Biking in Ghost Towns isn't Scary, Just Sad

There are over 500 Orthodox Churches of America in the United States.  The churches have parishioners with Russian, Georgian, Bulgarian, Slovak, and similar ancestry.  These churches are easily recognized by the architecture which includes the use of a wide dome with a single, thin spire.  Usually, the church will have more than one dome with the largest representing Christ with the smaller domes representing the heavens or if it is a three-dome church, the Holy Trinity.  There is a very distinctive Russian Orthodox Church in the small coal mining town of Wehrum, Pennsylvania.  The church has no parishioners and it is one of the few remaining structures in the long-abandoned town.  Burials in the cemetery ceased in 1927.  

The Pennsylvania anthracite coal industry rode a wave of profits from the beginning of the last century to about the 1950s.  When the space age came to America in the 1960s Pennsylvania’s coal was literally tapped out.  The switch to other fuels collapsed the Commonwealth’s largest industry.  In the span of two decades 32 coal towns in Pennsylvania ceased to exist.  Wehrum is one such town.  The town was founded in 1901 as a company town.  The non-union laborers and miners made a dangerous and poor living spending what they did earn in company-owned shops and on company-owned housing.  

That company was the Lackawanna Iron and Steel Company and it built Wehrum to mine coal for the steels mills of Pennsylvania.  The company welcomed Russian, Ukrainian and Hungarian immigrants to work in the mines.  It was this group of new Americans who built the church that still stands on A Street near the Black Lick creek.  

Lackawanna Iron and Steel was founded by the Scranton family (for whom Scranton, Pa. is named) in 1840 and it operated at its peak a series of steel mills, coal mines and railroads throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  During its meteoric rise the company built numerous towns and populated these hamlets with workers and miners.  The low wages and poor working conditions led to nearly constant employee unrest and strikes.  In some cases the strikes were settled by federal troops and martial law. 

In 1922 a large piece of the company was purchase by Bethlehem Steel and Lackawanna was operated as an independent firm until finally ceasing operations in 1983.  The company left behind a legacy of abysmal employee safety, acres of brownfield sites, pollution and the ghost towns.  The Black Lick creek runs red (pictured), a result of years of acidic coal leaching.  The lone church, Sts. Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox Church, is a stunning symbol as it was the only structure built not by the company, but by people and as the company buildings are all long gone, the church remains.  

Bike riders can visit Pennsylvania’s ghost towns on the 30 mile Ghost Town Trail.  They can see the red hued Black Lick creek and they can roll by brownfield areas that have been closed to humans for decades.  These spots are well marked by the absence of trees, and even weeds, as nothing green has been able to grow in these lands for a generation. 

 

Visit our website www.stickybottleteam.net for a Ghost Town Ride video of Centralia, Pa abandoned in 1962 when an underground mine fire erupted.  It still burns today.