Old Jersey Church, Lower Turkeyfoot Township

The Laurel Highlands Trail has a parking lot and entry point along the remote Jersey Hollow Road, just northwest of the village of Confluence.  This is rugged and beautiful country with unexpected vistas along the narrow, winding lanes.  

The semi-derelict church sitting in a cemetery on Jersey Hollow Road seems to go by several names: Old Jersey Church, Jersey Settlement Baptist Church, Turkeyfoot Baptist Church.  It was a Baptist congregation, obviously, which is somewhat rare in rural Pennsylvania.  Most of your far-flung country churches in these parts are Methodist, Lutheran, or Presbyterian.  Founded in 1788, it served settlers from New Jersey.  

I don't know if they still hold services here.  There's a portable outhouse out back, which was clean and well maintained, and a furnace in the dirt-floor basement.  An electric line runs to the building, and when I peeked inside I saw all the traditional accoutrements of a country church: American flag, Christian flag, faded old hymnals.  And yet, there's no place to park--aside from a tiny pull-off beside the road, big enough for three cars at the most.  And surely people don't walk to this place.

There was a grassy area next to the building where people might park, but it looked pretty untrammeled.  See the furnace inside the padlocked cellar?  The only thing separating this basement from the outdoors is a strong wire screen in the door and all windows--to keep the critters out.

The cemetery here is pretty large, and there's a newer one across the road with a sign advertising plots for sale.  

My guess is that there's a group of elderly folks who come back every now and again to clean the place up and do whatever quick repairs they can.  I don't know, maybe they hold a service here on a summer's afternoon with some retired Baptist minister who drives up from West Virginia.  But they're all getting a little too old for to keep coming back here to look after the church where they grew up, got married, and where they buried their parents and loved ones.  They'd like it if some younger folks stepped up to help keep the place from falling into ruin.  But the youngest folks alive who have fond memories of this little country church are in their late 60s.  You can only expect people to care about a place like this if they have sweet memories of it, and it apparently hasn't had a congregation in decades.  

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Laurel Highlands Trail, the Disappearing Overlook at about Mile 7.7

Such a beautiful day to spend in the Laurel Highlands.  It’s been a dry April, and the temperatures have alternated between unseasonably hot and unseasonably cold, but today was perfect. The trees are just beginning to bud in the uplands.  This is a shot of Sugarloaf Knob—which I’ve climbed—as seen from a certain disappearing overlook between miles 7 and 8 on the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail.

I call it “The Disappearing Overlook” because it doesn’t seem to have any other name, and I’m sure it’s only visible November through April.  It disappears for sure in the high summer, when the trees are in full leaf.  And yet, it’s a better view than the one you get from Brent’s Overlook, which is both year-round and named.

I began at Jersey Hollow Road and passed from mile marker 11 southward well beyond mile marker 8, at the narrow Augustine Road through the state game lands.  I turned around just before the long, steep descent into the Ohiopyle shelter area.  With the extra little distances I walked here and there, it ended up an 8-mile hike today, about four miles out and then back.

Actually, I stopped just short of the southernmost 8 miles of the Laurel Highlands Trail, which are the craziest and most difficult stretch of all 70 miles--enormous elevation changes in very short distances.  The rock formations between miles 11 and 8 are pretty impressive.  In fact, I came through this area some years ago to explore one of the rock cities.

Just behind this large boulder, there’s a vast field of enormous stones with crevasses and craggy canyons in between.  

But the highlight of this trip by far was the view of Sugarloaf Knob from a very short side trail just south of mile marker 8.  As I’ve explored the Laurel Highlands Trail, it’s occurred to me that I’ve already covered most of its 70 miles in day hikes.  Much of it will feel familiar when I do the whole thing in one fell swoop in July.   

1945 Helldiver Crash Site: FOUND IT! How to Get There

On a charmed third attempt, I finally found the site of the 1945 crash of a helldiver fighter jet, which was flying home to Detroit from a WWII victory celebration in DC.  Here are the melted remains of the engine, embedded in the forest floor.  For scale, you can see my daypack in the upper right hand corner of the photo.  It is indeed a very remote site, at least for Southwestern Pennsylvania.  Located on PA State Game Lands # 42 in the mountains just east of Ligonier, it takes some commitment to get there.

If all you want is information for how to reach the crash site, then skip to the bottom of this article, where I give the step-by-step directions.

The engine is probably about four feet in diameter, rusted, melted, weathered by nearly 80 years of sun and rain.  

When the plane crashed on October 9, 1945, local people helped authorities to find the wreckage.  No one knows exactly what went wrong.  This plane was flying in formation with a squadron of 21, when the pilot apparently tried to turn around and head for the nearest airport to the east.  They never made it and instead crashed into the western flanks of Sugar Camp Hill.  Locals pitched in to erect a plaque at the crash site, and someone still comes out here regularly to replace the small American flags when they get worn out.

Click this photo to read the plaque better.  Frank Z. Campbell and George Cohlmia, the only occupants of the jet, both died on impact.  Actually, Cohlmia, the radioman from Oklahoma, was found about 50 feet from the flaming remains of the helldiver.  Campbell, of Valdosta, Georgia, was still inside.  Some say that Cohlmia was out on the wing of the plane trying to save himself by jumping into the treetops.  Such a tragedy.  They survived combat in that horrific war.  Their families knew they were coming home, and then they died in some freak accident while flying over the Laurel Highlands.

Campbell, from all I can gather, was an only-child whose father died when he was very young.  He was 23 at the time of the crash.  His mother lived into her 80s, but was long-dead by the time the outside world began taking an interest in the crash site.  There's almost no information online about him.  Cohlmia is another story.  He was only 19 when he died (just one year older than my eldest child...).  He hailed from a family of 10 children born of Lebanese immigrants to Oklahoma.  Some of his relatives visited this site in the early 2000s.  There are many bits of debris still littering the ground around the melted engine, as seen here.  But please leave them there.  They are not mementoes for adventure seekers.  There's something of the sacred about them.  They belong to a tragedy that is not yours or mine to intrude upon.  All we can do at the crash site is to remember these poor fellows and to honor them.  

I first learned about this crash site on the Facebook page of the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail, which passes nearby.  The guy who posted photos on that page was pretty vague about how to reach the place.  I followed his directions and found them very wanting.  On my first attempt to reach the site, I tried to get there entirely on foot, which took a very long time and proved to be a failure.  On my second attempt, I arrived to find the mountaintops still too covered in snow to make the trek.  On my successful third attempt, I came with a bicycle, and instead of following the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail out to the area near the crash site, I rode a 20-year old Schwinn most of the way along a pipeline road that runs parallel to the trail.

So...here's how you get to the crash site: Throw a sturdy old bike into the back of your car and head east on PA 271 through the village of Waterford and up into the peaks of the Laurel Highlands.  When you reach the highest spot along the roadway, you'll see a large blue and white sign that says "Laurel Hill Summit, Elevation 2743 Feet."  When you see that sign, turn immediately into a small parking area on the right side of the road.  You'll see the pipeline road going into the forest.  Hop on your bike and pedal about 4--maybe 5--miles.  The road is muddy and undulating, and you'll have to get off and walk your bike pretty often, but you're still making MUCH better time than you could ever make on foot.  After 4 or 5 miles, you'll arrive at a big crossroads, pictured here.  It's the only big intersection that you'll come to, so there's no risk of getting the wrong one.

Turn right and soon you will begin to go downhill.  You'll pass a big TV or radio tower on the right.  Soon after that, you'll see yellow bands painted onto the trees on either side of the road; this indicates the spot where the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail crosses the lane.  You'll then pass a gas pad on the left--which is pictured here.  After going downhill about 6 tenths of a mile, you'll reach a large grassy meadow where the road ends.  

Here's a photo of that meadow as you draw near to it.  The road through here is pretty bad, but with the right bike you might be able to go as far as this meadow.  I ditched my 20-year old Schwinn up at the gas pad just because I wanted it to be in good condition to carry me back to my car, and I wasn't sure how rough the road would become.  Besides, I needed the pedometer on my phone to start measuring distances for me so that I could report them to this blog.  I want the world to know how to find Campbell and Cohlmia's sacred site.

Once inside the grassy meadow where the road ends, you'll see a much smaller road that leads off to the right.  It's in the far right-hand corner of the meadow.  This is where things get a little dicey.  Follow that small road to the right, but only follow it a few yards!  Once it takes you inside the woods, you'll see one small trail joining you from the left.  Do NOT take that trail.  It might lead to the crash site, but if it does, it's not the way I know.  Instead, take the second trail to the left.  This trail is much narrower and harder to see, but it's less than 50 feet from the first trail.  Follow this narrow trail about 2 tenths of a mile to a Y in the road, where you will see the rock cairn pictured here.  The cairn indicates the leftward branch of the road.  Turn left onto that path and begin a steady downhill descent.

I was just following instincts here because this left turn differed greatly from the advice that I'd found on Facebook.  But I was relieved to find that someone had painted little red airplanes on a few of the rocks and trees along this path.  Like the one here.  

From the cairn at the Y in the road, you will follow that leftward trail downhill for about 3 tenths of a mile.  The red airplane trail-blazes will become more frequent as you go.  They've got a strangely spooky quality to them, as does the forest in this area.  Thorny greenbrier chokes the forest floor, and many of the trees appear to be dead.  I was nervous to walk beneath large, dead trees in the strong April winds that sweep up over these heights.

Soon enough you'll see tattered old American flags looming through the trees.  This is the place where Frank Campbell and George Cohlmia died.  Click on this photo to enlarge it.  Here you'll see the plane's engine in the foreground to the left and the monument near the center of the photo.

Someone attached this crucifix to the top of the stone where the plaque is placed.

The wreckage of the plane is seen just over my shoulder and the plaque with the flags in the upper left corner.  

To summarize:

1) Park in the lot on the south side of PA 271 at the blue and white Laurel Hill Summit elevation sign.

2) From there, see the pipeline road heading south out of the parking lot and follow it for 4 or 5 miles to a crossroads.

3) Turn right at the crossroads and take that road downhill for about .6 (six tenths) of a mile.

4) At the meadow where the road ends, take the rightward trail into the woods.

5) Just inside the woods, take the second left and follow that trail .2 (two tenths) of a mile to a Y and a rock cairn.

6) Turn left at the cairn and follow that trail .3 (three tenths) of a mile to the crash site.

Helldiver Crash Site in the Laurel Highlands, My New Obsession

I mean…you know by now that I’m obsessive, right?  I get going on a topic, it occupies most of my energies for 4 or 6 months, then I’m on to something else.  I am going to find that damn Helldiver crash site on Sugar Camp Hill if it’s the last thing I do.  Which thing it might well be.  Here’s the Laurel Highlands Trail as it passes between the tall rocks between miles 57 and 56–or maybe 56 and 55.  

And here is the Navy radioman, George Cohlmia, whose body was found 50 feet from the smoldering Helldiver fighter jet.  He was one of 10 children of Lebanese immigrants to Oklahoma (of all the world’s many places…)  In George’s obituary, his father is called “Rev. Cohlmia.”  Must have been Baptists fleeing religious oppression in the homeland: out of the frying pan into the fire, quite literally.  He was a high school athlete who voluntarily enlisted as soon as he turned 18 and then died at 19.  

It weirds me out because my oldest child is 18, and in my mind still a sweet toddler asking me to read to her.

Sadly, there’s almost nothing online about the 23-year old Frank Z. Campbell who was flying the plane.  It seems that he had no siblings, so there was no one left to remember him after his poor long-widowed mother died in 1983.

 

2nd Futile Search for 1945 Helldiver Crash Site

This is Rager Mountain on the east side of the Conemaugh River gorge.  The river—which was responsible for the infamous Johnstown Flood—is unseen in the valley between the mountain and me.  Much of the woodland on this mountain belongs to the Gallitzin State Forest, the Charles F. Lewis Natural Area.  Alas, I experienced a regret up there in those woods on a July day many years ago.  Notice that it’s early spring here in the river valley.  

But you don’t have to hike very far up onto the mountainsides to find snow and cooler temperatures.  Yes, this photo shows a nuclear power plant at the end of an ugly electric line easement.  I mean, c’mon, there’s pretty stuff here and there, but it’s still Pennsylvania we’re talking about…. My goal today was to return to the area where I explored last week (see the post just below this one) and to ride an old bike 6 miles down an old dirt lane in order to find the Helldiver crash site from 1945.  What I didn’t count on was all the ice and snow on the mountaintops.  There was no way I’d be riding a bike up there.

So I went instead to the very beginning (or end) of the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail, near the village of Seward, and hiked uphill from mile 70 to a spot beyond mile 68.  It was a nice trek on a sunny day in early spring.  The air was fresh and bracing.  

This iron bar sticks out of a boulder along the trail. Who knows why?  The remains of old roads up and down the mountainside reveal the place’s industrial past.  This ugly piece of metal is just ol’ Mother Pennsylvania reminding you about her sordid past.  “Don’t forget,” she whispers, “never forget that I was once the smoking hearth of this world.  I reserve the right to be ugly and horrible when you least expect it.”  

The only real views were from the second electric line easement.  This is the Conemaugh River gorge.  A sign near the river, down below, claims that it’s the deepest gorge east of the Mississippi, but I sure think the New River gorge in West Virginia is deeper.

I have to admit that I set out this morning with a sense of foreboding about trying to find the crash site again.  I almost felt relieved when I thought maybe the bike wouldn’t fit in my car—but it did—or that I couldn’t find the pump to put air in the bike tires—but I did.  Then by the time I got to that faraway mountaintop and saw too much snow for bike riding, I was not relieved but disappointed.  So, yeah, I didn’t accomplish what I set out to do today.  But this was nice too.  Third time’s a charm, right?

 

Futile Search for 1945 Helldiver Crash Site

NOTE TO READER: The post below is old.  I did finally find the crash site!  To read that article, along with directions for finding the site, go HERE.

It was the longest hike I've taken in a while.  12.4 miles out-and-back on a remote section of the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail--which is to say 6.2 miles each way.  Averaging about 2.2 miles an hour, I got it done between 10:30am and 4:30pm.  But in that time, I did take a few breaks.  Six hours with very little weight on my back.  It might be another story when I come back to do a thru-hike in July, when I've got one 13-mile day planned and one 14-mile day.

One really nice thing about the Laurel Highlands Trail is that there are markers every mile, so it's easy to gauge your progress and to say where something is located.  "Oh, yeah, there's a stream between such mile and such mile."  On Facebook I read recently that between mile markers 51 and 52 there's an unmarked path that leads 1.2 miles to a spot in the forest where a "helldiver" military jet crashed in 1945, killing both men on board.  The closest you can get to the area by car is the parking lot at mile marker 57--which means that the site is remote and a long hike in both directions.

In March, you get a sense for the long views that are mostly obscured by all the tree trunks and bare branches.  The great distances are suggested, but not plainly seen.  When I come back in the summer, there will be nothing at all to see here but green leaves.  

It was a little rash to think I could just hike six miles into the late winter woods to find an unmarked trail to the site of a plane crash that occurred almost 80 years ago.  But someone had been out there recently, and he put the photos of the crash site on Facebook--a memorial plaque with the names of the two airmen and their hometowns.  The plane engine was left behind, too, partly sunken into the earth.  Someone goes out there every now and again to replace the two little American flags on either side of the plaque.

It's hard to tell from this photo, but these rocks are enormous, and the trail passes down through the cracks between them.  But back to the plane crash.  On October 9, 1945, a squadron of 21 helldivers was flying back to their base in Michigan from a World War II victory celebration in D.C.  There was fog over the Laurel Highlands, and one of them lost its way and crashed into the side of Sugar Camp Hill, a place I explored and wrote about back in January.  There was a pilot and a radio operator.  It's believed that the radio operator tried unsuccessfully to save himself by scrambling out onto the wing of the plane and jumping into the treetops.  An observer--surely a child at the time--from the nearby village of Waterford claims to have seen a man on the wing.  I mean, it makes sense that folks would be watching if 21 fighter jets came flying overhead.  But if they were lost in the fog, how did anyone see someone out on the wing?  The radio operator's body was found 50 feet from the crash.  The pilot probably died on impact, but the plane also exploded.  Photos of the old engine show melted metal.

I went as far as mile marker 51--shown here--looking for an unmarked path and found nothing.  It was a great hike in itself, and it scored me another peak on my peak-bagger's website, "Irwin Hill" at 2,800 some feet of elevation.  The trail passes largely through state game lands and Laurel Hill State Park.

It is sad that these two poor fellows would see combat in World War II and survive, only to crash their plane into a mountainside on the way home from a victory parade.  Their mothers must have been so thrilled when the war ended and their sons were still alive...then this.  The pilot was Frank Z. Campbell of Valdosta, Georgia, and the radioman was George Cohlmia of Watonga, Oklahoma.  Members of Cohlmia's family have made the long hike back to visit the site.

Brent’s Overlook, Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail

While planning my thru-hike on the Laurel Highlands Trail, I've been watching YouTube videos posted by people who have hiked all 70 miles of the trail and documented the highlights.  One such highlight was "Brent's Overlook" between mile 21 and mile 22.  

It's actually two overlooks, one a little more expansive than the other, and only about 100 feet apart.

I didn't realize that I'd actually been to this part of the trail before--TWICE--on day hikes.  There's a little purple lizard at about this spot on the Purple Lizard map of the Laurel Highlands.  One fun thing about the Purple Lizard maps is that they indicate sites of interest with little purple lizards, but they don't typically tell you what the lizard stands for.   

Is it a waterfall?  An interesting rock formation?  An especially old and enormous tree?  They don't tell you.  You're supposed to go and find out for yourself.  Some years ago, I went to a place very near to Brent's Overlooks, and I found something plenty interesting and assumed that I'd solved the lizard mystery.

What I found was a magnificently-shaped tree with a rock cliff just below it.  I decided to hang out on the rock cliff for a while and admire the tree, and then somehow life took me back to that spot in the woods a second time.  But neither time did I actually see the attraction that the lizard really represented: Brent's Overlooks.  The lizard was trying to tell me about these scenic views--which I only learned about by watching YouTube, and which were near enough to my stupid tree that I could have hit them with a stone.

On both of my previous trips, I settled for this beautiful tree.  And it is beautiful, graceful, unique, old.  On those trips, I stopped under this tree, as I said, and hung out on the rocks that are not pictured, and I thought, "Cool spot."  I went no further down the trail.  The overlooks were less than 200 feet away.  Tell me, why do I give up so easily?  Why do I always settle for so much less than there is?

The porcupines are killing this wonderful tree, to boot.  They've chewed off the bark all the way around the bottom, and I don't think a tree can survive that kind of assault.  Ah, but Brent's Overlooks were worth a return hike to this part of the Laurel Highlands Trail.  I hope the next time I see the view from the overlooks, I'll have 30 pounds on my back!