PA Donora: An Environmental Pilgrimage

 A friend and I traveled to Western Pennsylvania to visit the Monongahela and Youghiogheny Rivers a few weekends ago and it was a beautiful time to be in the Allegheny Mountains. We spent a day walking the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) Trail that I hope one day to ride from Pittsburgh to Cumberland. But for now, on this trip part research-part exploration, a pleasant six mile walk was enough to absorb the beauty of the valley on an October ay. The area is laced with amazing hiking and biking trails and so full of history, it would take a solid month to experience it all. 

Sandstone along the GAP

The Alleghenies are a little deceiving as far as mountains go because they aren't the result of dramatic continental collisions, faulting, and warping of the earth's crust like mountains are closer to home - the Blue Ridge, South Mountain, etc. These hills are formed by the erosion over millions of years of streams and rivers cutting down through the Allegheny Plateau, that from a height shows the mountains are really pretty much all the same in elevation. It's the valleys and ravines that make the topography so pronounced (and steep!).

Allegheny Mountains

Beneath our feet lay over three miles of sedimentary rock, sandstone, limestone, shale, siltstone, and coal. These layers were deposited in shallow seas and great swamps as sand, silt, mud, and the shells of tiny marine animals. The most important layers economically to the area are the great seams of coal that are exposed on the ridges and flanks of the hills, mined now for hundreds of years. My friend took me to see her childhood home where across the street was the site of a small coal yard.  Families often worked their own seams and, in her neighbor's case, had enough to sell. She remembers the coal tipple and the trucks coming in on Saturday mornings to take delivery of a month's worth of furnace coal. All the houses had coal chutes so that it could be shoveled or poured directly into a bin or hopper in the basement and fed by the shovel-full into furnaces and stoves.

An old privately owned coal yard now reverted to woods and field.

Part of our visit included a stop at the Donora Smog Museum, for research for my book on environmental pilgrimage. I can't say enough about the museum, but for now (COVID) it's only open by appointment during. We really appreciated the many hours Mark spent with us - we didn't leave until after dark! But the day we left for home, we spent the morning driving around this once bustling company town (U.S. Steel) driving slowly through the old mill workers neighborhoods, stopping at cemeteries, driving along the industrial plain where the enormous mills and zinc works once stood. What happened here in 1948 changed forever our approach to safeguarding the lives of Americans against air pollution and the health of industrial workers. Check it out in the link in Notes, below. 

St. Mary's Catholic Church and parish house in ruin.

Donora represents the boom and bust cycle of early 20th century industry. It also represents the beginning of an environmental movement that would define the second half of the century. The Donora Smog event of 1948 killed over twenty people, hospitalized hundreds, and sickened thousands over the course of a five-day temperature inversion. Hundred died in the year that followed due to effects of exposure. It is important to recognize (and teach) our environmental and conservation history so that we learn from it and learn how our own lives have been made better - or worse - by the actions of people who fought for protections and policies. 

Donora Smog Museum, "Clean Air Started Here"

I am well into a working manuscript for my first book, The Uphill Road: Environmental Pilgrimage in America.  It's been great to talk to colleagues who are also doing work in pilgrimage studies and environmental history. But as I travel to sites, many little known or unheard of in the making of our conservation and environmental identities, I am realizing that the stories must be experienced first hand to really understand how these places connect to all of us. Thanks to my traveling companion and fellow pilgrim, Cathy, for the good company on this research trip. 

Donora, 2020

Notes:

Donora Smog Museum https://www.sites.google.com/site/donorahistoricalsociety/

Devra Davis. When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution. Basic Books, Illustrated Edition, 2003.

If you go, please be sure to support local businesses. There are some wonderful eateries, small breweries, and shops. They need you now.