Take a Back Road: Morgantown – Washington – Wheeling
Part I
I admire the Interstate Highway System. I think it is one of the greatest civil engineering feats ever, easily. I believe it is greater than the Grand Coulee Dam or the New River Gorge Bridge, even if we combined their individual impacts on the United States and engineering everywhere (though I strongly suggest everyone visit both of these incredible sights). Despite this, even I will concede that the Interstate Highway System is brutally boring and after a few hours could even be described as torturous. But it’s not meant to entertain users, it’s supposed to do a job, and that job it does very well. That said, on a day off Chris and I went to discover some of America’s history. On a day like this, goal number one is to stay off of the Interstate Highway System, even though it would’ve meant about a 3-hour round trip rather than an entire day’s journey.
We decided on a loop route, taking us from Morgantown, WV to Washington, PA, over to Wheeling, WV and back through Cameron, WV. Establishing the route came as the result of geocaching, pizza, collegiate t-shirts, and our (usual) commitment to never take the same way home. Broadly speaking, this would largely be a tour on US Routes 19, 40, and 250, with some diversions on state routes. The initial goal was to get to Washington, PA. There was a geocache here that was apparently not to be missed.
Shortly after getting onto US Route 19 north, toward Pennsylvania, I began a trend that would last the entire day. I used an application on my phone to pull up geocaches along the way. Our first stop was narrowly in Pennsylvania, just past Mount Morris, at an old brick school house. Like so many historical sites in the region, there is no marker to explain its significance and but luckily it still sits largely as it likely did when children were last dismissed from class, probably around the 1920s when roads were improved enough for a first wave of consolidation, as described on the county's website.
We continued up the road through the borough of Waynesburg, the county seat of Greene County. Waynesburg is probably best known regionally for the university bearing its name in the center of town. It was once a town oriented around natural resource extraction industries and with the development of the Marcellus shale it seems to be reliving some of its historical past. Though a telling way to see how important a place was and is in history is to visit its cemeteries, which also happen to be common hiding places for geocaches. We picked one up in the Oakmont Cemetery. This cemetery was likely established as those hemmed in by buildings downtown filled up and is home to many recent burials. This says that a town is doing alright, for now at least.
A few miles up the road we encountered two trucks hauling large tanks to hold fluid, likely fracking fluid. The loads on these trucks were almost as wide as the entire alignment. We watched in awe as oncoming traffic had to squeeze over on what shoulders were there to pass through. When natural gas proponents praise the shale, they tend to leave out a lot of the logistical challenges faced. One of the most profound issues drilling operations have run into is related to transportation. They’re often using roads not intended for lots of heavy and large equipment. The driving skill of the truckers was impressive, though the frequent stops and the inability to drive much over 25 mph get old, fast. So we swung by one of the stranger sites on this part of US Route 19, a southern themed road house--Rinky Dink's Road House, and picked up a geocache. At this point we were watching the trucks try and make a tight turn while the queue of traffic behind grew and grew. But as with the old school house, roadside attractions like these make the scenic road a constant treat.
Let’s pause the journey here, but the most interesting sights of the day are still to come. We discovered one of North America’s firsts in Washington, PA. We visited the oldest bridge on the National Road in Pennsylvania. And we made it to a certain city in West Virginia with a very unique take on pizza that is worth the drive!
