Not Kennywood: Still fondly and vividly remembered by Alle-Kiski residents 90 years later, this amusement park - right here in the Alle-Kiski area - featured a huge swimming pool, a shooting gallery, a lake with a boat ride, an arcade, a dance hall, an airplane swing ride, pony rides and a train that encircled the entire park. Even more cool, you could take a trolley to get to it! Set on the scenic banks of the Kiski River next to River Road in North Apollo, Griftlo Park was the place to be during the first 30 years of the 1900s. According to Vandergrift's history book, Something Better Than The Best, whole towns and industries emptied into Griftlo on hot summer days. Griftlo, named for VanderGRIFT and ApolLO, began to decline in the 1930s with the Great Depression. It took a major hit during the 1936 Flood when the Kiski leaped out of its banks and swallowed, at least temporarily, most of Apollo (and the rest of the Valley). After the Flood, Griftlo never recovered its heyday and in the 1950s, featuring only pony rides, turned off its lights. Some evidence still remains of Griftlo, now the residential area behind Dairy Queen in North Apollo - an overgrown swampy pond and foundations of the swimming pool.

The Titanic That Didn't Sink: The Titanic was built in 1918 to house miners in Kinloch (on Greensburg Road near present-day Lower Burrell). Not many people realize the owners rented it out to the mining company, who then rented it out to whoever wanted a small room. The City of Lower Burrell history book says it was still completely occupied in 1939. The large row house apartment building, named for the infamous Titanic that sank in 1912, nevertheless suffered tragedy like its namesake when fire consumed it in 1979.

Troubled Bridge Over Freeport: Until 1888, the only way to cross the Allegheny River at Freeport was by boat. But it all changed that year when the new bridge opened up. Called the Garver's Ferry Bridge (after the man who owned the ferry there), it lasted until Spring of 1957. That is when the rust got so bad on the bridge, no one could figure out what was keeping the bridge together! It had to be shut down for repairs. But the handwriting was on the rusty wall: a flood two years later slammed an escaped barge into a pier and an entire section collapsed into the river. According to www.pghbridges.com, the collapsed portioned was lifted out of the Allegheny and temporarily put back together just long enough for something new. And so today, 47 feet in the air over the majestic Allegheny River, we now easily drive on Rt. 356 across the 426-foot David L. Lobaugh Bridge in Freeport. Opened up in 1965, it is located downstream from the old Garver's Ferry Bridge. Rust does not appear to be a problem. Just potholes.

What if you lived in Tarentum before the 1950s and wanted to show your new car to Uncle Fred who lived across the Allegheny River in Burrell? At that time, there was no Tarentum Bridge. The nearest way you could cross your car over the river meant about a forty-minute detour around and across on the Freeport Bridge or the New Ken Bridge. But finally when the Tarentum Bridge opened in 1952, there was still a minor hitch - you had to pay. Yes, the Tarentum Bridge at that time was a toll bridge run by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It would have cost you one thin dime. (If you drove a car; be happy. Driving a truck would have cost you a whole quarter). This bridge didn't stay a toll bridge but earned a dubious honor as the last state-maintained toll bridge in Pennsylvania when it stopped taking tolls in 1961.

Plane Sight: Airplanes have been a part of AK history since the Wright brothers, when someone successfully flew an airplane off Kepple Hill in Vandergrift, according to its history book, Something Better Than The Best. Ken Blose, the author of the book, also mentions Red Lindenmuth, a local daredevil airmail pilot, flying his airplane UNDERNEATH the Vandergrift Bridge in the 1920s. Where was his airbase? Why the Vandergrift Airport, of course. And where was this Vandergrift Airport? Right under the feet of Alle-Kiski high school students! Kiski Area High School is built on the same location where the airport was. Careful observation in the back of the school prior to construction even reveals rows of trees on either side of what was a runway. The airport's heyday was from the late 1920s to the late 1940s and included night rescues, USAIR, airmail, search and rescue, and a commemorative American stamp. Area citizens with automobiles at the time would hear planes buzzing around in the night and come to the rescue of pilots forced to make night landings. They would circle their cars around a runway and turn their headlights on in order to light up the landing strip. The airport was a vital part of the area's postal system that picked up and delivered airmail as a predecessor of today's USAIR. The airmail pickup and deliveries, which used a mailbag drop and a low-level-flight snatch-and-grab, caused a search-and-rescue to be carried out in the Pine Run ravine area by a local Boy Scout troop when a mailbag fell from the plane too early and totally missed its target. Airmail at Vandergrift Airport ceased in 1949, but not before the U.S. Postal Service made Vandergrift one of nine areas commemorated on a special type of stamp featuring airmail communities in PA. (Read more about this stamp in "New Airline Given Cachet" by Ken Blose in the Our Local Heritage archives at: http://www.alle-kiskitoday.com/features/archives.shtml?feature=heritage )

Electric: If you are careful, you can still see a small part of it outside North Vandergrift on the way to Leechburg. A small stone trestle still stands over a stream on a high bank next to River Road. The rails that ran along that eight-mile pathway from Leechburg to Apollo carried one of the major sources of transportation in the area for more than 30 years. The Leechburg & Apollo Electric Railway Company, opened in 1902, for the most part ran along today's River Road and in some cases even traced the towpath of the Pennsylvania Canal system built 70 years before. With mills in Leechburg and Vandergrift employing thousands, this trolley was a major conduit to work for men in Leechburg, Vandergrift, Apollo and Gilpin, Parks, and Kiskiminetas Townships. Stops included a waiting room between Second and Third Street as well as Knepshields in Leechburg, Hyde Park, Beale Mine, Kiskimere (which had its own spur), Kepple Mine, North Vandergrift, Gravel Bar, Griftlo Park (apparently once called Allison Park) and Second Street in Apollo. The trolley changed its name in 1905 to the Pittsburgh and Allegheny Valley Railway but by 1911 was bought by West Penn Traction Company. Besides the transportation aspect, the trolley company also had an ulterior motive - the spreading of electric lines, which would benefit their sister and parent companies. In time, West Penn Traction grew to become much more than a trolley company. Good thing, too. Increasingly better-quality roads, America's love affair with the auto and the devastating 1936 Flood pulled the plug on this early means of mass transportation in the Alle-Kiski Valley.

Bus Birth in New Ken: Trolleys weren't the only kind of mass transit in the AK region. The New Ken/Arnold area was served by the Westmoreland Transportation Company beginning in the 1920s. A bus line, they ran a route from New Kensington to Greensburg. According to www.amcap.org , 1941 saw the company join together with the New Kensington Taxi Cab Company, expanding the line's service to Aluminum City Terrace and the Valley Camp/Valley Heights area. But they didn't make much money, closed up shop and parked their rides for good in 1948. But the Public Utilities Commission stepped in and the line, in some form, was taken over by Penn Transit Company (PTC), once called West Penn Traction Company. PTC later rebirthed the bus line as the New Kensington City Lines. In time, PTC spun off some of their businesses, including those that had been a part of the electricity-supply side of the old trolley companies. We know the electric company side today as Allegheny Power (formerly known as West Penn Power) and the PTC as Port Authority Transit (PAT) - both corporations with their 100-year-old roots in electric trolleys.

Plum Stone Bridge: It is a scenic little place, the Plum Creek Cemetery west of New Texas Road/Orange Belt. Framing the entrance into the graveyard is a century-old relic of 19th century craftsmanship - over little Plum Creek, a stately stone bridge that was formerly part of the Center New Texas Road old roadbed. The route of the road is now 100 feet away and the bridge is now a part of the cemetery. The bridge's centerpiece, a stone arch, is made of sandstone from quarries in the area and was built in 1902. Allegheny County Engineer Charles Davis was responsible for the twelve-foot bridge which, according to www.pghbridges.com, is still "one of the best preserved structures of its type in the county." For the bridge aficionado, the stone structure is an excellent example of century-old craftsmanship.

Covered: It had been built in 1840 and had survived into the 1920s. Adding a certain quaint touch to the village, Saltsburg's covered bridge over the Kiski River acted as a nostalgic gateway, funneling traffic into the main part of town. But according to the Winter 1997-98 Canal Chronicle, the wooden structure burned in 1922. No one ever discovered how the fire began. The blazing inferno lit the sky around the river valley. Visitors today to the Saltsburg Area Historical Society's Stone House Museum can view a model of the town that includes the covered bridge.