Just wandering how many tales could be told by this rock pile/fence I visited on Will's Mountain.  It way probably established while clearing for farm land at one time; or perhaps it could have been part of a corral.  The wall knows for sure.  These photos are from my mushroom hunting area 8^).

 

 

Mushrooms love these Poplar trees:

 

Or course I had to shoot a stump or two:

 

George ,
Great pics Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the pics, looks like you had a great day.

QuoteOriginally posted by MJB:
George ,
Great pics Thanks for sharing.

These days, someone would come and lock you up for building a stone fence such as that.

Tales to be told indeed.

Happy shrooming.

hey george bet if you got a metal detecter you would find some cival war relics .that looks like a wall for cover.and you live in pa

john,  the thought crossed my mind but it's at such an odd place on the mountain.  I'll have to do some research on that critter.

George, I live in West Virginia and I used to hunt a small farm that had a stone wall/fence just like the one in the pictures. I have often wondered the purpose of it. The stone wall that I am talking about runs along the top portion of the bowl of a holler. It runs around the bowl and proceeds to go down the main big holler towards some large fields. It has collapsed in some places and hardly visible while in other sections is just like it was built new. It will be interesting to find out what the original purpose of these walls were. Please post any information that you may find on these. I can't imagine how much work and time it took to build these.

Winterhawk1960

George lives so far back in the hoots'n hollars, I don't know them folks knew back then there even WAS a civil war....


....or that it is over! Awful close to the M&D!

   

Heck it could be from Revolutionary times. We're close to Braddocks route and right on Washington's travel path.

George,

Great pics! That wall looks very similar to the walls that are found here in the north of England. Some of the walls over here are several hundred years old! Thanks for sharing your outing!    

Nigel

please investigate more george and let us know !!

Frederick John Bahr (1837-1885) was an immigrant from Baden, Germany, who eventually settled on Wills Mountain in Cumberland, Maryland to avoid the encroachment of the Civil War.

Frederick immigrated West most likely with his brother, Leonard. By 1862, they lived in Sandusky, Ohio, where Frederick apparently operated a theater, and married Margaret Kessler ((1840-1915) from Byron, Germany). While in Ohio, Frederick and Margaret had one daughter, Norma. They then moved to Long Island, New York, where Frederick had orchards, and there they also had a son, Frederick, Jr. Before long, they were living in Pennsylvania, where children Harvey, Annie and Minnie were born. Then the family lived in Winchester, Virginia, where son Leonard was born. But wanting no part of the surrounding Civil War, Frederick bought Wills Mountain, with its "Lover's Leap," which stands 1,652 feet above sea level and has extremely strong and dangerous wind currents that whip up and around the sides. Atop, he built a two-story log cabin for his family of already six, and there also adding two more children -- Elizabeth and Centennial.

Frederick was an inventor. A B&O Railroad magazine wrote an article noting that Frederick was "an eccentric German with indefatigable energy." When Frederick opened a beer garden and bowling alley, he had first built a railroad up the mountainside and had mules walking around a pulley system at the top, which moved the railroad cars around and up the mountain, carrying picnickers. He also invented a type of balloon/blimp ride which was made of fabric pieces sewn by Margaret (by hand). He put paddle wheels on the sides and had two cranks for propulsion windlass. The first blimp was destroyed by fire as they were filling it up. Margaret sewed another. The second blimp was cut to pieces by some of his enemies. Margaret sewed another. With crowds of people to view its launching, the third blimp was taken suddenly by a terrible wind, blowing it far away into trees. That apparently finished Frederick's motivations to invent, and most likely, he ran out of money.

With a person as smart, complex and driven, it was also reported that Frederick was cruel. Margaret did more than her share of support. He worked his family extremely hard, and bound out his son, Leonard, to work for a nearby farmer. Leonard remembered that his father thought nothing of kicking his children to make them work harder and to keep them in line. In 1878-79, Norma painted a picture of the homestead. But to escape Frederich's tyranny and possible poverty, by 1883, all had left home (either together or one at a time), including Margaret. They settled in Baltimore, with Norma going to the Maryland Institute (of Art). It is known that Margaret returned for Frederick's funeral in 1885. The cabin itself was replaced by the Wills Mountain Inn and postcards show its popular splendor. Currently, all that remains is a half-buried foundation.

Before his death, he might have worked as a laborer in West Virginia, but nonetheless, he lived alone his last years. Frederick John Bahr is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere on Mt. Savage.

Very Interesting!

The Lover's Leap you speak of is at the southern end of Will's Mountain, about twenty-eight miles due south of Manns Choice, and just N.W. of Cumberland, Maryland.  About the only ones who visit that spot anymore are rock climbers.

i would believe it might be a cover wall built by troops during one war or another as a semi-permanent position/fort. the height of it appears to be perfect for a rifleman to stand and shoot from behind while providing reloaders sufficient protective cover.

dang...things like that stir the imagination don't they?

near where i used to live there were some aerial photographs that turned up from 1923 that revealed a portion of an aquaduct/plume build by a spanish ranchero during the spanish era of california and an old adobe ruin that was later revealed as having been a stage stop during the 1840's...sighhhhhhhhhhh...both were plowed to build a housing tract.

QuoteOriginally posted by donw:
i would believe it might be a cover wall built by troops during one war or another as a semi-permanent position/fort. the height of it appears to be perfect for a rifleman to stand and shoot from behind while providing reloaders sufficient protective cover.

dang...things like that stir the imagination don't they?

near where i used to live there were some aerial photographs that turned up from 1923 that revealed a portion of an aquaduct/plume build by a spanish ranchero during the spanish era of california and an old adobe ruin that was later revealed as having been a stage stop during the 1840's...sighhhhhhhhhhh...both were plowed to build a housing tract.

That's just tragic....  :(

On November 14, 1753, George Washington, then a young Virginia lieutenant, reached the present site of Cumberland with a message from Governor Dinwiddie of that colony to the French who had come down from Quebec by the St. Lawrence River and Lake Erie to build a fort at the forks of the Ohio, where Pittsburgh now stands. Washington went immediately to Gist's house and fortunately secured that veteran woodsman as companion on the perilous journey, which was undoubtedly made over Wills Mountain instead of through the Narrows; a few weeks later they returned with an unsatisfactory reply from the commander at Fort Duquesne, and the French and Indian War followed. This added new importance to the route, for at least during 1755 it was more a military highway than one of trade and peaceful expansion toward the West.

Braddock's army, in which were both Washington and Gist, started west over Wills Mountain, but so great difficulties were encountered that the general reconnoitered the locality, and in Three days opened the easier way through the Narrows of Wills Creek, by which troops and supplies were afterwards transported. It is somewhat curious that after Braddock's experience, the government engineers should in 1811 have first laid out the National Turnpike over the mountain at a low point known as Sandy Gap, instead of through the Narrows, as was done in the re-location of the first six miles in 1833. These two routes once forked a few rods west of the Six-Mile House, but traces of the older one have now nearly disappeared.

At a date not entirely clear, Col. Thomas Cresap, the first permanent settler in Western Maryland, advance agent of and member of the Ohio Co. hired a friendly and honest Delaware Indian, Nemacolin, to make a way for foot travelers and pack-horses across the mountains and through the forests from Cumberland to the first point on the Monongahela, from whence navigation, impossible beyond the Potomac, could be resumed for Pittsburgh, Wheeling and the West. The dotted line across Wills Mountain on the map represents the route probably traveled by Nemacolin, and not long afterward by Christopher Gist, a pathfinder and explorer for the Ohio Co., in 1751-52. In his Journals, Gist mentions a gap (probably between Dan's and Piney Mountains) "between high mountains about 6 miles out" and "directly on the way to the Monongahela"; he also speaks of the roundabout trading path, which at that time he considered an inferior way. After Gist's return from his two trips of exploration, he and Col. Cresap employed Indians to open a primitive road over Nemacolin's trail; and this might be called the actual beginning of the present National Pike.

George,

Could you repost the pics of the stone walls?


JDS III