GAPers passing through Garrett may want to check out the beginning of the 21-mile-long 9-11 Memorial Trail from Garrett to the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville. This stretch is part of the larger 1,300-mile September 11th National Memorial Trail network. After crossing the Casselman River Bridge watch for the marked bicycle path to the right on Lafayette Street. Follow the signs to Water Street and turn left. Continue north through downtown Garrett (don’t blink) on Water Street a little over a mile to the current terminus of the trail, just short of the new Route 219 Overpass.
The first section of the proposed trail will follow the roadbed of the old Buffalo Valley Railroad, later known as the Berlin Branch of the B&O Railroad, 8.5 miles to Berlin. The Buffalo Valley Railroad was founded in 1871, the same year the Pittsburgh & Connellsville Railroad reached Garrett, by enterprising businessmen in Berlin and farmers in the Buffalo Valley. The first president of the railroad was Samuel Philson Jr. He was the son of Robert Philson (c. 1759–1831), an immigrant from Ireland who settled in Berlin, where he became a storekeeper. Philson was one of the ringleaders of the Whiskey Rebellion (1791–1794), a protest against the tax imposed on whiskey by the federal government in 1791. Farmers in western Pennsylvania had made a business of converting their excess corn, rye, wheat, and barley into whiskey, which was much more easily transportable to eastern markets than the grain itself. Only four bushels of grain could be loaded onto a pack horse, but one horse could carry the whiskey made from twenty-four bushels of grain. Farmers and businessmen in western Pennsylvania viewed the whiskey tax as an assault on their livelihoods and armed protests soon broke out. President George Washington dispatched 13,000 federal troops to western Pennsylvania to suppress the rebellion. Washington himself led one of the detachments to Bedford, thirty miles east of Berlin, “down off the mountain,” as locals like to say. Washington then sent Alexander Hamilton—he of the musical Hamilton fame—to Berlin to arrest the instigators of the rebellion. Robert Philson and sixteen others were taken into custody. Philson himself was taken to Philadelphia and tried for treason, reportedly the first time anyone had been tried for treason in the United States. Twelve honest men acquitted him due to lack of evidence and he went on to a distinguished public career. He joined the army and served as a brigadier-general in the War of 1812, was elected to serve one term as a representative in the U.S. Congress, and eventually became an associate judge in Somerset County.
So why didn’t George Washington himself come to Berlin and arrest Robert Philson? According to local lore word was sent down off the mountain to Bedford that if Washington showed his face in Berlin he would be shot on sight. To this day some people around Berlin like to claim that fancy-pants George Washington was too much of a chicken-shit to show his face in their town and instead sent his henchman Alexander Hamilton to do his dirty work for him. Of course Berlin is well-known for its braggarts, gasbags, and blowhards, so this story may well be apocryphal.
In any case, Robert Philson’s son Samuel became one of the area’s leading businessmen and was instrumental in the creation of the Buffalo Valley Railroad. In 1880 the B&O bought out the Pittsburgh & Connellsville Railroad that ran through Garrett and also acquired the Buffalo Valley Railroad, which then became known as the Berlin Branch of the B&O. Among locals it was affectionately called the Huckleberry Railroad. Huckleberries grew in abundance in the Allegheny Mountains near the headwaters of Buffalo Creek. They were packed into ten to twelve quart pails and transported to Berlin, where they were loaded on the Berlin Branch and sent to various cities on the B&O Railroad. American chestnuts (Castanea dentata), picked by the bushel before the chestnut blight killed almost all chestnut trees in the Alleghenies, were also shipped on the railroad, as were maple syrup and maple sugar. Locals also harvested swamp grass, which was dried and sent to markets on the East Coast, where it was used as a filler to pack fragile objects like glass, china, and crockery. In the late nineteenth century, before the introduction of refrigeration, ice from lakes in the area was also shipped to cities, where it was in high demand. Whiskey and other alcoholic products, including medicinal alcohol, were shipped from distilleries near Berlin, including the famous Franz Distillery, south of Berlin. Farmers in the Buffalo Valley and the surrounding area also sent their milk to a creamery at the terminus of the railroad in Berlin.
All of these products were soon eclipsed by coal. Numerous mines exploited the fabulously rich coal deposits in the Buffalo Valley. By 1927 one company alone, Consolidation Coal, had shipped 1,271,889 tons of coal from its mines in Goodtown, located on a short spur of the Berlin Branch of the B&O two miles from Berlin. The board of directors of Consolidation Coal included James Roosevelt, the father of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and F.D.R.’s maternal grandfather, Warren Delano II. Thousands of immigrants were brought in to work the mines, resulting in several mining towns in the Buffalo Valley. Locals usually referred to these immigrants as Russians, although very few if any were actually ethnic Russians. Most were Ukrainians, Belorussians, Georgians, and others from the fringes of the rapidly disintegrating Czarist Russian Empire.
The Berlin Branch of the B&O shut down for good in the 1970s. Its right-of-way sat idle for the next five decades and will now be repurposed as the first section of the 9-11 Memorial Trail. GAPs who want to get a glimpse of the trail can proceed to near the current terminus outside of Garrett and then head up the Buffalo Valley on Fogletown Road. After a mile or so the road passes by the Burkholder Covered Bridge. Built in 1870 the 47-foot-long bridge is one of seven in Somerset County utilizing the one-span Burr-Arch type of construction. The railroad probably made a stop here. Another 1.7 miles up the valley Fogletown Road runs into Owl Hollow Road. On Owl Hollow Road is the Beachdale Crossing, another station stop on the old Buffalo Creek Railroad. Once a community of sorts, it is now best known for the Beachdale Brethren Church. GAPers can continue on Owl Hollow Road to old Route 219 (the Mason-Dixon Highway) and return to Garrett on the road, or continue north on Route 219 1.8 miles to Pine Hill Road. Turn right and proceed to the old village of Raineytown, named after W. T. Rainey, a coal operator who opened a mine near here.
The village itself was established in 1898 and consisted of sixteen or more houses for coal miners. At first the village was called Red Raineytown because all the houses were painted red. The stop here on the Buffalo Valley Railroad was known as the Pine Hill Station, named after the village of Pine Hill about a mile to the south. Local farmers brought their milk here for shipment to a creamery in Berlin. There was a large company store in the village, but it burned down in 1903. In 1921, during the Prohibition Era, authorities raided a still used to make moonshine in the basement of one of the dwellings. Now only two houses remain in Raineytown. GAPer can return to Garrett via the Mason-Dixon Highway. The truly daring can backtrack .15 of a mile on the Pine Hill Road and then take Weighley Mill Road 1.8 miles to the famously rough and tumble town of Berlin, where, if we are to believe locals, even George Washington feared to tread. The 9-11 Memorial Trail continues from Berlin 12.5 miles to the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville using already existing roads. On September 7, 2024, an organized bike ride took place from Berlin to the Memorial and back, starting at 9:00 a.m. and ending at 2:00 p.m. This is now an annual event. The next “Tour de Trail”, as the event is called—apparently a takeoff on the Tour de France—will take place on Saturday, September 6, 2025.
As of this writing it is not known when the Garrett-Berlin section of the 9-11 Memorial Trail will be completed.
