The Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike

A Beautiful Mistake
by Tom Roe

Part 1 - Railroad to Nowhere

Buried in the Appalachian Mountains of South Central PA, lies a curious bit of pavement that has a history steeped in failure. It was built upon the remains a thrice failed rail line, its fate seemingly written long before the wheels of progress left it behind to rot.

During the 1840’s, the US Army Corps of engineers surveyed some land in search of a rail route between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, including a 13 miles stretch near what is today known as Breezewood. PA. While they did find a route, it was deemed far too difficult to build within budget and thus it was set aside for other plans. Later on, in the 1850’s, a train route was conceived that would run over 50 miles from Duncannon to the Juniata River, with a later addition of over 200 miles of track. This rail would use much of the land originally surveyed a decade earlier, including the 13 miles stretch through two mountains near Breezewood. The project proceeded, despite vocal concerns that costs would be too high. Consistent with it’s future fortunes this turned out to be prophetic.

The railroad had many names, (none of which stuck) with the first being the excitingly apt “Duncannon, Landisburg and Broad Top Railroad” and the last being the shorter, but less descriptive “South Pennsylvania Railroad”. After many delays and setbacks, work finally began in Summer of 1857 when two miles were graded and the track owners promoted a 200 mile expansion into Maryland and Virginia. So, of course after that announcement, no more work would be completed and the project sat dormant for more than 25 years.

The project was then revived in 1881 by legendary industrialists and businessmen Andrew Carnegie and William Vanderbilt when they stepped in and aimed to solve “the lack of interest” and “too expensive” problems by throwing a bunch of their money at the struggling owner of the right-of-way, the South Pennsylvania Railroad. Land was surveyed again for the new project that was to cut through the mountainous wilderness between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. Ground broke on the Rays Hill Tunnel around 1884 and the Sideling Hill Tunnel in 1885 in what is now a tract of the Buchanan State Forest in Bedford and Fulton counties. The construction of the tunnels were personally oversaw by Carnegie. He and Vanderbilt hoped that connecting the Steel City to the State Capital and the Susquehanna River would bolster Vanderbilt's fight for railroad supremacy in both Pennsylvania and New York State. He saw the buyout by Pennsylvania of the West Shore Railroad in NY as a threat to his holdings in that state and decided to build one of his own in PA, jointly with Reading Railroad, that would connect to the coast.

Back to the tunnels themselves though, as the tragedy continues to mount. Costs steadily rose and Vanderbilt’s initial optimism began to erode by the day. He wanted out and sought to cut his losses but the South PA’s President refused, demanding Vanderbilt pay at least for the completion of the line’s nine tunnels. Vanderbilt’s ally, infamous banker JP Morgan, shared Vanderbilt’s concerns, while also fearing that the project might attract unwanted competition to his rail investments in New York Central (the major railroad company in NY, and financier of the South Pennsylvania Project via Vanderbilt and Morgan). Being the living embodiment of the Monopoly Guy, he just couldn’t sit back and watch someone else make money off his “hard work”, so he brokered a deal that would send this project in an unexpected (and depressing) direction.

Proving that with enough money, unfortunately even railroads can be paid to keep quiet, JP “Monopoly Man” Morgan would successfully push a deal that, among other terms, would immediately stop all work on the South Pennsylvania and instead use money set aside for that project to outright buy a completed railroad - The West Shore Railroad in New York State. The same railroad that initially drove Vanderbilt to invest in the South PA after the state bought the West Shore line outright. But with that, the project was once again stopped, and for the first time, our tunnels sat abandoned. But things were about to get even worse.

The original idea of the deal was that the right-of-way (the planned route of the railroad) was to be sold to the State of Pennsylvania, but legal action left the deal in limbo for 20 years. While other, smaller sections along the 200 mile right-of-way were used in other projects during that time, our unfortunate tunnels sat undisturbed. The failure of Vanderbilt here earned this project the moniker of “Vanderbilt’s Folly”.

Multiple attempts were made by multiple railroads, including the original owner, to survey, grade, and construct a rail line. All of these efforts to utilize the original South PA line were failures, amounting to little more than confirming what everyone else already knew - it was just too expensive to build.

What happens to “Vanderbilt’s Folly” now? How do train tunnels that aren’t even complete become abandoned turnpike tunnels? Our story continues in part two, Zombie Turnpike.

Part 2 - Zombie Turnpike

Some of the richest people on the planet couldn’t make this plan work as a railroad. So, how does a state recovering from the Great Depression use a failed rail line to change the face American transportation? Find out in Part two - Zombie Turnpike.

Hey! Thanks for reading. This is the story of how the Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike came to be. It is not a complete history or compendium. It is meant to present the story of the abandoned turnpike section in general terms and leaves out or glosses over many noteworthy events, mostly pertaining to the turnpike as a whole and the history of roads and highways in PA and the US, as well as names of people and specific events. This is in an effort to present a cohesive story about just a small portion of the turnpike that now sits abandoned between Breezewood and PA Route 915. If something is left out or simplified for the purposes of this story, it is intentional.