USA > Pennsylvania > Cambria County > Johnstown > From trail dust to star dust : the story of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a city resulting from its environment > Part 4
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From Trail Dust to Star Dust
Commonwealth. In 1793 the Bank of Pennsylvania was chartered.
In 1723 a law was passed in the State issuing paper money to the amount of 15,000 pounds over an eight- year period. This became legal tender. During the Revo- lutionary War, Pennsylvania, like other states, issued large quantities of paper money. Continental currency had also been issued. During the "dark days," the value of this paper money fell very low. So deplorable was the situation as a result of the Panic of 1837 and the promotion of internal improvements, that the State trea- sury was empty. Few private corporations were sound. Specie payment was suspended. Because many of the banks had been established under State charters with very weak backing, the value of their notes depreciated. These were known as "Wild-Cat" banks. People hoarded their gold and silver.
By the Act of 1840, all State banks had to resume specie payments by January 15, 1841, and pay all their liabilities in gold or silver, or forfeit their charters. To gain postponement, the banks agreed to lend the State sums in proportion to their capital; such sums to pay the interest on the State debt. Eventually the State was saved from bankruptcy and its debts were paid. Through this transitional period "Bedford" money fell and rose with that from other private banks. It was Bedford money which was accepted in Johnstown for real estate trans- actions by Adam Cover.
It is recorded that Hull Smith in 1840 opened a State Bank on Main Street near Clinton Street. One source
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Exchange
states that the first banking institution in Johnstown was established in 1854 by Smith, Bell and Co., which introduced bank checks into local business practice. These checks bore a drawing of a rolling mill with a bloom going through the mills. This first bank was ab- sorbed by the First National Bank when it started in 1863. Six years later, 1869, John Dibert opened the bank- ing house of John Dibert and Co. These two are the only banking houses listed in the Business Directory of Johns- town in 1869. The Cambria County bank existed for only twelve years before it met with disaster. The Johns- town Savings bank was the fourth local bank, and it celebrated its 75th Anniversary in 1946.
A sound national money system was finally estab- lished. Americans can be everlastingly thankful that Jef- ferson in 1784 favored the decimal system, and so the United States currency was based on the Spanish system rather than on the English idea. The young Republic was averse to calling our unit of money a "crown." Besides, the Spanish dollar in a democratic society always had been more popular than the English crown. Early in the nineteenth century, particularly in the South, the Spanish dollar was literally cut with hammer and chisel into halves; the halves into quarters, and the quarters into bits, and these into "picayunes." It is in- teresting to compare these denominations with those of the scrip used by Cambria Iron Co. in 1865. (See illus- tration of scrip, page 37).
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14 Transportation
A desire for better transportation to the West became a burning fever in the 1820's and 1830's. Steamboats were all right but what could they do for the West? Traffic followed the rivers. The cost of roads was high and the loads were small. Cheaper transportation would mean more wealth for the West.
Philadelphia, like Boston, New York, and Baltimore, was in distress. The Pennsylvania road (Forbes) did not improve with age and as a result traffic from Pitts- burgh tended to swing south and over the National Road to Baltimore. But Baltimore was aware that western traffic was going down the river to New Orleans. New York was in danger of having New Orleans become the ranking port of the United States. Each eastern city wanted improved connections with the West to draw business from New Orleans.
Canals seemed to be the panacea for the ills of trans- portation. Enthusiasts talked of linking the Atlantic with the Pacific through a system of canals. What could be better than the easy movement of canal boats over the smooth paths of water connecting all the important centers of the Country? The panic of 1837 killed the
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Transportation
enthusiasm and a new panacea restored energy-the railroads. In fact, it was overexpansion of canals beyond their possible usefulness plus excessive loans for their completion that helped produce the financial panic of 1837.
Pennylvania's rivers cross through rather than paral- lel the mountain ridges. Therefore, the first travelers followed the rivers, settled along them, and sent their products down streams. The first products of Johnstown were carried by canoe on the rivers or by pack horse over the trails. These were maple syrup and nuts (in great abundance)-hickory, walnut, beech, and chest- nut. When the manufacture of iron began, these products were carried by mules or pack horses to Pittsburgh. Later the raft and the flatboat replaced the animals. After the mulepacks came the turnpikes and Conestoga wagons which traveled the paths that had followed the waterways. First the canal, then the railroad, and then the modern highways followed the pattern of paths established by the Indian trails.
Because the Erie Canal insured New York the place of highest rank as a port of entry and distribution to the West, Pennsylvania realized its resulting disadvantage in position. It was flanked by the Erie Canal to the north and by the National Road to the south. Pennsylvania, to meet the emergency, ordered a survey of the feasibility of digging a canal across Pennsylvania to the Ohio River. Pennsylvania was rightfully worried about Phila- delphia losing trade to New York due to the Erie Canal which gave direct water transportation to the newly and quickly developing West. Realizing that water trans-
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From Trail Dust to Star Dust
portation is cheaper than any other type of transpor- tation and that the railroads were still in their infancy, the State Assembly passed the Act of March 27, 1824. This act provided means to find a practicable route to connect the East with the wild and rapidly growing West, a route wherein the Allegheny Mountains were the difficult division line. The Pennsylvania Canal was the result of this investigation. The Canal served as the chief means of transportation across the State until the railroads were established.
The history of the United States more than that of any other country in the world has been the history of transportation. Indeed transportation might be called the warp upon which the woof of our material growth is woven. This cohesive, interdependent economic whole result has been completed by waterways, highways, and airways.
The gigantic Pennsylvania Railroad was not original in its location. Defense played an important part in its founding-a defense by Philadelphia against the effort to draw all traffic of the northwest to New York's Erie Canal and a defense against the threat of Baltimore to replace its National Pike with a steam railroad to the growing West. The vital urge to develop the West had become important before the Revolutionary War. The expedient thing to do was to follow a makeshift route via railroad from Philadelphia to Columbia (Lan- caster ) and canal between Columbia and Hollidaysburg.
Pennsylvania had the most difficult problem of the three routes. Its first attempt, the Pennsylvania Canal, had not been successful. The railroad was the second attempt. The apathy in Pennsylvania in the face of the
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Transportation
contemporary developments in transportation by her neighbors may partly be laid to Quaker conservatism but more so to the disjunction which existed among the different parts of the State caused by the geography and conditions of settlement. The rich agricultural sec- tions of Pennsylvania to the south were nearer to Balti- more than Philadelphia, and their settlers more closely connected by blood. Why should they support a scheme to benefit Philadelphia? The settlers west of the mountains to the south and east of Pittsburgh were quite different from the Philadelphians. Therefore, their interests lay elsewhere. Perhaps the greatest cause of apathy was the forbidding nature of the topography of the land.
The United States has been a frontier nation through most of its history. For over two centuries settled America could look west toward dimly known mountain ranges, vast forests, unexplored streams, and immense prairies. The American West beckoned alluringly to the ambitious, the restless, the discontented, and the lawless. The whole course of American history was conditioned by the existence of a sparsely settled frontier that pushed con- tinuously into the Indian country.
There were two routes in Pennsylvania leading into the West. The first, the Kittanning Path, ran along the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers to the mountains, and across the Appalachians to Fort Pitt, originally Fort Duquesne and now Pittsburgh, on the Ohio River. Today the Pennsylvania Railroad follows this route. The second, the Forbes Road, ran through southern Pennsylvania from Philadelphia to Fort Pitt. Today it is, in general, the route of the Lincoln Highway.
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15 The Pennsylvania Canal
The great West-all the country west of the Appa- lachian chain-had begun to attract farmers and other permanent settlers before the Constitution was ratified. The population to the west especially in Kentucky and Tennessee was increasing much more rapidly than in the older eastern states.
The importance of water courses is indicated by the population of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, New Orleans, Detroit, Cleveland, and Chicago. All these towns owed their growth largely to the opening of the Erie Canal, which had a nine-year start on the Pennsylvania Canal. Grain and livestock, nearly half of the national total, came from these sections. Those towns in the south- ern portion favored the route via the Ohio and Missis- sippi rivers and the overland route to Baltimore. Phila- delphia, Pennsylvania's port city, would soon be cut out of the race unless communications were radically improved.
THE ROUTE of the Pennsylvania Canal, opened in 1832, was by rail from Philadelphia to Columbia (Lan- caster), thence by the west branch of the Susquehanna and the waters thereof to the Allegheny Mountains, over
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The Pennsylvania Canal
the Alleghenies by rail, and then by water from Johns- town to Pittsburgh. From Philadelphia to Columbia, the eastern terminus of the Canal, there was a railroad 81.6 miles long. The Canal then followed the Susque- hanna and Juniata rivers to Hollidaysburg. From Holli- daysburg to Johnstown, canal boats were hauled by the Portage Railroad over the mountain and through it. At Johnstown the boats were put into the Canal again and taken to Pittsburgh by way of the Conemaugh and Allegheny rivers.
From Pittsburgh to Johnstown, the system consisted of a canal with locks and dams; from Johnstown to Hollidaysburg a railroad with planes and levels on which cars were drawn by horses, afterwards by locomotives. It was a combination of steam, water, horse-power, and man-power. Completed during the presidency of Andrew Jackson when great progress was being made in arts and sciences, it stands as an important monument in the great epoch of transportation advancement in the history of the United States; and it makes Johnstown one of the landmarks in the development of national methods of transportation.
A BASIN was essential to the operation of the Canal, for the loading and unloading of boats, and for the transportation of goods in bulk from the railroad to the boats and vice-versa. Just as today the railroads must have their great yards and the freighters their docks, so the canals needed their basins. There were two basins on the Pennsylvania Canal-one at Pittsburgh, the other in Johnstown. The latter occupied the ground between Clinton and Railroad streets on the west and south, and
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From Trail Dust to Star Dust
the Five Points and Portage Street on the east and north. It was semicircular in shape. At its greatest width, it was 200 yards; its length was 600 yards. On both sides of the basin were warehouses with docks or slips on each side so that two boats could be loaded or unloaded at the same time. The first slip was used by the packet boats or passenger boats. The packet slip was the center of at- traction, for people thronged here to see the arrival and departure of passengers from the East and West. Here or on the east side of Central Park the town folk received their mail which was placed in a large clothesbasket. A warehouse occupied a strip of land about 75 feet wide, and the slip was about 15 feet by 80 feet. The local warehouses are still located in this area. The tracks of the Portage Railroad ran on State ground to Clinton Street between the basin and Railroad Street (so-called for the Portage Railroad).
The land between the basin and the Little Cone- maugh River from Five Points to the waste weir was called Long Island or more commonly the Island. From the waste weir at the entrance of the basin to the aque- duct in the rear of the Cambria Iron Co. offices, all the land lying between the Canal and the river was known as Goose Island. It was so named probably because so many Germans living in the area kept geese. The Buck- walter grist mill stood on the island side of the race just below Franklin Street. The Five Points were so called because five thoroughfares converged at that place - Portage, Railroad, Church, and Depot Streets, and the old Portage Railroad lying on State-owned ground. The
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The Pennsylvania Canal
railroad was the connecting link of the land and water systems of transportation.
The business center of Johnstown in canal days was on Canal Street (now Washington Street). Next in im- portance were Clinton, Railroad, and Portage Streets. The Hulbert House, a prominent hostelry, was on Clinton Street. Mr. George King in 1833 bought the lot on the northeast corner of Main Street and Franklin Street for his residence. Franklin Street at the time was called Morrison Avenue.
Water for the basin and canal was let into the former through a sluice from the Little Conemaugh at Five Points and also through a forty-foot feeder from Suppes Dam in the Stony Creek. The feeder came down along the present line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, over what is now called Feeder Street. The Canal itself was about 60 feet wide and four to six feet deep. The width of Feeder Street was determined by the width of the feeder. Shortly after the Canal was put into operation, it was found necessary to have a reserve body of water for dry seasons. Consequently, the State began to con- struct the South Fork Reservoir about 16 miles from Johnstown at an altitude of 400 feet above the city.
THE SOUTH FORK DAM was immense, having a basin of 32 acres; it was fed by 48 square miles of quick-drain- ing mountain slopes and was therefore quick to rise. In fact, it was the largest artificial body of water in the United States at the time. Its length was three miles and it was from one-fourth to one mile wide. At the breast it was 72 feet high. Water in the dam was sufficient to fill enough barrels to girdle the earth. Having exhausted
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From Trail Dust to Star Dust
its finances, the State could not complete the dam, and so abandoned it for a few years. In 1845 it was eventually completed and water was stored. In 1847 it broke for the first time and caused considerable damage to the basin of the Canal. In 1862, two small breaks occurred without serious damage. Again it was abandoned. In 1880, it was purchased by the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club, a group of wealthy men from Pittsburgh, who "repaired" the dam and increased the height of the breast to ninety feet. Having been "reinforced" with stumps, sand, loam, rubble, and straw, and having no proper facilities to discharge its waters, the breast could not bear the strain of the mighty force of water behind it in the spring of 1889 and so broke with terrible and tragic results to the Valley, to the Town, and to the people living in it.
"All the horrors that hell could wish, Such was the price that was paid for-fish!"
THE WEIGHLOCK was on the north side of the Canal at the entrance to the basin. Until the weighlock was built in 1835, all boats with their lading were weighed in Pittsburgh. The manner of weighing was in- teresting. After the boat had been run into the lock, the water gates at either end were raised and the lock, being made as watertight as possible, was drained through a race leading to the waste weir. The boat, left resting on the cradle or frame of the scales, was as accurately weighed as if it were on land. Then the gates were low- ered, and water let into the lock until it became level
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THE WEIGHLOCK - PENNSYLVANIA CANAL
Courtesy The Pennsylvania Railroad Company
PEACEFUL SCENE IN CANAL DAYS - TOW MULES OR HORSES PULLED THE CRAFT
The Pennsylvania Canal
with the water of the Canal. After the boat was weighed, the toll was paid, and clearance papers were delivered. Several times along the way, the captain would have to show these papers to prove his clearance.
THE BOATS, at first, were 8 feet wide and 16 to 20 feet long. Later, section cars were invented. These were designed in three sections which, when coupled together, made the boat the size of a regular line boat of 70-foot length, 16-foot width, and 8-foot depth. The sections were detached and hauled over the Portage Railroad to Hollidaysburg, where the three parts were placed in the Canal, coupled together, and taken east. Later a four- section boat was used (1842). The section in the bow was used for the mules or horses, feed, and harness. The two middle sections were for merchandise, and the last one for the living quarters of the crew. These sections were, in reality, the forerunners of the idea of bulkheads which today are so essential to the great ocean-going liners. Each was made, however, to serve a different purpose.
THE MOTIVE POWER was six mules or four horses to each boat; three mules or two horses were used in service while the others rested in the bow of the boat. If the trip was not a hurried one, sometimes either one horse or two mules were used. This "tractor power" was changed every six hours, the term being called a "trick." This term is still used by railroaders for a "turn." At the same time the horses were changed, the driver and the steersman changed places.
Human muscle plus skill moved the boats from water to rail; also, from one place to another in the basin or
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From Trail Dust to Star Dust
from the basin to the weighlock. With the help of a twenty-foot pole a man on each side of a boat could shift it from place to place.
THE VIADUCT, spanning the Little Conemaugh River about eight miles from Johnstown, was a magnifi- cent piece of early engineering. It was, indeed, considered the most perfect arch in the United States, perhaps in the world. The Pennsylvania Railroad used it until its de- struction by the great flood of 1889. When it was built, it was the highest single-span arch known. It was a semi- circular arch of 80-foot span; the whole height of the walls above the foundation was 781/2 feet. The Viaduct, like the tunnel, shortened the railroad by two miles.
LOCKS AND DAMS were necessary for the movement of the boats through the Laurel Hill Gap to the west. Between Johnstown and Blairsville, there were 35 locks, five dams, and two aqueducts across the Conemaugh. The first lock out of Johnstown was located near the blast furnace of the Cambria Iron Company, now Beth- lehem Steel Co. A boat drawn into a lock could be lowered or raised in a few minutes to the depth or height of nine feet.
THE CANAL RAILROAD was called the Portage Rail- road. The word portage means a break in a chain of water communication where the boat must be picked up and carried. Commencing at Five Points and ending at Hollidaysburg, the railroad was 36 miles long. The rail- road, one of the first to be built in the Country, was opened in 1834, just two years after the Canal went into use. There were 11 levels and 10 inclined planes. The
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The Pennsylvania Canal
total rise was 1,138 feet. The Staple Bend tunnel used on the road was the first railroad tunnel in the United States. It may still be seen and is today a monument to the imagination, skill, energy, and boldness of American construction of 125 years ago. On the levels, the cars were hauled by horses-four horses to a freight train of five or six cars, each of which was about eight feet long. Later, locomotives were used for the hauling. The trains were taken up and let down the planes by stationary engines. One of these engines is preserved in the Blair County Historical Museum in Altoona. In 1843 one of the first wire ropes made was put to use on Plane No. 1. A safety car, to stop the cars should the rope break, was invented by a Johnstown man, Mr. John Tittle, and was adopted by the State. The rails (brought from Eng- land, the world's best rail market at the time) rested on stone blocks instead of cross ties. Each block supported one rail and was about 18 inches deep with a face 2 feet square. These "ties" were later used to build the present Franklin Street Methodist Church.
The Portage was a daylight railroad. One passenger train each way per day was the schedule. Several over- night hostels along the route are still standing. Freight trains stopped at the first place after sunset and remained until sunrise next morning. The only inland competitor of the old Portage road for western and southern trade was the National Turnpike with its Conestoga wagons going from Pittsburgh to Cumberland and a railroad from Cumberland to the East. The products of the West and South were brought to Pittsburgh on the Ohio River
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From Trail Dust to Star Dust
and at Pittsburgh were transferred over the Johnstown route, for it was the best and most economical for nine months of the year.
The season was from the early part of March until December, sometimes until Christmas. Charles Dickens in his American Notes of 1842 describes a trip on a packet boat-the scenery, the accommodations, the food, the people, all of which were "wholesome and good." He was much amused by the boatmen's ability to spit tobacco juice to mighty distances. Another interesting and vivid account of a similar trip on the Pennsylvania Canal is a volume entitled Peregrinations of Peregrin Prolix. "Peregrin Prolix" was a pen name for an English writer who made the trip and then described it in a series of letters. The missionaries of the day, however, report that there were "some awfully precocious specimens of depravity among the crew." It must be remembered that the missionary's code of that day was very strict, and the wit of the Irish workmen who built the Canal and manned the boats was very virile.
In 1850 the canal system served as a funeral train for the body of President Taylor. "Old Whitey," his horse, led the cortege down Railroad Street, as transfer was made from railroad to canal in Johnstown.
The Pennsylvania system of traveling and trans- porting goods was the best method of the period. The average time of a round trip between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia was three weeks for a freight boat and one week for a passenger or packet boat. This, of course, included time for loading and unloading, for "laying-up"
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The Pennsylvania Canal
on Sundays, for detention due to trouble, or for a tie-up to let some of the crew attend a country dance. Today, by air, the round trip can be made in four hours instead of seven days!
It is generally believed that Pullman and Woodring brought out the first dining car and sleeping car, but the original ones were really used on the old Portage road twenty or more years earlier, when the immigrant travel was heavy. The section cars had but one compart- ment for cooking, eating, sleeping, and storing of food, a little den about 8 by 12 feet. The regular passenger cars and trains stopped for meals at the two or three hotels at the foot of Plane 2, near the town of Portage. Here was "a good and a popular place for a frolic."
A relief map of the old Portage Railroad with diminutive cars to show how the section boats were carried over the mountain is exhibited in the Pennsyl- vania Railroad Historical Department in Philadelphia. Besides the stationary engine, the Blair County Histori- cal Society has some other good models, too. They also have ties and some of the original rope used in the rail- road. The Pennsylvania Railroad bought out the canal system in 1851. It followed the course of the Canal, thus putting Johnstown on the mainline of the Pennsyl- vania Railroad. Johnstown is truly indebted to the Indi- ans who blazed the trails which the Canal followed.
The redmen not only followed the water courses in their canoes, but they also made their way on foot over the trails that clung to the long ascending slopes and held persistently to the dividing ridges. The ridge
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