After leaving the Republic of Floyd, we continued on our journey north on I-81, stopping first in Lexington, VA to share a very tasty lunch, with an old friend, at an old restaurant on the edge of the beautiful Washington and Lee University. After leaving Lexington, we continued north, crossing West Virginia and Maryland into southwest PA. Our first stop was at the memorial of Flight 93. The site gives one an immense sense of sorrow coupled with knowledge of the brave actions of the passengers and crew aboard Flight 93 that prevented it from attacking the US Capital. The motto of the site is, “A common field one day, A field of honor forever.

Our next stop was at the site of the 1889 Johnstown Flood. The flood killed 2,209 people. I have been thinking for quite while about what I could say about our visit to the Visitor’s Center (VC) at the Memorial. I have no words to describe what Memorial will be showing. The Memorial was under construction, both inside and out, so I was unable to get only one photo of a man clinging to a part of a roof with flood waters all around him. Many books have been written about the flood itself, the cause of the South Fork dam failure and individual survival stories.

Leaving here we headed east toward the last NPS site to visit, The Allegheny Portage Railroad, on our trip to Freeland.

The Allegheny Portage Railroad was, “The first railroad to circumvent the Allegheny Mountains, the Allegheny Portage Railroad was the finishing piece of the Pennsylvania Mainline Canal. "The Portage," opened in 1834, marking the first time that there was one, direct route between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. All things to all people, it served merchants, passengers, slaves in pursuit of freedom, and soldiers from the Mexican War.” The system included a series of inclined planes and a 900–foot long tunnel carved through solid rock and made travel through the Allegheny Mountains possible in the 1800s.

The following is from Wikipedia. “ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegheny_Portage_Railroad”
“The Allegheny Portage Railroad was the first railroad constructed through the Allegheny Mountains in central Pennsylvania, United States; it operated from 1834 to 1854 as the first transportation infrastructure through the gaps of the Allegheny that connected the midwest to the eastern seaboard across the barrier range of the Allegheny Front. Authorized as part of the Main Line of Public Works legislation in 1824, it was a series of ten inclines connecting to a branch of the Pennsylvania Canal at either end, approximately 36 miles (58 km) long overall. It had five inclines on either side of the drainage divide running athwart the ridge line from Blair Gap through along the kinked saddle at the summit into Cresson, Pennsylvania. The Portage Railroad utilized cleverly designed wheeled barges to ride a narrow-gauge rail track with steam-powered stationary engines lifting the vehicles. Except for peak moments of severe storms, it was an all-weather, all-seasons operation. Along with the rest of the Main Works, it cut transport time from Philadelphia to the Ohio River from weeks to just 3–5 days. The roadbed of the railroad did not incline monotonically upwards, but rose in relatively long, saw-toothed stretches of slightly-sloped flat terrain suitable to animal powered towing, alternating with steep cable railway inclined planes using static steam engine powered windlasses, similar to mechanisms of modern ski lifts.
It connected two canal 'divisions' of the Main Line of Public Works of the Pennsylvania Canal System, from Johnstown on the west through the relative flats to Hollidaysburg on the east, thus allowing continuous barge traffic between the Ohio and the Susquehanna rivers. Considered a technological marvel in its day, it played a critical role in opening the interior of the United States beyond the Appalachian Mountains to settlement and commerce. It included the first railroad tunnel in the United States, the Staple Bend Tunnel, and its inauguration was marked with great fanfare.”
After looking at many of the exhibits, we continued on to Freeland.