2 NPS Sites, an Interesting Town, and a Ballgame
Baseball?!?! Yes, we had an interesting day - and this cover photo wasn't even from the town in which we saw the baseball game :)
We started the day out at Johnstown Flood National Memorial, the first of two National Park Units we'd see today. The South Fork Dam was built in the Johnstown area to create a lake for the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club. Unfortunately, the dam failed on May 31, 1889, and 20 million tons of water devastated Johnstown, Pennsylvania, killing 2,209 people. Below is what remains of the dam today-a view from one side to the other, as well as the topography upriver from the dam.
Several of the Hunting and Fishing Club buildings still remain.
After this site, we headed to our next NPS site, Allegheny Portage National Historical Site. Unfortunately, the Visitor Center was closed the day we were there, but we were able to walk to the Summit site and check out what it looked like. This was the site where the railroad crossed the Allegheny mountains for the first time. But it was difficult for the trains of the time to make it up the steep mountains, and it needed a portage system, which opened in 1834. "All things to all people, it served merchants, passengers, slaves in pursuit of freedom, and soldiers from the Mexican War." - NPS site. It was interesting seeing the different type of tracks, showing how the horses would work to pull the train through the portage. If you notice, on one side of the Summit house, there are wooden railroad ties in between the metal rail lines. After the house, there are no wooden ties.
After checking out the NPS site, we saw that a nearby town, Lilly, Pennsylvania, had an interesting history. Back in the 1920s, the coal miners in the area were attempting to unionize, which angered the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK planned a rally in the mining community of Lilly, PA, including burning crosses in what used to be Piper's Field. The KKK arrived by train and spent over 2 hours burning crosses in Lilly. The Lilly residents decided to take a stand and fight back. As the cross-burning ended and the KKK members started back toward the railroad depot, the Lilly residents cut the power to the entire town, making it difficult for outsiders to navigate their way. The townspeople met the Klansmen near the depot with hoses of water. The Klansmen answered with gunfire, killing 3 people. At the end of it, 29 Klansmen and 15 townspeople were jailed for the actions that occurred that night. The town has now created a monument to remember the day the town stood up to the bigotry.
While we were walking back to our car from this memorial, we said hello to a group of townspeople, who quickly (and correctly) figured we were tourists. They told us about a park in the town that had several memorials, both to the coal miners of the area and the nation's #1 "War Mother," who had lost 11 sons during WWII. Interesting...worth finding, which we did!
And nestled in a little corner of this park, was the random baseball glove/bat/ball piece-of-art in the cover photo for this post :)
We then, however, headed to our hotel in Pittsburg, which was basically directly across the street from the Pittsburg Pirates baseball field. My awesome husband finagled another MLB stadium for my MLB quest onto this trip, and we had a really nice night enjoying the field and a baseball game.
Conveniently, there was a craft beer bar between our hotel and the stadium right across the street, which we frequented for dinner before the game, and a nightcap after the game.
