History
The Pine Creek Gorge is believed to have been formed at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation, when retreating glaciers provided large amounts of water and dammed Pine Creek's northward flow. The creek flowed south instead, carving the gorge in a few thousand years.
Portions of the trail follow old abandoned logging roads and railroad grades. These are left over from the 19th and early 20th century when the lumber industry cut down almost all the trees in the area. The state of Pennsylvania purchased the land, often at tax sales after it was abandoned and clear-cut. In the 1930s, some Civilian Conservation Corps work was done in the state forest and state parks, building recreational facilities and making roads.
The Pine Creek Gorge Natural Area was originally 8,153 acres (32.99 km2) and extended from Ansonia south to Jerry Run, and from rim to rim of the canyon, plus 300 feet (91 m) on each side. In 1968 the Pine Creek Gorge Natural Area was designated a National Natural Landmark. This was expanded to 13,100 acres (53 km2) in 1993, to include land up to Claymine Road on the east rim and West Rim, Paiter-Leetonia, and Colton Roads on the West Rim. The natural area extends 18 miles (29 km) along Pine Creek.
The West Rim Trail opened in 1982, originally as a 21 miles (34 km) long trail from the current southern terminus at Lloyd Run and Rattlesnake Rocks to the Refuge Trail. The final 9 miles (14 km) of the trail were completed in 1985, extending it to the current northern terminus near Ansonia.
Read more about this topic: West Rim Trail
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)