The Canal

This painting is on the side of a building. It just caught my eye.

The canal system worked it's way from the east to Pittsburgh. From Johnstown to Pittsburgh it was 105 miles of canal that was 4 feet deep. It opened up the Frontier. The interesting part of the canal system was between Holidaysburg to Cresson to Johnstown. Big mountain to cross. So they built an incline system. The canal boats were put onto a flat bed with wheels and pulled up the mountain to various stages. When hiking you can find the remains of the old incline. Today the National Park Service has a site in Cresson, where they have rebuilt one of the incline stages. By 1857 the railroad had come, and the system died.

Our buried history

My little town sits at the crossroads of 3 major highways. They are all old and have been here since the town was founded in 1793. One is the major east-west route, one is the major north-south route, and the other originated here and at one time was a toll road. Today some newer four lane roads bypass the center of town and go around it...that is ok because of all the trucks.

At one time all of those roads in town were brick. There is a town north of here that use to be a major maker of pavers... Patton Pavers. My great-grand dad layed a lot of the roads around here. My brother found some in Italy when he visited there while in the Navy. Slowly, here, those roads have been all covered over with blacktop. Then the blacktop comes off because of the winter weather, and the old road is exposed. The brick doesn't get pot holes, it stays pretty stable. It's the blacktop that keeps falling apart. Tells you something, doesn't it?