One of my favorite experiences each term is serving as a mentor for a team in Pitt’s Civil Engineering Senior Design Project program. Despite the complications of pandemic social distancing, the program has managed to continue to provide each graduating senior with a valuable “near-real-world” engineering experience as a member of an integrated design team. The project assigned to the team I mentored dealt with the feasibility of renovating a major historical building in Brownsville, the Monongahela Railroad Union Station. Combining three of my passions – history, railroading, and engineering – it was an ideal fit for me. The Monongahela…

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It is always a treat to watch Spring arrive in our woods. Somehow the combination of Pandemic exhaustion and my recent illness has made it even more special than usual this year. By my calculations it is about ten days late this year, and more welcome than ever. My walks in the woods invariably begin with a visit to the tree we planted in memory of wife four years ago. We chose a tulip tree in homage to the four magnificent specimens that bordered the deck on our cottage at Conneaut Lake. We dug up saplings in my sister-in-law’s yard…

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I continue to be thrilled by the construction of a new barn at Woodville, part of Neville House Associates’ ambitious project to create “the Woodville Experience” by complementing the Neville House with authentic outbuildings. The result will provide twenty-first century visitors with an opportunity to experience life on a wealthy western Pennsylvania estate in the eighteenth century. The skeleton of the barn is constructed from hand hewn timbers that originally were part of a barn built near Latrobe early in the 1800s. When I wrote about this project a month ago, the erection crew had preassembled the four transverse bents…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society celebrated Women’s History Month by welcoming back one of their favorite speakers, Dr. Todd DePastino, and an excellent presentation entitled “Women in World War II”. Todd began his talk with an examination of society’s attitude toward women in general and women in the workplace specifically in the years preceding World War II. He chose to introduce this subject by discussing William Marston, the subject of the recent film “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women”. Marston was an eccentric person, a prominent psychologist and feminist. He was convinced that the masculine personality was responsible for most…

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Our recent column on the evolution of Native Americans in this area ended with the Iroquois in control of the Ohio Country at the beginning of the eighteenth century, treating it primarily as “hunting grounds”. At this point, other nations began to move back into the area – notably the Delaware being forced west by the settlers in eastern Pennsylvania and the Shawnee returning from their diaspora in the south. We will begin our discussion of this era by dealing with the Indian settlements in western Pennsylvania, and defer talking about individuals for a later column. We have chosen the…

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March means different things to different people, most of them positive. Pirate fans like spring training, when “hope springs eternal” and their team hasn’t yet been eliminated from the pennant race. Horticulturalists celebrate the return of daffodils and hyacinths after their winter dormancy. Basketball fans are thrilled by the NCAA tournament and their own “brackets”. For me March is the time for my favorite sports event – the Iditarod. My interest in this wonderful race dates back nearly two decades to an equally wonderful trip my wife and I made to Alaska. Intermingled with many other enjoyable experiences on this…

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A lot of exciting things have happened at Woodville in the past two and a half centuries – I am excited about something happening there right now! Several years ago the Neville House Associates announced “The Woodville Experience” Capital Campaign, a fund raising effort with the goal of enhancing this National Historic Landmark and create “an extraordinary living history complex”. The enhancements include an interpretive log cabin, a whisky still shelter, a fully restored field well, and a circa 1810 Belgian style barn, each faithfully restored to match the late eighteenth century feel of the Neville House. Watching the barn…

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Every time my ventures into local history come in contact with Indians, I realize how little we know about their involvement in the Charters Valley. This is an interesting subject, one that must begin with an understanding of the evolution of these people from their earliest days at Meadowcroft Rockshelter up to historic times at Catfish Creek.  The discoveries at the Meadowcroft site have challenged conventional wisdom regarding the arrival of humans in the Western Hemisphere. Dr. James Adavasio’s excavation of the site in the 1970s encountered artifacts that suggest human occupation there as much as 19,000 years ago. If…

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On February 18, 2021, PennDOT identified the bridges to be included in their new “Pathways Major Bridge Public-Private Partnership (P3) Initiative”, an ambitious program to replace or rehabilitate infrastructure components in nine major projects scattered across Pennsylvania. The only project in southwestern Pennsylvania is the Bridgeville interchange on I-79. PennDOT’s difficulties funding transportation have been well documented. In addition to 40,000 miles of highways and 25,000 bridges, the department is also responsible for public transportation authorities in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as well as for ports and airports. There has been general agreement that PennDOT’s current annual budget for highways and…

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Through 1926, private aviation was dominated by open cockpit biplanes. Mayer Aircraft had at least four such models – the Laird Swallow, the Travel Air, the Curtiss Oriole, and the Waco 9. “Miss Pittsburgh”, on display at Pittsburgh International Airport, is a Waco 9. She made the first airmail flight, Pittsburgh to Cleveland, on April 21, 1927, taking off from Mayer Field. On May 21, 1927, Lindbergh completed the first successful solo flight across the Atlantic in the “Spirit of St. Louis” a high-wing closed cabin Ryan Brougham monoplane and ushered in a new era. Never one to be far…

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