get out lehigh valley: irt

The walk today falls under the "learn something new every day"  category. I might need to take the history walk.

This morning was the Get Out Lehigh Valley walk at the Ironton Rail Trail. As you can see in the photos, it had snowed. This morning it was about 24 degrees when I left the house. With a lot of wind. I have no idea what te wind chill was, but it was low. I'm guessing it was about 12.

Before walking, I had to take my niece to a Girl Scout cookie booth at Walmart. The child had a million layers on and she was destined to be cold. (And she was.) I then hopped on 22 and went to the IRT. It was 9:30 when I arrived. A full half-hour early. The sign-in people were there so I signed in and headed towards the Whitehall Parkway.

 This is about 1/2 mile in, at the bottom of the hill. I took the Parkway spur towards McArthur Rd. When I reached McArthur, I turned around and came back. It was about 9:55 and they were still checking in people. We didn't start until at least 10:15. Plus we still had the group pic to take. What amazed me was that 40+ people showed up to walk in the cold.

We went to the red caboose for the picture were a member of the IRT commission gave us a talk on the trail and Portland cement in Coplay. And, of course, it's importance to the development of the Lehigh Valley. This person runs history tours of the trail--there are 50 historic artifacts on the trail. We learned about the cabooses restoration and the restoration in progress of the Pullman car on the parkway spur of the trail. They are also building a trailhead at the North Whitehall section of the trail. The section near Mauch Chunk road.

Do you know why the Lehigh Valley was so important to the development of Portland Cement? Now I do. It wasn't only the Bethlehem Steel that built America ...

I need to take one of those history tours.  I learned a lot from the red caboose to the kilns. That's only a half mile, or so. there is one at the end of March, and another in October.

First, the railroad ran under the street, and one of the ruins is a bridge support. And that odd little building on the trail was the wash house. And that the phone booth 96.6 indicated how far they were from Reading terminal in NYC (now the World Trade Center). Also that when Conrail took over, they destroyed all the phone booths so they didn't have to pay taxes on them. This one was found in Slatington, in the woods. It was restored and brought to the trail. The phone inside is fake. The real one is at the Atlas Cement Museum in Northampton. Who knew? I've seen the signs for Atlas Museum in Northampton and thought it was a building full of maps! The Museum is open to the public on the 2nd and 4th Sunday from 1:00 P.M. to 3:00 P.M. between May and September. Okay, that might be a hard trip to plan, but I'm going.

We finally reached the kilns in Saylor park. (Founder of Coplay cement.). The front one on the left cost $350K to restore. There are eight more. (These are only 60 feet tall. They were taller at one point to stick out of the buildings, like smokestacks. They were removed when the building was demolished.) They (not clear who) are trying to raise the money from cement companies across the country because they are historically significant. These kilns are where the "recipe" for Portland cement was perfected. The official name for them is Schoefer kilns. They only operated about 10 years, in the 1890s, before the rolling mills were developed. The ones in this area are the only ones left. The ones in Germany were destroyed during WWII and the bricks used to rebuild the cities.

I told you I learned a lot.

I went a little further and turned around and went back. The slow pace was interesting but cold. And I needed to collect my sister and the child. History tours are best on a warmer day.

Miles/Steps:  4-ish
Bathrooms:   Port-o-potty. But I didn't use it. 
Wildlife:        A couple of birds of prey circling the kilns
Weather:      mid-20s, sunny, poop-load of wind. Clearly, March is still in its "lion" stage. 
Extras:         A blizzard is coming. A blizzard is coming. I'm so excited. Maybe I can use my snowshoes after all.