Celebrating the road west
Until Oct. 9, 1963, those traveling west from Baltimore, Md., on Interstate 70 reached the end of the superhighway at Washington, Pa. There, they would take the last exit at West Chestnut Street and continue their journey on Route 40.
After the ceremonies captured in this week’s Mystery Photo, those travelers could go another 13 miles to West Alexander, just short of the state line.
It was a momentous occasion, attended by all the political and business leaders of Washington County, the Trinity High School band and majorette corps and a couple hundred onlookers.
Among those standing on the bank with her parents in this photo was Susan Watson Allen. Her family lived in the house just behind the oil derrick in what would become known as Warne Manor in North Franklin Township.
The house at the top of the hill was the home of John Warne, then a North Franklin Township supervisor, who died in 1991.
“It was the first all-electric house in the Washington area,” said his daughter, Rebecca Warne Kurp.
The house she grew up in and the many others in the plan are off Milbeck Drive. They can be seen now, barely, through the thick foliage that has grown up there, from I-70 at Exit 15 or from North Franklin Drive, which parallels the interstate and leads to Consol Energy Park and development west of Washington Crown Center.
We had quite a bit of help from our readers in solving this puzzle. Of the more than three dozen readers who called or emailed us, all but two correctly identified the location.
Many people remembered the oil derrick being there, but none better than Scott Finch of Prosperity.
“I tore down that derrick in 1985 or 1986,” Finch said. “There was even a picture of me doing it on the front page of the paper. They called me a one-man wrecking crew, or something like that.”
Although the derrick is long gone, Arthur VanBriggle sent us a photo of the band wheel from the well that’s still there.
“I remember a guy who didn’t even own the property gave me $30 just to leave the wheel where it was,” Finch said.
Some of our readers remembered the day well because they were playing in the band. Joyce Neff Hough recalls being on the new highway before its official opening. She took a summer driver’s education course in 1963.
“Mr. Slosky, our driver’s ed instructor, took us (my two driving partners and me – Donna Evans and Richard Wilhoft, all from the Wash High Class of ’65) out on the new highway to learn to drive on highways, prior to its opening,” Hough wrote from her home in Annapolis, Md.
The opening of the 13-mile link was marked by ribbon-cuttings in Washington for the westbound lanes and at West Alexander an hour later for the eastbound lanes. The importance of the new road was by no means underestimated. Edward Martin, retired general and former Pennsylvania governor, was speaker at both ceremonies.
“This road will eventually reach the Pacific Coast as it now does the Atlantic Coast,” Martin told those assembled. “It is an important link in the vast network of limited-access highways that will link east and west, north and south, and of which Washington will be the crossroads.”
Interstate 70 would eventually reach Cove Fort, Utah, where it terminates at Interstate 15. Take that road south and you’ll pass through Las Vegas, Nev., on your way to San Diego, Calif.
In his remarks, Martin predicted that someday in the future, four lanes would not be enough to handle the traffic, and how right he was.
There were six photos published in the local Observer and Reporter newspapers the day after the ceremonies, but this one wasn’t among them. Perhaps the editors thought the huge derrick, a relic from the area’s oil and gas boom of the late 19th century, was a distraction. But today the picture is evocative, capturing the very moment between Washington’s past and its future.
Look for another Mystery Photo in next Monday’s Observer-Reporter.