River Ridge Farm, Near Franklin

Above is a grainy photo of the main house at River Ridge Farm.  When the leaves are off the trees, you can still see this dark old house presiding aloofly over the valley of the Allegheny River and all the wooded hills around.  It's a beautiful sight.  It was built by a wealthy man named Sibley.  When I was a child, my father always pointed it out when we drove past--across the river and up in the hills.  He called it "The Sibley Estate" and said that a certain US President summered there once or twice and that Sibley himself lived there under house arrest--though I don't recall which President or why Sibley was under house arrest.  His money--like all the money around here--was in oil. 

The beautiful Samuel Justus Rail Trail leads you to the gates of the estate.  Here's the gatehouse.  That's to say, there used to be a train stop here.  The railroad tracks eventually fell into disuse, but then in the 80s or 90s, the wonderful rail-trail movement tore out the old railroad and used the bed to create a beautiful path along the river.  This brought people once again to the gates of River Ridge Farm.  

The driveway is long since disappeared.

In 1968, my father had the choice to buy the old farmhouse at River Ridge Farm or a big wooden house in Oil City.  Both were selling for $7,000.  The farmhouse was a huge, redbrick mansion in its own right, though not as grand as the 33-room main house.  My mother didn't want to live so far from town, so he opted for the (now abandoned and condemned) house in Oil City.   

 

Long ago, I saw black-and-white photographs of my mother sitting in the carillon tower pictured here.  The photos had frilly edges.  My father's Mustang--which he bragged about for decades after it was gone--was in the background.  I don't know what happened to those pictures.  My parents became hoarders, and so much good stuff got thrown away with the bad when we moved them out of their long succession of wasted houses.  Oh, but truly my mother was beautiful when she was young.  My father looked like an angry weird scarecrow, but she was lovely.  River Ridge Farm is still an enormous estate with a gatehouse, a guesthouse, a farmhouse, and a main house.  It's now owned by a fundamentalist sect that does recovery from addiction with a religious bent.  They're secretive, and the estate is closed to the public.  After Sibley died, the "White Fathers" set up a Catholic missionary training center here.  That, too, is long gone.