The story goes that a woodsman who lived in a cabin near the town of milltown next to the Newfield Coal Mine in late 1800's
became jealouly enraged when he caught his wife fooling around with another milltown man and that he burst into the cabin catching the cheating wife and man and went about killing them bruttaly with an axe
and taking off into the woods to never be found .
The legend goes that to this day on an ocassional warm quiet summer night you can hear the woodsman chopping away in the woods with his axe. near where the newfield mine once operated , when you stop along The road way and yell "woodchopper chop wood " 3 times this is just one of the many variations of the story I have heard.
The truth the wood chopper noise people would hear was an old Gully Whumper Oil Well pumping away along Indiana Road. which was run on ocassion in the summer time .
The wood chopper myth may have been started as a way to explain the noise the well made when operating as a way to scare the local kids as it pumped away late into the night.
I remember this place well! Several friends of mine and I orchestrated a scene at this location in the mid 1960s. I dressed up in old working man's clothes with an old man's Halloween mask and tossed cap, and carried an axe. I was dropped off and laying in the woods when 2 cars full of guys and girls pulled in after telling the story on the ride there. Fred was with his girlfriend and he got out of the car. It was dark and I grabbed him while he screamed and both cars sped off. Another guy, Tom, picked us up while the other 2 cars went the long way back to the pizza shop in Wilkinsburg. We took a shorter way back and was there when the 2 cars arrived. It took about 30 minutes to get there and all the girls were still crying as they came in running to the phone to call the police. Then we broke the news it was all a joke. Oh, to be young again! Those were the days.
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