The Ghost Town of Blue Marsh, Pennsylvania

so greetings from pennsylvania once again we're back here with a familiar friend this is blue marsh lake we've been here a lot recently filming some of our union canal videos here well i i live near here too so i often come just hiking here at blue marsh lake but it's it's frozen right now it's actually not too cold today it's in the mid 30s just a bit of a breeze but yeah we're gonna do another one of our pennsylvania ghost town videos get this series going again we did the village of gold mine a couple weeks ago maybe a couple months ago actually but now we're gonna do the village of blue marsh so blue marsh lake is named after the village of blue marsh that used to be here at the southern end of the lake i got a couple maps i'll show you in a moment here one's an older map and one's a newer map comparing the area so we're gonna see what we can find we're not gonna find any uh buildings that are still whole and complete those are all torn down but we're just gonna see what we can find maybe foundations or who knows what else is gonna be out here let me uh give you a look around first though so they're looking out at blue marsh over that way is the state hill boat ramp i parked just oh yeah there's a parking lot just right behind us naomi's up there but out here is blue marsh you can see lower the lake levels in the wintertime a little bit lower because we were here not too long ago lock 43 for the union canal is out there somewhere underwater yeah but out there out over this way was the village of blue marsh a bunch of it's probably under water still but would have been all in this area a whole village not a huge village but a village nonetheless with its own church and post office and school its own general store plenty of their homes it was the first settlement in what's called lower heidelberg township too so there have been some old homes from like the 1700s 1800s they're all gone now but we're gonna go looking to see if we can find any remnants of this old town i know the the lake border trail goes around whole lake does go through this area i've hiked that years ago even before i started filming i do remember seeing like rubble like concrete and brick and stuff like that in some places but the parts of the town that would be under the lake now and on the lake shore go on there's going nothing left like they would have scraped all that stuff away when they made the lake but maybe further in in the woods and stuff we might find some things so like i'm gonna find a spot to show these maps and then we're just gonna get to explore and we'll cut you up and get to exploring all right so here we got our two maps the one on the left here is the older version i guess they call it pre blue marsh lake and this one's the newer one here the colored one so right here is the town of blue marsh village of blue marsh every little black dot there is a house we're building here's the modern day brownsville road this is still here today come over here here's the brownsville road again right down here is where the town would be mostly underwater because we're be pulled in here parked at the state hill boat ramp but some of the roads are still um like here's the uh here's the state hill road going down this way and that's this road right here so that's the state hill road right there here's a here's blue marsh road over here and we have blue marsh road right here so a lot of the old roads are still here all leading down towards where the old village was so it was down in this area some probably underwater so i'm probably back in here a little bit so we'll see so looking at uh here's statehill road just around the bend here there's some houses there so i would put some houses maybe right here above lake level we'll see we'll see we can find like i said all right so let's get to actually exploring i know the lake border trail is uh i think it's just up that way and it's one of the old roads here but i think just by this truck there's another trail this is one of the old roads that was back here part of the town so i think we might just go this way first i don't necessarily have a plan i'm just going to go exploring yeah off the left here is another unnamed trail looks like yeah this all this whole this pavement here is all new it's part of when they build built blue marsh lake in the parking but you can see this old trail here you can see the old pavement this is what's on the roads taking you to the town of blue marsh it's like i said we're just going to keep our eyes open to see if there's anything out here yet to find of the old town we'll talk a little bit more about the history of blue marsh lake too when it was built and stuff like that all right so that old road just kind of brings us up to the lake shore again lots of ice i think you can see the that's the road right there so maybe uh yeah i'm just trying to think here maybe we'll walk along the lake shore a bit as i get past this ice we will just go and head up on that way see some other folks out there yeah so here is the old road as it comes out of the woods it's all covered in ice but you can still see the uh mcadam on it just kind of ends down here close to the lake this part this part down here if i got bulldozed up but i did see some uh icy around here there is some uh old concrete up here too pipe coming into the ground there so we might uh let's check that all don't make my way around this ice though yes you can definitely see pieces of rubble concrete out here all this like uh pieces of uh like terra cotta pipe laying out here there's a old terracotta pipe coming out of the ground right there there's the remnants of a another one i was looking at earlier there's another pipe concrete platform here yes i'm not sure what this was i don't see anything else in the woods there offhand at least yeah there was something here at one point lots tons of this terracotta pipe so i'm not sure what was here all right let's keep searching like i said let's just walk along the lake bed for now keep our eyes peeled into the woods too if we can see bringing things in there all right even up here i see some more like rubble and concrete stuff and just up ahead there's that rubble that other concrete that i saw whole line of it going up through there [Applause] and just looking back yeah right up the right there's that old road that old road just goes right out into the lake so you know the town was out in there maybe up on shore here a little bit too at least parts of it oops like slip on the ice gotta watch it here but yeah blue marsh lake was built in the 70s i think it started in 1974 might have that wrong i think they completed in 1979 but they started acquiring the property through eminent domain in the late 60s so that's a history of it it was built for flood control that's the way it goes i guess you know i don't think too highly of an eminent domain but you know i do come here to blue marsh a lot i love coming here it's close to home and stuff so i mixed feelings about that whole the lake being here kind of not a big fan of the idea of eminent domain government just taking your property but at the same time i'm kind of thankful for a place like this though so it's kind of get mixed feelings so that's the history here of blue marsh if you ever wondered i never really don't think i've really ever talked about it too much so we'll cross the ice just go ahead and take a little peek into the woods up here [Applause] lots of red cedars in here he's not really seen too much yet but all right i think we'll head back i think like i said we'll keep walking along the lakeshore there are uh trails and old roads that we can take on the way back that go through this way but let's stick to the lake for now might pop in occasionally in the woods yeah so check out all the christmas trees they're just kind of dumped out here not sure why i'm not sure if that was done legally or or illegally they go all the way up that way i see something out in the middle of the lake there looks like an old foundation not sure i don't think we'll be able to get to that let's see if we can uh at least make our way over there yeah so here's another old road coming out from down the woods down here went off into the middle of the lake there so we were way up there that other road is going to the lake too so these roads are all converging out into there that wind is picking up you can still see a bunch of brick and stuff here here's the old road [Applause] just go straight down to the lake here all right that coil that wind is cold man you know along the shore you'll see fragments of bricks and all kinds of stuff probably when they just bulldoze the town yeah right there's that road we were just looking at earlier trying to make way up that foundation the lake up there yeah well we're on that side of lake we were kind of protected from the wind but the wind's kind of blowing straight towards us now all right so here we are at that foundation you can see some more concrete and rubble up this way but what's out there i don't think i can get across to that about getting wet feet which i don't want to do yeah but some sort of foundation out there we can zoom in on it a bit here kind of interesting at least one thing that survived the destruction yeah i would like to get across there it almost almost looks like someone made a little uh stepping stone trail over there but it is underwater i'm not gonna head over there but anyway i just noticed um here's that road of course just over there uh i'll point out that road coming out of the woods right down through there but here's here it is on the other side here you can see the the line of the macadam there the pavement going up through this way here's that road the road just goes out out that way kind of wondering if that's it right out there too but we're gonna keep heading that way i'm pretty sure summer up this way we do meet up with the uh the lake border trails it comes it falls an old road to the edge of the lake i think that might be state hill road [Applause] we'll see we're gonna head up that way then all right we're gonna leave the lake shore i don't really want to go all the way around that way so we're going to head inland you still haven't found the lake border trail it's up here somewhere so i think we'll just do some off trailing for now [Applause] sometimes that's the best off trail maybe sometimes not too but all right let's see we can find well here we are in the middle of nowhere just continuing on i am keeping my eyes open things right now i'm trying to find one of these old roads and somewhere up here has to be the old like the lake border trail because if if there's anything foundation-wise left it'll be along those old roads and i do believe i see an old road up here or just some ice but i'm pretty sure it's a trail yeah i think it's what we want at the brush here yeah here we go this was looking for but man it's icy that's not cool so just determining which way to go i think going left i believe that takes us up to where the emergency spillway is for the blue marsh lake but we don't want to go that way today i think we need to go this way go to the right let's take this the one road i'm looking for state hill road i think that was the road the last old road we saw coming out towards the lake that i pointed i think that's the one we'll encounter that one up this way but i think i think that's why we might have a chance of seeing any foundations that might still be out here just try to stay off the ice here all right so we've been following this icy path for a while which might be an old roading of itself but kind of keeping off the ice on the edge but i think i've come to what i'm looking for perhaps there is you can clearly see that's an old road going up that way up the hill but also goes this way i wanna quick walk down this way a little bit just to see then we head up the other way there's a gas line that goes underground through here so that's what you're seeing up ahead so like electrical boxes or meter boxes of some sort i don't think i'm gonna spend too much time down here though yeah because earlier we had kind of bushwhacked up the way through that way didn't really see anything all right let's head back so time to head up this way i mean this is clearly an old road going up through here so we'll keep our eyes open see if there's anything interesting on the sides here not sure if there is kind of thinking there might not be much to see at all anymore but i thought about i thought that way in the past about places and sometimes i've been surprised so we'll just uh we'll keep looking i mean that's what we're out here to do is to look see what's left and to not slip on the ice [Applause] actually i think i changed my mind i think up ahead is the road i'm looking for seeing their crossroads up there it could be wrong but i think that's the road i'm looking for we'll find out in a bit here yeah this is definitely the road i'm looking for you can see the pavement all right let's arrow that's so we were on the lake border trail that's what those arrows are all right so um i believe this will take us up to uh the brownsville road go up this way we might walk up this way just icing here yet let me turn it off for a moment all right so i was thinking about going up this way but i see the gate up there you can drive down just up to the gate that's up there no place to park up there i might just go and walk up there a little bit to see if there's anything up there but i don't think so i think if there's any sort of you know some of those houses we saw on the map those black dots they'd be down this way i think i just quick check up the other way quick just to cover my bases yeah i'm not really seeing anything up this way it's really too steep on either side for the houses you see the old guard rail though the old wooden posts and the cables there keep you know the car slid off the road they hit the guardrail that's the old style there's old cables and posts all right let's go on down this way see if we can find yet hopefully something all right so that's the way we came but even here you can see it's like a little almost looks like a little lane going up here there's a flat area up in there let's make my way over here looks like an old telephone pole cut off right here too right there so i'm going to guess that there was something here building wise you see how it was kind of cut out from the hillside not seeing any foundation or anything though but i'm gonna take a guess that maybe something was here okay so i see something over there and i've seen it there's where we were earlier there's like a i think there's an old road up here i think it's follow that line with my finger there's this road down here but i need to get up there i see some other like interesting things i just got to get across this ice all right let me see if we can get over there okay we made it across but here you guys see this little come up it's flat and it goes up there's like an old road through here back up there is where we're talking earlier got some random stakes in the ground but uh up above there's something interesting yeah over in there i see like some concrete up there let's get up there if we can alright you should be able to see it up ahead there take your way through some brush here looks like there was a fire here i think it's burnt black all right yeah not sure what we're looking at here but there was something here there's pieces of it over here on the ground all right yeah i don't know what this was but it's something most substantial thing we've seen all day except for that little stuff that little um foundation out in the middle of the lake there and then up ahead you can see how the road the old road goes straight this is state hill road but the main trail goes this way which is a road in of itself but that's where we were earlier when we were down by the lake we saw this road coming out it crossed the sectional lake and reappeared on the other side there let's make our way we'll walk down there a little bit see if there's any foundations across this ice again yeah because there's the sign for the the border trail that's the way back to where we parked but let's go down here well when the army corps of engineers the people that built blue marsh when they removed the town they removed it so as i'm walking down this road i believe we're at the point where there'll be houses on either side looking down that way we're kind of looking down towards town we'll check them at that i'll show the old map again i think this point we could blc into town but yeah just nothing nothing really to see anymore but of course just as i say that i see a little trail going off this side poke my way up there a little bit and there's indeed a foundation up this way so let's go check it out i just saw a glimpse of concrete came back here let's walk back there together so maybe there's something back in here to check out so we're almost down by the lake bed again because like i said earlier we were walking that way but let's uh i saw a little trail there's a trail there just a little footpath run into the shrubs here right in the face and over in there i see some concrete so let's see where this trail let's see if this trail takes us over that way well there's definitely a foundation over there yeah right down right down in there all right let's uh why are we down there all right well it's not much but it's something compared to what we've been finding today let's left this ghost town i think you can call it that i guess it's just a small concrete foundation a lot of trash around here though not really sure what this was for too small to be a house so you can go around the other side of it you can see it in there all right yeah don't really know i'm not sure what to make of it but right off that main road so all right let me uh forget what i'm gonna do from here then we're back on the old road again here [Applause] yeah here we here's where like i said here's where we were earlier today we came across here went all the way around and walked up that way yeah because out there's that uh that one structure on the lake that we were looking at earlier all right we're parked holy over there so i got a little ways to walk it but we'll keep our eyes open for anything else and there could be other things to see along these old roads and trails but as you can see it's terribly overgrown down there you can't really even even here in the winter time i mean it's summertime it'd be impossible to see anything in there but even here in the middle of winter it's a little hard to be hard to spot anything down in there so there's there's the possibility of there being more to see than what we saw today but we did what we could we're not done yet i still gotta make my way back to the jeep something else surprise us on the way back i believe the parking lot is just up ahead i think my girl is parked actually parked down there somewhere but i hope they go out this way yeah she's looking at ice it's been time to walk on the side here just it's it's ice plus it's kind of melting a little bit so there's like water on top so it's just super slick it's just on the trail [Applause] so thanks for coming along on another adventure with me searching for a remnants of the ghost town of blue marsh i guess in some ways it's not really my ghost town because not much left at all like i said most of it would be out where the lake is we found a few things but you know i had to ease my curiosity i i lived near blue wash and i'm kind of doing a series on ghost towns at least working on it so had to ease my curiosity to see if there is indeed anything out here at all from from the town and the answer is not much but if you come out here in the winter of the lower lake levels you can see like some signs of the town and like i said there's probably only switch hands here there's probably more in the woods in the brush hidden to see that's just it's almost impossible to get back in there all right that's so fun to reach around the woods on the lakeshore all right i'm gonna get home i forgot to bring my food bag along so i'm getting kind of hungry all right as always thanks for coming along and uh i'll see you on the next one you

Channel: The Wandering Woodsman

Views: 19,838

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Id: rtQF9r6c44w

Length: 29min 13sec (1753 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 02 2022