August 4-8, 2019

Shawnee State Park

Schellburg, PA

So far we have been very impressed with Pennsylvania State Park campgrounds. 

We had wanted to spend a week at Shawnee but could only get a site from Sunday through Thursday. 

In addition to our usual trip to the local Walmart for groceries we took a drive to tour two different National Historic Sites, Allegheny Portage Railroad and Johnstown Flood Memorial.

We began our visit to the Allegheny Portage Railroad at the Visitor Center where we watched a film and learned the site had the first railroad constructed through the Allegheny Mountains in central Pennsylvania. 

 

Spanning 36 miles and connecting the Midwest to the eastern seaboard, it was primarily used as a portage railway, hauling river boats and barges over the divide between the Ohio and Susquehanna Rivers between 1834 and 1854.

The railway consisted of five inclines on either side of the drainage divide.  The endpoints connected to the Canal at Johnstown on the west through Hollidaysburg on the east.

Wheeled barges rode a narrow-gauge rail track with steam-powered engines lifting the vehicles.

The railway cut transport time from Philadelphia to the Ohio River from weeks to just 3-5 days.

It played a critical role in opening the interior of the country beyond the Appalachian Mountains to commerce and settlement.

The portage railroad was rendered obsolete by the advance of railway technology in the late 1850s. 

Outside the Visitor Center we walked down the boardwalk through a stone quarry leading to Incline Plane 6 which preserves the remains of the original engine house foundation. 

 

Half of the exhibit shelter contains a reproduction of the machinery that would have been in Engine House #6 including a stationary engine as well as the gears, brakes, and assorted levers that kept the tow rope in motion. 

 

 

 

 

Adjacent to Incline Plane 6 is the Lemon House that served as its owners home, tavern, and business. 

 Samuel Lemon operated the business serving passengers of the newly built Allegheny Portage Railroad.   

 Gentlemen passengers would be welcomed into the bar area while the ladies ate a hearty meal in the dining room followed by a visit to the parlor.

 

The house passed through various owners and was kept in different stages of repair until the National Park Service acquired the site in 1966. 

A short drive or walking trail leads down to the Skew Arch.  The arch is 80 feet 5 inches long on the south elevation and 54 feet 11 inches long on the north elevation.

The stone bridge was built for passage of a Turnpike road over the Railway.

After a picnic lunch we drove twenty miles to the Johnstown Flood National Memorial.

The Visitor Center contains two floors of exhibits and a theatre showing a film that used excerpts from an old movie from the 1920s.

A dam was built by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1853 as part of a cross-state canal system with Johnstown as the eastern terminus supplied with water by Lake Conemaugh.    The canal was abandoned as railroads superseded canal barge transport. 

The Pennsylvania Railroad purchased the dam and lake and sold it to private interests.

The group of speculators modified the canal to convert it into a private resort lake for their wealthy associates.

Included in the development was lowering the dam to make its top wide enough to hold a road and putting a fish screen in the spillway.  These alterations are thought to have increased the vulnerability of the dam.  And a system of relief pipes and valves, features of the original dam were not replaced.

With the establishment of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, members, including more than 50 wealthy Pittsburgh steel, coal, and railroad industrialists, built cottages and a clubhouse.

In May, 1889, the heaviest rainfall that had ever been recorded in that part of the United States turned small creeks into roaring torrents, ripping out trees.

After assessing the situation, the president of the club assembled a group of men to save the face of the dam by trying to unclog the spillway that was blocked by the debris caused by the swollen waterline.

The first town to be hit when the dam collapsed was South Fork located on high ground where most of the people were able to escape.

As the water flowed toward Johnstown it picked up debris such as trees, houses and animals.

The flood, before hitting the main part of Johnstown, hit the Cambria Iron Works sweeping up railroad cars and barbed wire.

Johnstown residents were caught by surprise as the wall of water bore down, traveling 40 miles per hour and reaching a height of 60 feet.

Many people were crushed by pieces of debris while others were caught in barbed wire.

The death toll has been calculated at approximately 2,200.  That number may be more or less as some who were suspected as being victims later turned up alive.  There is also not an accounting of people who may have been visitors that were not counted as missing.

Bodies were found as far away as Cincinnati and as late as 1911.  99 entire families died in the flood, including 396 children and 777 people were never identified.

The damage has an estimated $17 million price tag and is considered the worst flood to hit the U.S. in the 19^th century.