gap. To get there, the Pennsylvania Railroad routed its tracks southwest from Altoona, and then west up Burgoon Gap, gaining grade by doubling back over Horseshoe Curve at the head of the hollow. The PRR tracks then sidled along the face of the front before turning west again up Sugar Run Hollow. The New Portage Railroad was built west from Hollidaysburg up Blairs Gap where it gained grade by doubling back over the Muleshoe Curve. It too sidled along the face of the front before turning west up Sugar Run Gap on the opposite side of the hollow from the PRR tracks.

The scale difference is apparent in the engineering of these two stone arches built by the Portage Railroad 20 years apart. The 1834 Skew Arch Bridge carried the road over the railroad, and the 1854 Muleshoe Curve Bridge carried the railroad over the road.

He-Men after climbing to the top of the Muleshoe Curve Bridge. Put back into rail service in 1904, the Muleshoe Curve was abandoned for good in 1985.

   william penn highway

     The automobile eventually inherited the Huntingdon, Cambria and Indiana Turnpike, which maintained its tolls into the early 20th century. Extending across the three counties mentioned in its name, this was the middle section of an important road that crossed the state from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh by way of Reading, Lebanon, Harrisburg, Lewistown, Huntingdon, Hollidaysburg, Ebensburg, and Blairsville. In 1916, the Harrisburg-based William Penn Highway Association began to promote this road, encouraging its improvement into an all-weather automobile road like the transcontinental Lincoln Highway, which was marked out across the state via Philadelphia, Lancaster, York, Chambersburg, Bedford, Greensburg, and Pittsburgh in 1913. The William Penn Highway Association subsequently marked out a branch from Reading to New York City, and aligned itself with the transcontinental Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway Association. The 1916 strip map to the left shows how the Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway was marked out over the Alleghenies between Hollidaysburg and Blairsville. When the Association of American State Highway Officials adopted a national network of uniformly signed interstate highways in 1926, the William Penn Highway became part of U.S. Route 22 (above). When a new limited-access alignment for US 22 was built over the Alleghenies in the late-1980s, it was routed through Sugar Run Gap along the abandoned right-of-way of the New Portage Railroad.

This advertisement locates Mountain Lake Park and its spring-fed pool "In the Heart of the Alleghenies on the Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway." The long closed Mountain Lake Park is also marked on the above strip map.

The town of Gallitzin sits above the head of Sugar Run Gap where the crest of the Allegheny Front is pierced by three railroad tunnels. The middle tube (2 on the above map) is the Pennsylvania Railroad's Allegheny Tunnel completed in 1854. A year later, the state finished the Portage Tunnel to the south (at 3). In 1904, the PRR built the Gallitzin Tunnel (1) parallel to and north of the Allegheny Tunnel. The Portage Tunnel was built for the New Portage Railroad, which continued down the mountain to the east along the south side of Sugar Run Hollow toward Muleshoe Curve. The Pennsylvania Main Line extended down the mountain on the north side of Sugar Run Hollow toward Horseshoe Curve. After 1857, the PRR owned all three tunnels, eventually establishing the still operating protocol to use the Portage Tunnel for eastbound traffic, and the Allegheny Tunnel for westbound traffic. The Gallitzin Tunnel was abandoned in 1995 after the adjacent Allegheny Tunnel was re-bored to accommodate two tracks and higher double-stack container trains.

On top of the Alleghenies at the Gallitzin tunnels (above). A westbound NS double-stack container train emerges from the Allegheny Tunnel (below left). Double-stack trains crossing the Alleghenies (below right) are part of a global network of trade linked to post-Panamax container ships plying the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and North America, and the Pacific Ocean between North America and Asia.

Eastbound freight train entering the Portage Tunnel (above).