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From The Allegheny, by Frederick Way, Jr., 1942, p.190:
The
surviving beauty spot of the Allegheny valley par excellence, lies
south of Franklin, Pennsylvania. The river uses up 35 miles of its
course going 15 miles to Emlenton. To accomplish this, it goes off on a
leisurely excursion around bends, sometimes aiming for the Gulf of
Mexico, oftentimes for the Atlantic seaboard, once or twice for Lake
Superior, and for a mile or so very certainly toward the North Pole.
While engaged upon this serpentine adventure, the river is buried deep
in yawning mountain gorges. The section is inhabited by eagles and a
few buzzards, mainly. The railroad which parallels the Allegheny most
of the distance from Pittsburgh to Oil City takes one look at this
primitive chaos and disappears through a tunnel for other fields to
cinder. Once in a while an engine pops out of a hillside to survey the
situation, only to pop promptly into another tunnel and scurry away
again. High outcroppings of bare rock stand solitary sentinel on the
hillsides and catch the direct rays of the afternoon sun and reflect
them into the gloomy green vales below. At several points the sun comes
up at 11:30 in the morning and sets at 1:30 - so a native told us. This
native was tending a "hilside" farm set at an angle of about 45
degrees. He placed his cabin at the foot of the farm; said it was a
handy arrangement: on rainy days he need only look up the chimney and
watch the corn grow above him. He planted the field by standing on the
rooftop firing a shotgun loaded with corn kernels and with deadly aim.
He didn't seem very reliable looking, otherwise, as I remember him; in
my notebook, where these items were jotted, is a penciled '?' inasmuch
as such hillside farming methods are pursued in Kentucky only, far as I
know. One small town known as Kennerdale (Kennerdell), drifted into
this region by some mistake; the inhabitants have slowly become aware
of the error and have been moving away, until now there isn't much left
of it.
Geologists tell us that this section of the Allegheny is
rather new. The original Allegheny River started at the headwaters of
what is now the Clarion. The present Clarion valley was the upper
Allegheny valley. The glaciers were responsible for the shift, and
caused a river to slither down from Franklin and seek outlet into the
Ohio-Mississippi system. As frequently attends such cataclysmic
upheavals in nature, the result is splendid to look upon. The entire
region is useless for farming, or lumbering, or railroad building, or
highway construction, and with these patent advantages, has remained a
beautiful cool paradise on a hot summer day, where silence screams to
make itself heard, and vague scents of fragrant shrubs waft from glens
and coves. A long-legged crane stands on a sandy bar at the head of a
riffle watching for a fish and several wild ducks poke inquisitive
bills among reeds in the shallow bars. There are no signs proclaiming
this section as a 'sanctuary' nor has it been turned into a park, or a
reservation. A few fishermen have discovered access to the region and
on a Sunday, or the Fourth of July, the 'muskies' and the bass may ogle
at wading boots casting rubbery brown and yellow gleams in the shoals,
and notice peculiar artificial bugs switching along just below the
surface."
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