Train Tunnels and Hemlocks

The mountainous roads of Central Pennsylvania can seem treacherous and can elicit white knuckles from passengers unaccustomed to traversing these rural highways. These essential roads that link opposite sides of the mountains are steep and curvy. Driving on PA234 in remote Perry County, trying to make our way to Fowlers Hollow State Park, we saw a brown wooden sign that pointed out directions to the “RR Tunnel,” without any further explanation. Of course, it was an invitation to investigation. We turned off onto an unpaved road named Hemlock Road, not knowing that we would later explore it more thoroughly.

The train tunnel in Big Spring State Park 

We parked the car in a small lot and braved the heat and an onslaught of insects traversing what promised to be a one-mile roundtrip to the location of an unfinished railroad tunnel. The proposed tunnel was meant to carry lumber to the other side of Conococheague Mountain. Started by the Newport and Shermans Valley Railroad, which operated in Perry County between 1890 and 1935, the uncompleted tunnel was abandoned presumably because of its unfeasibility. Later, the rail lines were used to ferry passengers to picnics in the early twentieth century. 

The former bed of the railroad tracks

The path and picnic areas, as well as some of the surrounding forest, constitutes the Big Spring State Forest Picnic Area today. With the work of the Civilian Conservation Corp, the state park was opened in 1936. We walked a human-built ridge that was once held a narrow-gauge railroad track to help remove timber to supply local industries, including a tannery and axe-handle maker. The humidity, along with temperatures in the mid-80s, make the walk less appealing than one would have thought. But standing at the opening of tunnel, with the cooler ambient temperature of the air pouring out of the tunnel, was refreshing. We decided that a visit to the tunnel in the autumn would be a much more enjoyable experience. 

Remaining trees in the Hemlock Natural Area

Later, after a brief visit to Fowlers Hollow State Park, we happened upon the opposite end of Hemlock Road. It intersected with another unpaved road near the park. Hemlock Road is approximately nine miles long, and for a while navigates the ridge of the mountain before sweeping down into valleys and hollows of the state forest. About halfway between its two terminuses, we stopped to admire Hemlock Natural Area, a 120-acre stand of virgin Hemlock trees. Unfortunately, most of the trees are dead or dying from an infestation of Hemlock woolly adelgid, a small insect that feeds on the sap of the trees. It was introduced from East Asia to the western United States in the 1920s. By the early 1970s, Pennsylvania had become severely affected and has the potential to destroy most of the local Hemlock trees within a decade.