Poking Around in Pennsylvania

Three Roadside Monuments
by Craig Mains

1. On US Route 220 on the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania sits this marker indicating the state line, which, in this case, is also the Mason-Dixon line. We had traveled this route at least three or four times before I noticed it, possibly because there is another, more prominent, “Welcome to Pennsylvania” sign further north.

The marker is made of cast concrete and is triangular. Maryland is shown on the north side (so motorists heading south know they are entering Maryland) and Pennsylvania is shown on the south side. The third side, facing east is blank. On two sides it reads “Mason and Dixon Line, Penn State Highway Dept.”

I couldn’t find any information on when the monument was first erected. I found one newspaper article that reported that the marker had been removed during a highway improvement project in the 1990s and had not been replaced afterwards. A local farmer lobbied the Pennsylvania Highway Department to replace the marker, which they had misplaced. The marker, once it was rediscovered in storage, was reset in 2002. I have never noticed similar markers along other highways crossing into Pennsylvania from Maryland or West Virginia.

Both photos are from Wikimedia Commons. The photos I took did not show the lettering as distinctly and the day I stopped by the vegetation was much higher making it hard to see the base. All other photos are mine.

2. This original Lincoln Highway marker stands along Business Rt. 30 on Main Street in Everett. In 1925 the US Bureau of Public Roads switched to a system of numbered roads, eliminating named highways. One of the last projects of the Lincoln Highway Association before they disbanded was to cast 3000 concrete markers, with the permission of the US Bureau of Public Roads. 2436 of the markers were placed on September 1, 1928, mostly by Boy Scouts. No one seemed to know what happened to the other 564 markers. Many of the placed markers have been stolen, disappeared, damaged in accidents, or moved to other locations. Not many are in their original location like this one in Everett.

Like the Mason-Dixon line marker, we had probably passed this marker two or three time before I noticed it. The markers are probably about six feet long but only about three feet are above ground because of the top-heavy design. The base is octagonal. On the top is an embedded bronze medallion of Abraham Lincoln above the Lincoln Highway logo.

A close-up of the Lincoln Highway logo. The colors were mixed into the concrete and included in the final casting making maintenance painting unnecessary. Some of the oxidation by-products of the tarnishing of the bronze medallion have bled down into the Lincoln Highway logo.

On the east side of the marker is a curved arrow indicating a bend in the highway. Like the logo, the blue color was mixed into the concrete.

A close-up of the bronze medallion. It reads, “This highway dedicated to Abraham Lincoln.” The medallion was embedded in the concrete in such a way that it could not be removed without damaging it. The concrete has a coarse surface because of the big grain size of the sand that was used. There may have been some weathering of the surface as well.

3. I’m not sure it could be called a roadside monument as it isn’t visible from the road. The monument is about 2.5 miles down a single-lane dirt road with occasional turnouts near Blue Knob State Park. The monument is a memorial to two children, George Cox, age 7, and his brother Joseph, age 5, who disappeared into the woods near their home on April 24, 1856. This sign is along the state road indicating the turnoff to the road to the memorial.

The memorial is a short hike from the small parking area. In 1856 this area was sparsely populated and mostly still virgin timber. It is believed that the boys may have gotten lost after setting off to follow their father who had left to go squirrel hunting on his own. Thousands of people are reported to have searched the woods for the children over a two-week period.

A local resident, Jacob Dibert, claimed to have a series of recurring dreams, which he believed had to do with the lost boys. In his dreams he saw a deer carcass, a child’s shoe, a log across a stream, and a birch tree with its top missing. He told only his wife and his brother-in-law, Harrison Whysong, about the dreams. Whysong believed he knew where some of the combination of objects were, so the two set out. They found the lifeless bodies of the two boys huddled together at the base of the birch tree.

In 1906 the nearby village of Pavia, on the fiftieth anniversary of the disappearance of the boys, began collecting money for a permanent monument. The monument was erected in 1910 at the site where the boys were found in 1856.

The monument reads, “The lost children of the Alleghenies were found here May 8, 1856 by Jacob Dibert and Harrison Whysong.” At one point, the parents were suspected of having murdered the children to garner sympathy and donations. The floorboards of the family cabin were ripped up in a search for the bodies. It seems that Dibert and Whysong were never suspects. The incident has become something of a local folktale and some local people believe the area is haunted by the children. The shelter and the chain-link must have been added to prevent vandalism.

Some people who visit the monument leave toys for the children, mostly stuffed animals and plastic cars and trucks. If the boys were able to make use of them, I’m sure they would be puzzled by what they were since they wouldn’t have been remotely like the toys of 1856. One thoughtful soul left them a bagful of marbles, which may have been the only item that they might have been familiar with.

Country singer Allison Krause wrote a song about the incident called, “Jacob’s Dream.”

November 2020

 

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