Readers rush to solve mystery of road location
The Beallsville-Fredericktown road, as it appeared circa 1950
A Google image of the same stretch of the Beallsville-Fredericktown road
Margie Harbaugh Seeger in a recent photo
Observer-Reporter’s archives for many years without any identifying information. We now know its location, thanks to many of our reader-investigators, some who emailed us current images of the identical location.
Some responders guessed the photo was taken at various places along the length of the Monongahela, and elsewhere, but the overwhelming majority of the 50-some phone calls and emails we received placed the photo on the Beallsville-Fredericktown road, known variously as Beallsville Road, Ridgewood Drive and State Route 2063.
”It appears to be an old photo of Beallsville Road approaching Route 88 along the Mon River near Fredericktown,” wrote Duane Galensky. “The ‘driveway’ is actually a road called Vesta Road.”
Galensky, as several other readers did, included a Google Streetview image of the same spot. “The houses look similar and in similar positions, and the telephone pole seems to match up nicely. Even the distant hills peeking through the now-grown trees seems to have a similar profile,” Galensky wrote.
Under magnification, a large mound can be detected beside the river.
”That was the slate dump from the Vesta No. 5 Mine,” Patrick Morgan said. Morgan, 78, who grew up in the Fredericktown area, explained that mine waste was taken across by barge and a conveyor bridge to a processing plant on the Fayette County side of the river.
”Beyond that telephone pole is where the state prison in Fayette is,” Morgan said.
”My great grandfather, Pete Bercosky, and his wife, Victoria, built the house you can see just down the road on the left around 1925 or 26 and raised five daughters, all of whom became nurses,” wrote Rich Giecek. “The house had a garage built underneath, a high porch and a bachelors’ quarters in the back, which they rented to single miners who worked at nearby Vesta No. 5 mine.”
”That section of road where the guardrails are brought back one of my worst memories,” said Audrey Komlo Grilus, who grew up in Vesta Heights (where the road to the right once led) and now lives in Washington.
”My brother and I were delivering air raid warning fliers to neighbors when he was hit by a car,” Grilus said. “The woman who hit him stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake. He was badly hurt, but he made it, and he’s still living today.”
Most of the men in the village of Vesta Heights worked in the mine, Grilus said. She remembers that during World War II, the most dreadful sight was a taxi, which was how telegrams were delivered to the families of those killed in action. “We would watch to see in front of which house the taxi stopped.”
We were finally able to track down Margie Harbaugh Seeger, one of the two girls in the previous Mystery Photo and the granddaughter of Washington photographer Dan Harbaugh.
The Washington Reporter.”
Since that picture was taken in the early 1950s, Margie graduated from Washington High School, moved with her parents, John and Libby Harbaugh, to Michigan, where she met her eventual husband. The couple settled in Texas in the early 1960s, raised a son, Mark, and two daughters, Kim and Carol. The Seegers have six grandchildren.
Observer-Reporter.