Warm weather has brought us the festival season, with the National Road Festival kicking it off. Billed as “the world’s longest festival” it stretches the length of the original National Pike, from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois. We are not in a position to judge its popularity for its entire length, but it certainly was a major success this year in the section between Brownsville and Washington, Pennsylvania.
Like so many other events that have been constrained by the pandemic for the past two summers, this festival seemed bigger and better than ever this year. I had the good fortune to spend an afternoon exploring it with my ex-student and good friend Kevin Abt. He lives and works in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and was enjoying a visit to his hometown and the wonderland that is Western Pennsylvania in the Spring.
We amateur historians are well aware of the story of the National Pike and its impact on our young nation. Acknowledged as the first major federal infrastructure project, the original highway was begun in 1811 by contractor Henry McKinley. Initially it followed Nemacolin’s Trail over Haystack Mountain and Chestnut Ridge to Uniontown. From that point it headed west and north through Brownsville and Washington, reaching Wheeling in 1818.
In later years the National Road morphed into US Route 40 and eventually was superseded by Interstate I-70. Fortunately its heritage has been maintained lovingly by a series of non-profit organizations scattered along its length, organizations that cooperate to provide festivals along the entire length of the original Pike on the third weekend in May.
We began our journey by driving down I-43 to California and then taking Route 40 into Brownsville. For the past three semesters I have been involved with teams in Pitt’s Civil Engineering Department Senior Design Projects program doing projects in conjunction with a group of Brownsville citizens dedicated to reviving that community’s commercial district. When I learned that “Pike Days” would be celebrated there this year, I resolved to make Brownsville my first stop.
Knowing that the center of activities would be Nemacolin Castle, we quickly located a convenient parking spot near it. Owned by Fayette County and administered by the Brownsville Historical Society, the Castle is a revered historical landmark. Located on the site of Fort Burd, its construction began in the 1790s and was continued into the Victorian Age by three generations of the Jacob Bowman family; old-timers still call it Bowman’s Castle. It claims to be the third oldest “castle” in the United States.
From the Castle the view to the west and up and down the Monongahela River is spectacular. A Diesel horn from across the river announced the passage of a train full of coal cars heading north through West Brownsville. And, not to be outdone, a towboat pushing a tow of barges filled with coal completed the panorama.
As soon as we entered the grounds, we realized that the major attraction there was a Civil War encampment and the re-enactment of a specific battle from that conflict. As part of the Seven Days Battles, the 4th Pennsylvania Reserves were involved in a violent action known as the Glendale Battle. Re-enactors from that organization were encamped at the Castle this day; that is the battle they chose to re-enact.
All historical re-enactments are constrained by the number of combatants involved; nonetheless, properly done, they can provide a tiny flavor of the real thing. This one had about a dozen soldiers on each side; I think they did a good job of acting out a small engagement on a hot, sunny day. The sound and smoke from each musket discharge was certainly authentic. And, seeing men fall was a wee bit heart rending, even though we knew it was just play-acting.
There was also music and vendors’ booths on the Castle grounds. We chose to move on and skip the other events in Brownsville so we would be sure to encounter an eastward bound Wagon Train of re-enactors somewhere on the Pike. We did make a mandatory stop at the historic cast iron bridge over Dunlap’s Creek. Built in 1839 when Market Street was part of the National Road in Brownsville, it is still in full operation.
We then crossed the river to West Brownsville and found Route 40, much of which follows the original route of the National Pike. It turned out to be a nearly continuous Yard Sale. In every village, at every semi-related commercial establishment, and scattered regularly along the highway we passed collections of cars pulled off the road and groups of people perusing piles of items spread out on tables, searching for treasures.
The villages – Richeyville, Beallsville, and Scenery Hill – are each picturesque and filled with handsome old houses, making one wonder “Wouldn’t this be a neat place to live?” Beallsville is the location of a famous sculpture, “The Madonna of the Trail”, one of twelve identical statues commemorating “the Pioneer Mother” located along the National Old Trails Road. Also in evidence along the Pike are numerous old mileposts, each showing the distance to Cumberland on one face and to Wheeling on the other.
We found the Wagon Train in Scenery Hill. It consisted of ten wagons, each pulled by a pair of horses and covered with canvas over hoops. They had left Washington that morning, heading East. Scenery Hill could easily be the capital of the Pike Days Festival. Filled with tourist-friendly shops, it is fairly busy year-around. This weekend it was mobbed, the obvious result of reaction to the pent-up demand for local tourism that has been frustrated the past two summers.
The combination of beautiful weather, a congenial companion, and a lot of other folks showing their enthusiasm for a strange collection of niche interests that appeal to me added up to a red-letter day, capped off by dinner at my newest favorite restaurant, the All-American Bistro at PineBridge Mall.