Happy hoofing: history as exercise
Because of the coronavirus and its restrictions, spending time outdoors has taken on new importance. In this spirit, here are some suggestions for history-minded walkers. Spending an hour (or so) rummaging through the past this way can be both edifying and relaxing. (Note: not a guarantee.)
Laurel Hill State Park, Somerset County
The park, an expanse of woods and walking trails, guest cabins, rustic dams and meandering creeks, is a tribute, in its way, to the Great Depression-fighting New Deal program: the Civilian Conservation Corp, or CCC.
Just off Route 31, the park is a veritable CCC museum. A living museum, if you will.
Anywhere you walk at Laurel Ridge State Park, you’ll find something the CCC had a hand in, including hundreds of buildings, scores of roads, not a few picnic shelters, and at least four dams.
One of the dams, on the edge of some deep woods, once formed a swimming hole. When I saw it a decade or so ago, it had morphed into a muddy pond. Constructed of large chiseled flat rocks laid like stepping stones, the dam was an unparalleled example of CCC craftsmanship.
Arthurdale, W.Va.
Let’s continue with New Deal-themed walks. Arthurdale, located south of Morgantown via Route 7 off Interstate 79, is a place great to stroll. It’s sufficiently spread out to give the walker a sense of accomplishment and compact enough so that you won’t lose your way.
Arthurdale was constructed in the early 1930s by the federal government to help coal miners and others “stranded” by the Great Depression.
It was a beacon of hope in a dark period for the country.
Championed by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and visited by FDR himself, Arthurdale consisted of 165 homes with amenities – electricity, indoor plumbing – not always available to the average American family in 1934.
In the decades since the government sold the properties in 1941, the houses have been enlarged and otherwise changed, but it’s still possible, in many instances, to distinguish between what was original and what came later.
Other federal government “planned” communities followed, including Norvelt in Westmoreland County, which is not the “walking” community that Arthurdale is.
Oak Grove Cemetery, Uniontown
Situated on West Main Street, between downtown and the cluster of restaurants and motels and shops on Route 40, Oak Grove was the cemetery of choice for earlier generations of Uniontown civic and business leaders.
Thousands of graves, many marked by family obelisks, dot the hillsides and valley between West Main and Route 21, closing in on Uniontown Hospital, on the far side.
Now, it might be helpful to know a little history, so here it is: Uniontown was a center of the U.S. coal and coke industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a result, many of the graves contain the remains of those who made fortunes in the days when Fayette County was both sooty and rich. (Some were rich, most were not. Those who weren’t probably didn’t make it in to Oak Hill. All were sooty.)
Thus, you might, on your walk, look for the Semans family memorial and graves, the I.I. Feathers Mausoleum, the Barnes family plot, and the Thompson family resting places, among others.
In addition, Oak Grove holds the mortal remains of assorted lawyers and doctors and politicians, including more than a few members of Congress. Andrew Stewart rests here. He might have become president, if not for a missed vice presidential opportunity.
Wooda Carr served only a short while in Congress. His major claim to fame: he was the father of John Dickson Carr, the celebrated murder-mystery writer who was occasionally heard on the radio in the ’30s and ’40s.
Daniel Sturgeon and William Crow, United States senators, rest here. Surgeon served in the Senate of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster in the 1840s. Carr died in 1922, while in office.
Their graves are not far apart. Reporting Carr’s burial, the Daily News Standard ghoulishly editorialized, “The senators will sleep their last sleep together.”
Ouch.
Oak Grove also contains the graves of Civil War veterans. These are clustered in a circle around a memorial to the war. On its base, the memorial is inscribed, “They died to save a nation.”
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. His latest book “JFK Rising,” is available on Amazon. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.