Trail book great resource for Great Allegheny Passage hiking, biking
If your New Year’s resolution is to get into shape and lose weight — a perpetual wish for many Americans — by hiking, biking or jogging along parts of the 150-mile trail that connects Pittsburgh with Cumberland, Md., there’s a new book that will enhance your time doing it.
In his “Great Allegheny Passage Companion,” Bill Metzger, 75, of the Somerset County trail town of Confluence, has compiled a mile-by-mile review of what one can see along the Great Allegheny Passage — what once was the Yough River Trail in Westmoreland and Fayette counties. He has filled it with trail maps highlighting the topography, details that can’t be found in the thin trail brochure at visitor centers and historic photographs, many from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Readers will learn about the geography around the trail, the geology of the area and histories of the towns and people who have lived in the area that would become the trail.
Metzger said he wrote the book so those who use the Great Allegheny Passage can learn about the communities people walk by or riders pedal through. One hundred thirty miles of the trail lie within the state, and the focus of three-fourths of the Metzger’s 319-page book is the Pennsylvania segment of the trail. It is likely that no other author has compiled so much history of those small towns and villages in one book as Metzger has done.
The trail, created along old railroad lines that served mills, coke ovens and mines from Pittsburgh through the mid-Mon Valley to McKeesport to West Newton, Connellsville and Ohiopyle, “strings together the history of Western Pennsylvania,” Metzger said. But, some of that history is hidden behind what Metzger called a “tunnel of trees” that no longer were trimmed when the railroads abandoned the corridor.
“I really want people to understand what is going on,” said Metzger, who lives a few minutes from the trail.
The book is replete with stories of the coal mines, coke ovens, lumber mills, paper mills and rail lines that forged the path for the trail, and the industrial titans — such as Andrew Carnegie, H.C. Frick and the Mellons — who owned the enterprises and employed those who toiled there long and hard to operate them. A railroad buff whose former job required riding freight lines across the states monitoring the delivery of large pieces of equipment such as transformers, Metzger includes a healthy dose of railroad history and pictures.
He gives the reader a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how the president of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad agreed to hold off on selling the Yough Branch of its line until the newly-formed Regional Trail Corp. could raise the money and political support to buy the right of way that forms the trail along the Youghiogheny River, from McKeesport to Ohiopyle.
Metzger writes about what he loves. He said he has logged about 75,000 miles riding various trails and has made several trips from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C. He is a founding member of the Allegheny Trail Alliance, the coalition of seven trail organizations that joined forces to build the Great Allegheny Passage and the intersecting 52-mile Montour Trail.
He gives the reader a thumbnail sketch of historic events people are likely to know about — George Washington’s venture to the wilds of what would become Western Pennsylvania and the start of the French and Indian War — and he offers his opinion that the French would have started it if Washington had not in a fatal encounter with them at Jumonville. He reminds the reader that Native Americans resided in areas along the trail long before Europeans such as Washington explored it.
The book, published by Metzger’s company, Three Wheel Press of Confluence, has been years in the making, though Metzger said he has worked on it in earnest for the past few years. It is an updated version of the trail guide he previously published, which focused on the trail from McKeesport to Confluence.
“Great Allegheny Passage Companion” is priced at $39.95 and is available through Amazon, Three Wheel Press and Great Allegheny Passage visitor centers in West Newton and Ohiopyle.
Joe Napsha is a TribLive reporter covering Irwin, North Huntingdon and the Norwin School District. He also writes about business issues. He grew up on Neville Island and has worked at the Trib since the early 1980s. He can be reached at jnapsha@triblive.com.
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