The Pennsylvania Turnpike, sometimes shortened to Penna Turnpike or PA Turnpike, is a controlled-access toll road that is operated by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States. It runs for 360 miles (580 km) across the state, connecting Pittsburgh in Western Pennsylvania with Philadelphia in eastern Pennsylvania, and passes through four tunnels as it crosses the Appalachian Mountains in central Pennsylvania.
Interstate 68 (I-68) is a 113.15-mile (182.10 km) Interstate Highway in the U.S. states of West Virginia and Maryland, connecting I-79 in Morgantown, West Virginia, east to I-70 in Hancock, Maryland. I-68 is also Corridor E of the Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS). From 1965 until the freeway's construction was completed in 1991, it was designated as U.S. Route 48 (US 48). In Maryland, the highway is known as the National Freeway, an homage to the historic National Road, which I-68 parallels between Keysers Ridge and Hancock. The freeway mainly spans rural areas and crosses numerous mountain ridges along its route. A road cut at Sideling Hill exposed geological features of the mountain and has become a tourist attraction.
Fulton County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 14,556, making it the fourth-least populous county in Pennsylvania. Its county seat is McConnellsburg. The county was created on April 19, 1850, from a part of Bedford County and named after inventor Robert Fulton. The county is part of the Southwest Pennsylvania region of the state.
U.S. Route 522 is a spur route of US 22 in the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The U.S. Highway travels in a north-south direction, and runs 308.59 miles (496.63 km) from US 60 near Powhatan, Virginia, to its northern terminus at US 11 and US 15 near Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. US 522 serves many small cities and towns in the Piedmont, Blue Ridge Mountains, and northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The highway serves the Virginia communities of Goochland, Mineral, Culpeper, the town of Washington, and Front Royal and the independent city of Winchester. US 522 then follows the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians north and then east through the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, a 2-mile-wide (3.2 km) stretch of Western Maryland, and South Central Pennsylvania to its terminus in the Susquehanna Valley. The highway serves Berkeley Springs, West Virginia; Hancock, Maryland; and the Pennsylvania communities of McConnellsburg, Mount Union, Lewistown, and Middleburg.
In structural geology, a syncline is a fold with younger layers closer to the center of the structure, whereas an anticline is the inverse of a syncline. A synclinorium is a large syncline with superimposed smaller folds. Synclines are typically a downward fold (synform), termed a synformal syncline, but synclines that point upwards can be found when strata have been overturned and folded.
Breezewood is an unincorporated town in East Providence Township, Bedford County in south-central Pennsylvania, United States. Along a traditional pathway for Native Americans, European settlers, and British troops during colonial times, in the early 20th century, the small valley that became known as Breezewood was a popular stopping place for automobile travelers on the Lincoln Highway, beginning in 1913. Greyhound Lines opened a Post House facility in the town in 1935; it closed in 2004.
Sideling Hill Tunnel is one of three original Pennsylvania Turnpike tunnels abandoned after two massive realignment projects. The others are nearby Rays Hill Tunnel, and farther west, the Laurel Hill Tunnel. It was less expensive to realign the Turnpike than to bore a second tube for four lane traffic. Sideling Hill Tunnel is 6,782 feet (2,067 m) long.
Rays Hill Tunnel is one of three original Pennsylvania Turnpike tunnels that were abandoned after two massive realignment projects. The others included the Sideling Hill Tunnel, and farther west, the Laurel Hill Tunnel.
Laurel Hill Tunnel is a 4,541-foot-long (1,384 m) tunnel on the Pennsylvania Turnpike that was bypassed and abandoned in 1964. It is bored through Laurel Ridge, spanning the border of Westmoreland and Somerset counties. Its western portal may be seen from the eastbound side of the Turnpike at milepost 99.3.
The Allegheny Mountain Tunnel is a vehicular tunnel carrying the Pennsylvania Turnpike through the Allegheny Mountains. At this point, the Turnpike carries Interstates 70 and 76. When the tunnel was built, it was considered an "engineering marvel."
The Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike is the common name of a 13-mile (21 km) stretch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike that was bypassed in 1968 when a modern stretch opened to ease traffic congestion in the tunnels. In this case, the Sideling Hill Tunnel and Rays Hill Tunnel were bypassed, as was one of the Turnpike's travel plazas. The bypass is located just east of the heavily congested Breezewood interchange for Interstate 70 (I-70) eastbound at what is now I-76 exit 161. The section of the turnpike was at one time part of the South Pennsylvania Railroad.
Buchanan State Forest is a Pennsylvania State Forest in Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry District #2. The main office is located in McConnellsburg in Fulton County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The forest also includes tracts in Franklin and Bedford Counties. It is named for James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, the fifteenth President of the United States.
Interstate 70 (I-70) is an Interstate Highway that is located in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States. It runs east to west across the southwest part of Pennsylvania and serves the southern fringe of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.
Wills Mountain is a quartzite-capped ridge in the Ridge and Valley physiographic province of the Appalachian Mountains in Pennsylvania and Maryland, extending from near Bedford, Pennsylvania, to near Cumberland, Maryland. It is the northernmost of several mountain ridges included within the Wills Mountain Anticline.
U.S. Route 40 in the U.S. state of Maryland runs from Garrett County in Western Maryland to Cecil County in the state's northeastern corner. With a total length of 221 miles (356 km), it is the longest numbered highway in Maryland. Almost half of the road overlaps or parallels with Interstate 68 (I-68) or I-70, while the old alignment is generally known as US 40 Alternate, US 40 Scenic, or Maryland Route 144. West of Baltimore, in the Piedmont and Appalachian Mountains / Blue Ridge region of the Western Maryland panhandle of the small state, the portions where it does not overlap an Interstate highway are mostly two-lane roads. The portion northeast of Baltimore going toward Wilmington in northern Delaware and Philadelphia in southeastern Pennsylvania is a four-lane divided highway, known as the Pulaski Highway. This section crosses the Susquehanna River at the north end of the Chesapeake Bay on the Thomas J. Hatem Memorial Bridge.
The Mississippian Pocono Formation is a mapped bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia, in the United States. It is also known as the Pocono Group in Maryland and West Virginia, and the upper part of the Pocono Formation is sometimes called the Burgoon Formation or Burgoon Sandstone in Pennsylvania. The Pocono is a major ridge-former In the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians of the eastern United States
Rays Hill is a mountain ridge in Pennsylvania's Ridge and Valley Appalachians region. It is bordered to the east by Sideling Hill. About halfway along its run, the west side of Rays Hill ties into Broad Top Mountain, a large plateau.
U.S. Route 40 Scenic (US 40 Scenic) is a scenic route of US 40 in the U.S. state of Maryland. US 40 Scenic, which is known for most of its route as National Pike, is the old alignment of US 40 over Town Hill in eastern Allegany County and Sideling Hill in far western Washington County. The highway was originally constructed as part of a turnpike connecting Baltimore with the eastern end of the National Road at Cumberland in the early 19th century. The highway was paved as a modern road in the mid-1910s and designated US 40 in the late 1920s. US 40 was relocated over Sideling Hill in the early 1950s and over Town Hill in the mid-1960s. The US 40 Scenic designation was first applied to the old highway over Town Hill in 1965. Following the completion of Interstate 68 (I-68) at Sideling Hill, US 40 Scenic was extended east along old US 40's crossing of the mountain in the late 1980s. US 40 Scenic is the only scenic route in the U.S. Highway System; formerly, there was a second, US 412 Scenic in Oklahoma, but this has since been redesignated to a more conventional "Alternate" route.
The gaps of the Allegheny, meaning gaps in the Allegheny Ridge in west-central Pennsylvania, is a series of escarpment eroding water gaps along the saddle between two higher barrier ridge-lines in the eastern face atop the Allegheny Ridge or Allegheny Front escarpment. The front extends south through Western Maryland and forms much of the border between Virginia and West Virginia, in part explaining the difference in cultures between those two post-Civil War states. While not totally impenetrable to daring and energetic travelers on foot, passing the front outside of the water gaps with even sure footed mules was nearly impossible without navigating terrain where climbing was necessary on slopes even burros would find extremely difficult.
