August 3, 2016: More PA History

In summary, our Gettysburg visit was enlightening--the first time we've really grasped the terrain and how it influenced that battle. (Forgot to include this shot of us with Mr. Lincoln in the last blog--his Gettysburg Address also gets a lot of play in Gettysburg, as you might imagine.)

Jack, Lincoln, Carol

Wednesday we departed the Gettysburg KOA and headed for Altoona, to visit the famous Horseshoe Curve, a railroad engineering masterpiece. We had a message in the morning before we left from Dick Parady, saying that he had something for Jack and asking if we could meet them on the road. So we had another nice visit with Dick and Rita, at a rest stop on 81. He had a lovely and very appropriate book for Jack--a flyfishing memoir written by a friend of his, which we'll both enjoy reading on this trip.

Rita, Carol, and Dick at rest stop

We arrived at Altoona about 3 pm and stopped first at the Railroader's Memorial Museum. Altoona was one of the largest, if not THE largest, railroad yards/facilities in the country, in the heyday of the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad. We looked around and watched a movie about the Horseshoe Curve, and then headed for the Curve itself, about 6 miles from the museum. The facilities for visitors at Horseshoe Curve are mighty impressive. Located on a scenic flat grassy area right in the middle of the curve but a couple hundred feet lower down, several buildings offer historical background. Then you can either walk up the 150+ steps to trackside, or take an old-fashioned funicular train up the side of the ridge; it runs every half hour.

Entrance to the once mighty Altoona yards of the Pennsylvania Railroad (now a museum)

Greeting us as we walk inside the museum

When we arrived in the parking lot, a train was going around the curve; it's a novel sight to be surrounded by a train. The noise echoes off the mountains. Jack took some photos and then we looked around in the buildings. The curve was designed and built in 1854, to solve a major engineering problem of how to get the railroad connected through these mountains. It was ingeniously conceived and engineered, and was built by 450 Irish miners imported to do the job, using hand picks, wheelbarrows and dynamite. (A lot of their descendants still live in the area.) The Curve considerably shortened the time between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, going from 4 days using the jerry-rigged previous method, to less than a day. It's been heavily used by the railroad ever since.

An old photo of an eastbound train going around the Curve, pulled by a steam locomotive. 

The engineer and fireman could look across the bend and see the end of the train.

An engineering marvel. 

We opted to take the funicular train up, which was quick and fun. Even neater was the view from trackside. It's a very peaceful and remote-feeling spot, with three train tracks going all the way around what looks like a picnic area, with lots of tables and benches, with ridge and mountain views all around. Some folks were visiting from Ohio and had apparently spent the whole day watching trains go by! (About 60 trains traverse the curve in a day, so we had lots of opportunities to watch trains and wave at the engineers while we were there.) A number of other visitors were there besides us. Looks like a popular spot, and that's understandable. We hung around until 5:30 pm or so. Lots of fun.

The ride to the center of Horseshoe Bend

At the center of the curve waiting for a train to go by.

Train pulled by three diesel engines entering one leg of horseshoe. 

This west-bound train consists of empty coal cars.

Nearing center of curve, lead diesel blows horn and all spectators wave.

Engines now on other leg of horseshoe .

Engines on right leg and trailing coal cars left leg. A sight to behold. 

Even though it was late, we decided to drive on to Johnstown and see if we could see anything related to the big Flood. We put the address of the Johnstown National Historic Park in our GPS and wound up and down through backroads to get there. We weren't sure what to expect but we were blown away by what we learned. Even though the Park visitor's center was closed when we got there, lots of explanatory plaques scattered around told the full story. The Historic Park is located about 14 miles above the city of Johnstown, in another high, scenic and peaceful spot (these spots seem a dime a dozen in this pastoral, mountainous part of Pennsylvania--our kind of place!).

This particular place, however, used to be the site of a large lake (about 2 miles long--one of the largest manmade lakes at that time, made by a big earthen dam). The lake was originally supposed to provide water for a canal system, but the railroad did away with the need for the canal system. Some of the rich guys in the area, including Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick, bought the lake and surrounding acreage and set up an exclusive hunting and fishing resort, members only. They built a big lodge and numerous cottages where the swells came to entertain themselves.

One weekend in May of 1889, the rain poured down like it never had before. The lake quickly filled up and started overtopping the dam, and eroding part of it. The President and caretaker of the resort, who lived in a house overlooking the lake (which is still there and is part of the Park), organized work details to try to make the dam higher and patch the eroding. He sent the resident engineer down the mountain a ways to telegraph down to Johnstown that it looked like trouble was coming, but apparently false alarms had occurred previously so the Johnstown authorities didn't pay much attention. Besides, the huge amount of rain was already creating flooding problems for them in the city streets.

Late in the afternoon, it became obvious that the dam was going to break, and break it did--the entire giant lake drained out in less than an hour and headed downhill toward Johnstown. (Later studies said the flow rate during that short time was the same as the Mississippi River's.) It took the flood water about 45 minutes to get to Johnstown and by then it had picked up mounds of debris, trees, houses, animals--and a warehouse full of barbed wire from a nearby wire factory, just to make the whole thing more hellish! The outcome was the worse natural disaster in US history--over 2200 people died. Man oh man. Did you have any idea that's what the Johnstown Flood was about? We didn't. Shocking. And the courts found no liability for the folks who had the nice resort and lake up there, even though they had modified the dam and had failed to replace some essential valves and pipes that had been sold for scrap. Act of God. (Laws changed after that.) Following photo borrowed from Johnstown Flood Museum web site.

We messed around up there for quite a while and got stuck driving in the dark, so we stopped for the night at a hotel in the quaint little town of Ligonier (c. 1760), site of a French and Indian War fort and lots of George Washington and Colonel Crawford stories.