Special thanks to Jane at
Desolation Travel for posting a link to this article!
Be sure to check out her awesome site! Woo!
In the summer of 2008 two friends and I rented a truck, threw our bicycles in the back, and drove about 3 hours west... to Breezewood, PA. Breezewood itself is an interesting place, but it wasn't the purpose of our trip. What was? The 10+ miles of Pennsylvania Turnpike that had been abandoned 40 years earlier.
I had come across a few websites about the Abandoned PA Turnpike earlier in the year, and immediately decided that I needed to visit. I was completely fascinated by the idea of such a large abandoned segment of highway, now available for the daring hiker or bicyclist to explore. That, and it was close enough to do in a day trip.
The Journey
Breezewood
Upon taking exit 161 off of the PA Turnpike (I-76/I-70), we found ourselves in Breezewood, PA. Having been a popular travel route since only a Native American trail passed through the valley, Breezewood caters to the traveler passing through. The main stretch (Lincoln Hwy/US-30) is absolutely PACKED with motels, fast food restaurants, quick-marts, gas stations with plenty of overnight truck parking, and a travel center with shops to pick up anything an interstate traveler may need (including a rogue Radio Shack, which produces receipts that other Radio Shacks won't recognize for exchanges). And traffic. Breezewood has lots of traffic. And everyone is in a hurry to get back on the road.
To say Breezewood caters to travelers is not to say that it is a very hospitable place. In fact, most of the motels/restaurants/gas stations/etc are pretty run down looking, or quite outdated to say the very least. Take for example, the Breezewood Motel:
$29/night is a steal, but I can't say I'd want to sleep there.
The ladder on the right is a nice touch.
Onward to the Abandoned Highway
Eager to get to biking, we continued a few hundred feet east on US-30 and found what looked like as good a parking spot as any. We found a car parked in a gravel area between US-30 and Tannery Rd, right at the base of a hill. The hill was the bank for the overpass that had since been torn down, and at the top was our entrance to the Abandoned Turnpike!
"Pike2Bike is closed. You can still use it, but it's your own fault if you die."
Welcome to a former highway!
After about 1.5 miles of old highway with the occasional ambitious plant growing in a large crack, we found what may be the abandoned highway's biggest draw: a tunnel. This is the Ray's Hill Tunnel. It's about 2/3 of a mile long. When it was in use, it was the shortest of the Turnpike's seven tunnels. And now here it stands. Forty years after its closure, and becoming more and more overgrown by nature.
My friend Matty in front of Ray's Hill Tunnel
Looking into the tunnel, the only light was the tiny dot of sunlight we could see at the other end. The air was cool and moist, and smelled of mold. I took a photo using a flash, and quickly saw that the air looked as unpleasant as it smelled.
Delicious.
We found a rusty chair near the tunnel entrance, and the requisite amount of graffiti, but not much else. As for the doors to the left, locked. Since we had to pass through this tunnel again to get back to the car, we decided to try our luck with the doors on the next tunnel and save breaking and entering for later in the trip if necessary. We still had a lot more of the highway to explore!
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Exiting Ray's Hill Tunnel | Photo from Chernobyl? Nope!
And so we biked onward. The highway segment between the two tunnels isn't very different from a typical limited-access highway. Sure the road condition is a bit sub-par, and in places it's overgrown with plants, but it otherwise feels pretty much like a ride on a highway in rural PA - complete with occasional glimpses of farms. The highway has been used off and on for testing... testing new fuels, testing new paint, testing new reflectors, testing rumble-strips. So we encountered a bunch of changes in the road as we biked along.
Next up is the Sideling Hill Tunnel. At around 1.3 miles long, it is the longest tunnel on the PA Turnpike. The door to the room next to the tunnel entrance had been torn off, so we poked around with flashlights. The floor was flooded with about an inch of standing rusty water, but past that we found the stairs leading up to the ventilation shafts. Awesome!! Several stairs were missing, and many more were completely rusted through. Maybe this was a bad idea? No going back. Upon reaching the next floor, I noticed something was missing... a bunch of the floor. Not sure why or how, as it's a concrete structure. We managed to not plummet to our collective death. The next room housed a bunch of old equipment, which is apparently now a popular restroom for birds. Past the rusty equipment is an attic area that seemed to span the length of the tunnel. With lots of little circular holes in the floor, I'm guessing it was also used as access to change light bulbs in the tunnel ceiling. There was another room off to the side, but my friend entered and quickly exited, notifying us that there was a rotting vulture just inside the room, and not much else. Pass. Back around the missing-floor, down the rusty stairs, through the flooded room, and outside we go.
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First floor sludge | Poopy equipment
Ventilation attic with light bulb access
Since our flashlights had already endured one tunnel and a bunch of building exploration, the batteries were pretty drained. We made it maybe 1/5 of the way into the Sideling Hill Tunnel when our lights went out. We could still see the end of the tunnel we came from, but only darkness the direction we were heading. So we decided turning back was a better option than continuing into complete darkness with concrete falling from above us and holes in the road. Back to Breezewood for lunch, and a little driving around to charge the flashlights. We drove over to the other side of the Sideling Hill Tunnel, and attempted it from the opposite direction. Some cool road signs, graffiti, and a surplus of concrete medians were there. As the flashlights didn't hold up for more than a few minutes, we had to leave the tunnel uncompleted.
The History
Why was the turnpike abandoned?
All seven tunnels on the PA Turnpike were originally single tunnels through the mountain. The highway is two lanes in each direction, but at each tunnel it would squeeze down to one lane in each direction. An increase in vehicular traffic meant that there were frequent bottleneck issues. So in the 1960s the four tunnels that are still in operation were "twinned", meaning an additional tunnel was added right next to the existing one, to provide two lanes in each direction. The other three tunnels were bypassed, as I assume they thought it would be easier to go over and around the mountains, rather than through them again. The current rumor on the internet is that the third bypassed tunnel (Laurel Hill) is being used as a shed for road salt by the Turnpike Commission. So it's off limits.
Maps and Sources
I've created a map that may help if you ever visit:
Sources:
