A long abandoned Boat club behind a Springdale Power Plant- Now Lost to History

It was the summer of 1974  as a Boy scout I was participating in a Allegheny Trails Council  Boot & Paddle program which involved taking a weeks long 150 mile trek by canoe from Tionesta Pa to edge of Pittsburgh along the Allegheny River a trip no longer available any more since they closed Camp Tionesta in 1977  in favor of new camp heritage built in Farmington Pa.

We would spend several different nights stopped at uninhabited islands or small parks sometimes  beside a dam or marinas.
But one of those stops was like a ghost town a long abandoned boat club behind the West Penn Power station in Springdale . A small slice of ground a 100 feet wide by maybe 200 yards it was filled with little decaying picnic pavilions bath and changing  houses and picnic tables . It looks to have been abandoned in late 50's I do not even know the name of it and access to it now is strictly by boat as the whole area has changed in the 40+ years I was last there. From the satellite pictures it looks like all the structures have been bulldozed and maybe just couple foundations left .

It might have been called the Springdale -Cheswick Boat Club  but locals I asked know nothing about it even existing. The little picnic groves and beach houses you could see where painted with different nautical symbols and  flags and they where probably made to move after the plant converted from coal to oil as several large oil tanks took up much of the area at that point since removed   Then again after building it the river conditions around the plant may have well changed making it uninhabitable.
I wish I would have been able to afford a film camera to record the trip because so much of what I saw along the trip no longer exists  factory's , Oil wells and  railroad buildings and structures  torn down and industry removed as well as marinas and vacation homes and shacks.  Plus the bad flooding after hurricane Agnes and Ivan wiped out large numbers of homes and parts of towns as well as ice flows from winter freezing.
Unfortunately many of those I took the 2 trips down the river with are no longer with us many of the scout leaders  who would now be in their 80's 90's  having passed on including many of the scouts as well having died young from cancer .You know I have to wonder if it was not from what we encountered camping overnite on this  and the other spots ,including my getting bite by a tick with lyme disease which at time Dr.s did not know what they where dealing with .Plusall the other pollution from the river we swam and bathed in  . Once we got below Oil City the river went from clean to oil slicked and polluted.
It may well have helped contribute to my own bout with cancer. I still every once in a while run into one of the guys I went down river with and every time more and more have passed on.Who have taken these trips.

Im 3rd from left

River map travel guide

Map where we stayed the night behind power plant

Neckercheif Slide your awarded for completing trip

A forgotten African -American Cemetery full of Veterans Graves and a Cemetery full of Mentally ill patients A True Disgrace what has happened to them

I have rode up Cemetery Lane from Babcock Blvd. many times over the years and never realized a now gone road entrance with 2 rusted posts and wire across lead back to an African American War veterans cemetery which has been abandoned and left to rot and be destroyed and looted by vandals
its a disgrace how this cemetery has been left and abandoned  not even a name for it. All because back in the day African Americans where not allowed to be buried with whites what a disgrace .Same discrimination Jews meet when it came time to be buried.Of course it does not surprise me my great maternal grandfather is buried at union cemetery along cemetery lane but my great maternal grand mother is buried at Catholic cemetery up the road because my great grandfather was not catholic he was not allowed to be buried with her.  The African American  cemetery at present is very difficult to get to due to construction going on to expand the masonic lodge above it but the developers have promised to protect the cemetery during the expansion.

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/north/2006/02/09/neglected-african-american-cemetery-for-veterans-may-be-restored/200602090419

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~njm1/09African-AmericanMilitaryCem.html

http://www.interment.net/data/us/pa/allegheny/african-american-military-cemetery.htm

 There is no excuse why this and several other small cemetery have been let go around the western pa area but it has happened and racism which allowed the segregation is alive and thriving as well as always in area with Pittsburgh being known by blacks as Pittsburgh Mississippi  The most southern northern city and its the truth hate crimes are always in the news in this area.

Whats left of the African American cemetery

To make matters worse all over Pa in fact the entire US not only are there abandoned and forgotten African American cemetery but there are cemetery full of just stones with numbers for those who where paupers whose bodies where never claimed by relatives. and even worse all the cemetery across Pa and US which have interred thousands of the mentally ill with nothing but a number stone for a grave and like the one at the old Dixmont hospital site it has completely gone back to seed and been lost to history. 

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2014/07/17/As-state-mental-institutions-close-cemeteries-are-forgotten/stories/201407170168

The Glowing Tombstone of Giovanna T Cecere

Heard about this story and news article on a Face Book group about the South Side of Pittsburgh which I spent a good deal of time in South Side my dad was born and lived there for a while and I grew up part of my life in nearby Carrick.

As you climb up 18th street  from the south side to Mt Oliver on the last sharp bend on left you will find St Michael's Cemetery I spent several hours there with Boy scout troop 383 putting flags on veterans graves
Not sure the church that started the grave yard still exists St Michael's on South side on 20th street no longer exists the church sits empty and school and convent converted to Condos or if this is a different St Michaels in area .

And so the stroy begins

It appears that with the death of the much loved and at too early an age of 21 of a heart condition that 

Giovanna T Cecere  would be laid to rest but something very special would happen one night  the Pinkish stone marking her grave started glowing 

https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=cecere&GSfn=giovanna&GSmn=t&GSby=1929&GSbyrel=in&GSdy=1948&GSdyrel=in&GSst=40&GScntry=4&GSob=n&GRid=44974138&df=all&

Thank you to the dedicated volunteers of www. Find A Grave.com who do all the leg work finding these graves .

Apparently from the article it caused a major stir in the community for several evenings. Even a priest blessing it.  What caused the glow is not fully known was it devine intervention to show how good this women was ? Could it be naturally occurring and decaying radiation  which is known to occur in some quarried stone Possibly. But what ever it was I have not been able to find much out about it.
Most people around then have passed on I knew might know about sadly. I can not find much follow up on the story . But this is one of just many strange occurrences which have happened all over the region. I would like to see it was Gods Hand doing this  Not something natural but we may never know.  If you do go to check out the stone do so respectfully  and remember police do patrol the cemetery and there is a care taker .

Unsolved Major Burglary of David Weiss Catalog Showroom in Wexford Pa.

You would not think Pittsburgh was a big place for diamond and jewelry business but you would be mistaken. Not only does Pittsburgh have a Office building dedicated to high end jewelers known as The Clark Building on liberty ave but it has also had some high profile Jewel Burglaries as well .

One such story involves the David Weiss Company they where popular catalog stores back in 1970s and 80's  along with Basco's and Dele Kenpers  all 3 long since out of business it sat Katy corner  across from popular shopping center and down off road which made it a perfect target being isolated.  Especially since the front of the store faced the rear of the highway .

One night while working for Holmes Protection as an alarm runner repairman   in 1980 my runner Partner  the late Stanley Churma and I were sent to fix the Alarm at the David Weiss catalog showroom in Wexford on US 19. Stanley goes on to tell me this store was the reason Holmes had to install  the Wells Fargo Line Security  Unit on their McCullough Loop system .Which was used to transmit alarm signals to Holmes Downtown Pittsburgh Offices. After they suffered a major loss at this store in the 70's 

https://www.google.com/patents/US3794991

A McCullough loop is basically a large single loop of telephone wire which starts at the central office and is starts out then goes to the individual clients panel and on to the next as many as 100 alarms could be monitored on this loop  each control had a small dc motor which would punch out a unique code in the office to tell when it was turned on and off or was in alarm and Holmes had McCullough loops which went all the way up to to Meadville Pa which monitored fire alarms at Amway feed mills 100 miles away. Of course McCullough loops had there problems as well and this is where burglars took advantage and why the line security unit needed installed.

Certain times of days when business where opening and closing multiple transmitters coming into the office could confuse the pen which made the marks on the tape and overlap each other  a real mess you could not tell some times of all alarm panels had closed properly.

Another problem which was exploited and allowed the David Weiss in Wexford to be burglarized in late 70's  and  tens of thousands in Jewelry stolen was the loop had  no way of knowing if it was going thru a customers
 panel or not, a smart burglar just had to know where to place a jumper on the McCullough loop after measuring phone line voltages and determining which pair to jump and could bypass the panel which happened in Wexford.
To combat this high risk customers after this major burglary had modules placed in there panels and the line security unit looked to see that each panel was sending a special code to it if it did not see the code coming from the panels every 90 seconds an alarm went off and  armed runners like myself where dispatched to see what was going on. This technology worked excellent for many years but eventually burglars with computers where able to emulate it with another computer . McCullough loops have almost completely gone away with private secure 2 way radio and encrypted cellular and internet communicators now in use. Holmes Protection which was based out of NYC no longer exsists and was merged with one of the big national alarm companys.

Now for just such a burglary to go down  takes a burglary crew and many times big burglary where often thought to be pulled off by the local mafia crime family since they where  military precise. and left few clues . To my knowledge no one was ever arrested .


Of course with security getting harder to beat at night this has lead thieves to use the much ore risky tactic of day lite armed robberies where several armed thieves hit the place and break into show cases with sledge hammers and clean them out while holding employees hostage.