Highland Park's Ghost Town

In the 100-year-old image of the Heth's Run Bridge you can see some buildings on the far-side of the biurdge. Those structures are long gone. They may have lasted until the 1930s and the building of the Highland PArk Bridge. Te approaches needed every bit of footprint at the base of the hill to squeeze in the approach ramps.

If you walk the woods above Butler Street east of One Wild Place (formerly Hill Road) you will notice utility lines and poles through the trees along the path of a former road through there. Can it be that this utiltiy line was last used 75 years ago, predating the Highland Park Bridge?

There are also sewers located in the mids of the woods. This old road is now used for a new trail that loops up the PArk Road near Carnegie Lake...another link in a network of trails and paths that could span the East End to Frick Park.

The Fill of Haight's Run

The Heth's Run Bridge still stands but the Valley is no more. Sometime in the 1930s the City started using the Valley of Heth's Run as a trsh dump. This next picture is taken on the river side of the bridge from the 1915 photo...you can see the railing of the Bridge at the top.

This is years of fill...and the fill goes all the back toward the Highland Park neighborhood at Heth's Park off of Hampton Street.

The stream remains, buried. The manholes for the now sewered stream are some of the deepest I have seen...and they had to be extended as the fill deepened.

In the first half of the last decades creative minds and commmunity advocates promoted a valley restoration concept. Funding has been pursued and some has been awarded; but the project has stalled. Lets keep this vision alive and active.

Heth's Run - March 12

Winter's grasp weakened again and this Saturday was perfect for the riverfront walk I can tak directly from my Sheridan Avenue Estate. I started by generally following the path of a raindrop. Before sewers rain landing on Sheridan Avenue flowed toward Heth's Run and then to the Allegheny River.
But, now to follow the flow of a raindrop you need a map.

In the last decade of the 19th century Highland Park was built up and sewer lines dug and put down. At that point most of the water from our Sheridan Estate would flow into the sewers and flow down to the sewer beneath Haights Ave instead of down Heth's Run.