Canal Fossils

We're riding south along the east side of the Allegheny River. The beauty is soothing, like bicycling next to a painting. Much of the ride is in complete shade. We're riding on an old railbed, next to an even older canal bed and towpath.
These are the fossilized remains of the 19th century industrial frenzy that engulfed this region.......
the frenzy that brought my Irish ancestors here seeking work and stability. It all began when my great great grandparents, Michael and Bridget Welsh, fled the famine around 1850. The Walshes ("Welsh" as they spelled it at the time) landed in Mosgrove, Pa after moving quickly through Canada, then Maine and Boston. Great grandfather found work maintaining the tracks along the river just north of Kittanning and they lived on the banks of the Allegheny between the river and the tracks. It's incredible to imagine how many trains must have passed within twenty feet of their home every day...on their way to Oil City and the "black gold" there. Today, we'll find that old house and see if it still stands. My Great Grandfather P. J. Welsh found work on the railroad in Oil City and moved up there, taking the very rail that we are now riding north, to where my grandfather was eventually born. P. J. met his wife, Margaret Burns, who is from East Brady and the daughter of two more Irish famine refugees, somewhere along the way, and they lived in Oil City, bringing my grandfather into the world in 1902. Today, we'll look for the graves of James and Mary Burns (Margaret's parents) in East Brady/Brady's Bend area.

Arriving in Parker from Oil City yesterday was exhiliarating, cycling through two old railroad tunnels, both at least 1/2 mile long and pitch black.
We took an incredible ride over a bridge across the Allegheny into Parker, then through a burned out old industrial city, up a steep hill into "new" Parker. We're sitting on the "bluffs" at the River Watch B and B watching the Allegheny inch its way to Pittsburgh, imagining the industrial machinery that broke my ancestors backs and lifted them toward some semblance of stability. Ireland....Canada.....Mosgrove...Oil City....Butler.....Cranberry Township....and for me careening out West to our home in Denver. I can almost smell them, their sweat in along the canal and the tracks mixing with our sweat along the trail. I can hear their bosses' shouts in this valley. I can feel dying dreams in boarded up taverns in rusted river towns.
I can see desperate people who hitched their genes to runaway rails and sent me to Denver, Colorado to learn the beauty of history....that I may one day return to discover their scratches in the earth, their remains in the woods.