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Centre Daily Times Native Americans slept there - for thousands and thousands of years. Then in 1793, from outside Philadelphia, came Revolutionary War veteran Philip Benner, who applied a clever mind to the business of forging iron. He was helped by the thick forest, steady stream, lots of limestone and plentiful iron ore around Spring Creek Canyon. Benner died and his children sold off the land as big rolling mills produced iron in bigger and more efficient settings, replacing iron made on plantation forges scattered in the countryside. The banker W.F. Reynolds arrived in 1841, a few years after Benner died. Reynolds bought up a lot of land cheap, including the Spring Creek Canyon land. His family held the land for decades, leasing farm lots to tenant farmers. Then, nearly 100 years ago, the Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh went shopping for land that could be used both to teach inmates to farm and to feed the state' s prison population. The Reynolds family sold the state what is now its Rockview prison land. Those are the highlights of the past 8,000 years at Spring Creek Canyon, from early native Americans using rock shelters along the creek to a group of community residents today planning the canyon' s next transition. Retired engineer-turned-historian Robert Hazelton and Penn State anthropologist Timothy Murtha have lent their knowledge about Spring Creek Canyon' s past to the team that consultant A.J. Schwartz has assembled to draft master and management plans for the canyon. The plans will be unveiled Tuesday, and presented at a public meeting a week later. Of all the history that washed through Spring Creek Canyon, it is the last phase - the state Department of Corrections ownership since 1911 - that has made it unique. The state, and thus the 20th century, didn' t disturb it much. All up and down this region there was settlement, Murtha said, looking back over eight millennia. It just so happens it was largely adjacent to these streams, and this is the only section I know of that' s been untouched for so long as it has. The canyon had a lot going for it from the start. A stream runs through it, fed by nearby springs. It has a fertile flood plain. Early native Americans, moving with the seasons as they hunted, took shelter there, near the interchange of their transportation arteries, Spring and Bald Eagle creeks. Three prehistoric sites - two of them rock shelters - were found on the 1,800-acre canyon tract about 30 years ago, Murtha said. No formal work has been done on them yet. Because there are 30 documented prehistoric sites within a mile radius of the tract, Murtha believes similar or greater densities of prehistoric sites will be found within the tract. He said the canyon has this kind of perfect recipe of natural landscape features that led to very long occupation and high-density occupation. I mean people go there to fish nowadays - there' s a reason for that, Murtha said. People were also fishing back 6,000 to 8,000 years ago. And at the same time, by an accident of history, because the prison owns the property, it' s also relatively untouched. Benner started to build his iron business along the creek in 1793, developing it around a big creekside rock in the wilderness with 100 ironworkers he brought with him from Chester County. The Rock iron works included two forges, a furnace, a rolling mill, nail factory, gristmill and a sawmill, according to the Centre County Historical Society. It shipped high-quality iron to Pittsburgh, Baltimore and New Orleans. Hazelton, a retired electrical engineer who leads tours of the area, said an iron industry community of perhaps 250 people grew up there. Remains from the industry' s structures are still present, he said, including the foundation of the Benner mansion. Benner was an enterprising ironmaster. He fabricated Ushaped iron to fit over the backs of haul horses for efficient transportation to city markets, Hazelton said. But Benner' s children didn' t advance the business after his death in 1832. The empire grew, and then it died, Hazelton said. Bob Donaldson, historical society member and a planning team adviser, said the Canyon' s cultural history and natural resources need to be secured and protected before the public is turned loose to get on the site. Murtha, who does a lot of archaeological work in Mexico and Scotland, said it' s rare to find a place in the world with 8,000 years of human tracks. This is actually one of those places, he said. Every element, every major part of history is represented in these parcels of land, and that' s fairly unique. You' ll see the whole sweep. You' ll see all the periods, I have no doubt. You' ll have representative sites and locations for all of those sites that will lead up to present day. The most important thing, Murtha added, is that it' s been given to us - almost like this gift.
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