Did you know?
A hundred years ago this week, the first of three Summit Mountain Hill Climbs was held.
According to story on the front page of the June 18, 1913 edition of the Uniontown Morning Herald, “75 Cars entered for Hill Climb contest on Friday afternoon.”
The Fayette County Auto Club was sponsoring the event, which took place just three years after the first Indianapolis 500.
The event was an obvious success. The bold front page headline on the day following the race claimed “4,000 attend Hill Climb Contest; fine exhibition; no accidents.”
As many as 800 cars owned by spectators lined the race route. There were actually nine “events.” Each driver was placed in racing categories based on the price of their car.
Howell McCormick won the main event in his $5,000 Packard. He negotiated Summit Hill in one minute, 55 seconds.
The winner’s purse in this year’s Indianapolis 500 was $2,353,355. The winner’s purse in the 1913 Summit Mountain Hill Climb? McCormick took home an “auto fire extinguisher.”
On the same front page as the results from the Hill Climb, there was a report about a “shocking” telephone call.
A 20-year-old resident of Whiteman Avenue in Uniontown happened to be talking on the phone during an electrical storm.
It was reported that he’d been warned not to talk on the phone during a thunder storm, but he ignored the warning.
Well, lightening struck, and the man was knocked unconscious when the electrical charge traveled through the phone’s wiring and knocked him to the floor.
A doctor was summoned and, “He was not seriously injured, but complained of being numb, and seemed to be suffering from a pain in his back,” the reported said.
Also in 1913, the Borough of Uniontown officially became the City of Uniontown.
“Uniontown a city of the third class,” read the headline on the front page of the Uniontown Daily Standard on Dec. 20, 1913.
Uniontown joined Beaver Falls, Lock Haven and South Bethlehem as the four towns designated as third class cities that year. At the time there were 27 third-class cities in Pennsylvania. There are currently 53 third-class cities in the state.
Pittsburgh, by the way, is a second-class city, while Philadelphia is the state’s only first class city.
This month 80 years ago, the Morning Herald carried a rather unusual story. “Son files suit against mother in auto accident,” read the headline for the story published on June 20, 1933.
The son was seeking damages for a June 19, 1932 accident, in which the car he was riding turned over in West Virginia.
Oliver M. Taylor of Brownsville claimed that his mother insisted that he go on a trip despite his disapproval, and on the way home the car flipped over on some slippery pavement. As a result, Taylor spent three weeks in the hospital in Cumberland, Md.
Taylor’s mother, by the way, wasn’t even the driver. Alan K. Taylor, the victim’s brother, was behind the wheel at the time of the accident.
I was unable to find out if Oliver Taylor prevailed in the lawsuit. There was no further report of the suit’s outcome.
On June 20, 1934, there was a troubling report about the people who were trying to avoid paying for licenses for their dogs.
“County Population on the Wane; 5,000 Dogs Slain,” said the headline for the story on the front page of the Daily News Standard.
“More than 5,000 mongrel dogs have been killed in Fayette County during the past year, it was reported this morning by State Enforcement Officer A. W. McDowell,” it said.
As of that date, McDowell said he’d prosecuted over 200 dog owners for not having the proper license tags. Those people either paid for the licenses, or were sent to jail. Or, as he noted, they would simply kill the animals.
There was a report the following day that could have easily been ripped from today’s headlines.
“Thieves Get 600 Pounds of Wire From Fayette Metals,” was a headline on the front page of the June 21, 1934 edition of the Uniontown Daily News Standard.
In 2013, the theft of copper is commonplace. As it turns out, the theft of copper in 1934 was a thief’s bounty too.
“The wire had been burned from a generator which had been turned in and as the job was not completed until late last night the 600 pounds of copper wiring had been left in the yard,” said the article about the theft at the Fayette Metals Co. on North Mount Vernon Avenue.