Category: Moon Township

  • Fall Colors Reflected in Montour Run

    Fall leaves reflected in Montour Run

    A placid pool in Montour Run in Moon Township.

    Reflections of fall leaves
    Reflections of fall leaves
    Reflections in Montour Run
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
  • Fall Colors on the Montour Trail

    Fall colors on the Montour Trail

    A few scenes along a short stretch of the trail in Moon Township.

    Picnic table
    Bridge on the Montour Trail
    Bridge on the Montour Trail
    A yellow wood
    Fallen leaves
    Fall colors
    Bridge
    Sumac and maple
    Red, yellow, green
    Fall colors on the Montour Trail
    A curve in the trail
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.
  • More of Robin Hill, Moon Township

    Robin Hill from the front

    The only excuse we need for publishing more pictures of Robin Hill is that we have more pictures of Robin Hill. It’s a beautiful Georgian house designed by Henry Gilchrist for Francis and Mary Nimick; it was left to the township by Mary to be a park for the residents. We’ll walk around the house counterclockwise.

    Front door
    Perspective view of Robin Hill
    Right side of Robin Hill
    Perspective view of the garden side
    Garden face of the mansion
    Robin Hill mansion seen from the gazebo
    Back door of Robin Hill
    Window of Robin Hill
    Stairs up from the garden
    Left side of Robin Hill
    Garden face of Robin Hill
    Kodak EasyShare Z981; Kodak EasyShare Z1285.

    More pictures of Robin Hill, and a composite of the garden face.

  • Montour Trail

    Jogger on the Montour Trail

    The Montour Trail claims to be the nation’s longest suburban rail-trail. That is a matter of definition, of course: the trail connects to the Great Allegheny Passage, a rail-trail that goes through suburbs of at least three major cities—Pittsburgh, Cumberland, and Washington. But the Montour Trail is entirely within the Pittsburgh suburbs. It follows the path of the old Montour Railroad, which carried mostly coal until it finally gave up the ghost in the 1980s.

    Looking across a bridge
    Bicyclist crossing a bridge

    There are many short bridges along the trail, because it follows Montour Run for much of its length, and trains cannot afford to be as whimsical in their curves as small rivers often are.

    Bridge
    The date 1920 stamped in concrete
    Kodak EasyShare Z1285; Kodak EasyShare Z981.

    This bridge is prominently dated in the concrete.

  • Montour Run in Early Autumn

    Montour Run

    In Moon Township, Montour Run alternates between placid pools reflecting the forest around them and gentle burbling rapids.

    Montour Run with tree leaning over the water
    Trees reclected in Montour Run
    Montour Run
    Reflections in Montour Run
  • Montour Run

    Montour Run

    End-of-summer sunlight filters through the leaves along Montour Run in Moon Township.

    Montour Run
    Montour Run
    Montour Run
    Montour Run
    Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6; Kodak EasyShare Z1285.
  • Remnants of the Oil Industry in Moon Township

    Oil rig

    California’s gold and Pennsylvania’s oil were the two great booms of the 1800s. The Gold Rush gets all the glamorous stories, because gold is shiny and oil is dark and slimy. But oil made bigger fortunes. According to Wikipedia, oil production in Pennsylvania peaked in 1891. Well into the twentieth century, it was common to see oil derricks even in back yards in suburban towns. “Oil Wells in Moon Township” at the Moon Township Historical Society has some personal memories of the oil industry in Moon Township.

    Robin Hill Park preserves some memories of the oil industry, which you can easily visit if you walk down the access road behind the Robin Hill mansion.

    Some of the pictures in this article are enormous, with more than 20 megabytes of data if you enlarge them. Be careful on a metered connection. We are trying out a Samsung cell phone with a 50-megapixel camera. The results are okay. It will not replace good cameras, but it gives us more pixels to crop out in an emergency cell-phone picture.

    (more…)
  • Field of Flowers

    Field of native flowers
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.

    A field of native flowers in Robin Hill Park, Moon Township.

  • Garden Face of Robin Hill, Moon Township

    Robin Hill from the back patio
    Composite of three photographs from a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6.

    Old Pa Pitt had intended to place this picture with the rest of the pictures of Robin Hill the other day, but his automatic stitching software failed him. He had been reasonably careful in taking the three photographs so that they would line up nearly perfectly, but the stitching software produced a comical monstrosity reminiscent of Frank Gehry. What went wrong? Only because Father Pitt was stubborn enough to edit the “control points” himself—“control points” being identical features marked in two pictures, so that the software knows how to align them properly—did he discover the problem. The parade of identical windows was too much for the program. The extreme symmetry caused it to identify this window as the same as that window, which caused the whole building to collapse in a heap.

    So old Pa Pitt stubbornly picked out all the control points himself, and produced a nearly perfect rendering of the garden side of the mansion. Stubbornness is a character flaw, but it has its uses.

  • Robin Hill, Moon Township

    Robin Hill

    Robin Hill was designed for Francis and Mary Nimick by Henry Gilchrist. He gave them a classic Georgian country house, and, like many country houses, it is really meant to be enjoyed from the garden side.

    Back of Robin Hill

    The house was built in 1926, and for nearly half a century the Nimicks enjoyed it. When Mary died in 1971, she willed the whole estate to the township to be preserved as a park.

    Back of Robin Hill
    Back door
    Back door
    Robin Hill
    View of the house through the trees
    Window
    Chimney
    Another chimney
    Side of the house
    Front of the house

    The front of the house presents a dignified appearance to the visitor.

    Front door
    Front of the house
    View of the house through the trees

    Cameras: Kodak EasyShare Z981; Sony Alpha 3000; Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6.