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This past weekend I grabbed some friends and ventured west to re-visit the abandoned turnpike.  As you may recall from my previous posts, the abandoned turnpike is hands-down my favorite nugget of bizarre Pennsylvania history.  And ever since I learned that scenes for the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road had been filmed along [...]

As mentioned in some of my previous posts, Pennsylvania has a very unique bit of history about 90 minutes west of here.  Nestled between Breezewood and the Sideling Hill travel plaza, a 16-mile-long segment of the Pennsylvania Turnpike has been abandoned since 1966.  The roadway, complete with two large tunnels, cuts through the mountains like [...]

As the official representative* of Pennsylvania’s Abandoned Turnpike, I decided to take advantage of the recent snowfall, chilly temperatures, and “low” gas prices to make another trek out to Breezewood.  In typical fashion, my plans to leave at 8am wound up becoming my plans to leave at 11am, which means I left around 12:30pm.  But [...]

There’s a movie coming out this November that features everybody’s favorite 13-mile stretch of abandoned highway.  The abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike was used as a major filming location for The Road due its post-apocalyptic appearance and relative isolation.  Look at slides #6 and #4 of the USA Today slideshow, and you’ll see the eastern portal of [...]

The first I heard about it was back around ‘93. A friend told me about it while we were driving up to the then-new Steamtown Mall. “Hey, did you ever hear about that Concrete City place? Yeah, it’s weird; it’s like they were going to build apartments or something but they just [...]

PennDOT is selling off some of the older, less fortunate bridges in the state.  A full list can be viewed here, and the price is more or less whatever you feel like paying.  Very likely, whoever purchases a bridge will be responsible for relocating and/or demolishing it.  Still … how awesome would it be to [...]

The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940 with seven tunnels. Today, only five remain open. Three have been bypassed (Laurel Hill, Rays Hill, and Sideling Hill) and one more (Lehigh) has been built on the northeast extension. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is currently planning to bypass the Allegheny Tunnel, which would result in the first abandoned [...]