USA | Allegheny Mountains | 9-11 Memorial Bike Trail From Garrett to Berlin

Bikers biking on the 150-mile-long Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, who pass through the town of Garrett may want to check out the beginning of the 21-mile-long 9-11 Memorial Trail from Garrett to the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville. This stretch is part of the larger 1,300-mile September 11th National Memorial Trail network. After crossing the Casselman River Bridge watch for the marked bicycle path to the right on Lafayette Street.

Casselman River looking north from theCasselman River Bridge

Water Street. Just follow the bikes

Downtown Garrett

Follow the signs to Water Street and turn left. Continue north through downtown Garrett (don’t blink) on Water Street a little over a mile to the current terminus of the trail, just short of the new Route 219 Overpass.

The current end of the 9-11 bike trail just outside of Garrett

The first section of the proposed trail will follow the roadbed of the old Buffalo Valley Railroad, later known as the Berlin Branch of the B&O Railroad, 8.5 miles to Berlin. The Buffalo Valley Railroad was founded in 1871, the same year the Pittsburgh & Connellsville Railroad reached Garrett, by enterprising businessmen in Berlin and farmers in the Buffalo Valley. The first president of the railroad was Samuel Philson Jr. He was the son of Robert Philson (c. 1759–1831), an immigrant from Ireland who settled in Berlin, where he became a storekeeper. Philson was one of the ringleaders of the Whiskey Rebellion (1791–1794), a protest against the tax imposed on whiskey by the federal government in 1791. Farmers in western Pennsylvania had made a business of converting their excess corn, rye, wheat, and barley into whiskey, which was much more easily transportable to eastern markets than the grain itself. Only four bushels of grain could be loaded onto a pack horse, but one horse could carry the whiskey made from twenty-four bushels of grain. Farmers and businessmen in western Pennsylvania viewed the whiskey tax as an assault on their livelihoods and armed protests soon broke out. 

President George Washington dispatched 13,000 federal troops to western Pennsylvania to suppress the rebellion. Washington himself led one of the detachments to Bedford, thirty miles east of Berlin, “down off the mountain,” as locals like to say. Washington then sent Alexander Hamilton—he of the musical Hamilton fame—to Berlin to arrest the instigators of the rebellion. Robert Philson and sixteen others were taken into custody. Philson himself was taken to Philadelphia and tried for treason, reportedly the first time anyone had been tried for treason in the United States. Twelve honest men acquitted him due to lack of evidence and he went on to a distinguished public career. He joined the army and served as a brigadier-general in the War of 1812, was elected to serve one term as a representative in the U.S. Congress, and eventually became an associate judge in Somerset County. 

So why didn’t George Washington himself come to Berlin and arrest Robert Philson? According to local lore word was sent down off the mountain to Bedford that if Washington showed his face in Berlin he would be shot on sight. To this day some people around Berlin like to claim that fancy-pants George Washington was too much of a chicken-shit to show his face in their town and instead sent his henchman Alexander Hamilton to do his dirty work for him. Of course Berlin is notorious for its braggarts, gasbags, and blowhards, so this story may well be apocryphal.

In any case, Robert Philson’s son Samuel became one of the area’s leading businessmen and was instrumental in the creation of the Buffalo Valley Railroad. In 1880 the B&O bought out the Pittsburgh & Connellsville Railroad that ran through Garrett and also acquired the Buffalo Valley Railroad, which then became known as the Berlin Branch of the B&O. Among locals it was affectionately called the Huckleberry Railroad. Huckleberries grew in abundance in the Allegheny Mountains near the headwaters of Buffalo Creek. They were packed into ten to twelve quart pails and transported to Berlin, where they were loaded on the Berlin Branch and sent to various cities on the B&O Railroad. American chestnuts (Castanea dentata), picked by the bushel before the chestnut blight killed almost all chestnut trees in the Alleghenies, were also shipped on the railroad, as were maple syrup and maple sugar. Locals also harvested swamp grass, which was dried and sent to markets on the East Coast, where it was used as a filler to pack fragile objects like glass, china, and crockery. In the late nineteenth century, before the introduction of refrigeration, ice from lakes in the area was also shipped to cities, where it was in high demand. Whiskey and other alcoholic products, including medicinal alcohol, were shipped from distilleries near Berlin, including the famous Franz Distillery, south of Berlin. Farmers in the Buffalo Valley and the surrounding area also sent their milk to a creamery at the terminus of the railroad in Berlin. 

All of these products were soon eclipsed by coal. Numerous mines exploited the fabulously rich coal deposits in the Buffalo Valley. By 1927 one company alone, Consolidation Coal, had shipped 1,271,889 tons of coal from its mines in Goodtown, located on a short spur of the Berlin Branch of the B&O two miles from Berlin. The board of directors of Consolidation Coal included James Roosevelt, the father of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and F.D.R.’s maternal grandfather, Warren Delano II. Thousands of immigrants were brought in to work the mines, resulting in several mining towns in the Buffalo Valley. Locals usually referred to these immigrants as Russians, although very few if any were actually ethnic Russians. Most were Ukrainians, Belorusians, Georgians, and others from the fringes of the rapidly disintegrating Czarist Russian Empire. 

The Berlin Branch of the B&O shut down for good in the 1970s. Its right-of-way sat idle for the next five decades and will now be repurposed as the first section of the 9-11 Memorial Trail. GAPers who want to get a glimpse of the trail can proceed to near the current terminus outside of Garrett and then head up the Buffalo Valley on Fogletown Road. After a mile or so the road passes by the Burkholder Covered Bridge. Built in 1870 the 47-foot-long bridge is one of seven in Somerset County utilizing the one-span Burr-Arch type of construction. The railroad probably made a stop here. 

Burkholder Covered Bridge. The proposed route of the bike trail can be seen on the right

Burkholder Covered Bridge.

Another 1.7 miles up the valley Fogletown Road runs into Owl Hollow Road. On Owl Hollow Road is the Beachdale Crossing, another station stop on the old Buffalo Creek Railroad. Once a community of sorts, it is now best known for the Beachdale Brethren Church. 

Beachdale Brethren Church

The proposed route of the bike trail looking south from the Buffalo Creek Bridge on Owl Hollow Road 

The proposed route of the bike trail looking north from the Buffalo Creek Bridge on Owl Hollow Road 

GAPers can continue on Owl Hollow Road to old Route 219 (the Mason-Dixon Highway) and return to Garrett on the road, or continue north on Route 219 1.8 miles to Pine Hill Road. Turn right and proceed to the old village of Raineytown, named after W. T. Rainey, a coal operator who opened a mine near here.

Route of the proposed bike path looking south from Raineytown. There was once a Native American village to the right of the trail beyond the house. To my knowledge it has never been officially investigated, but numerous artifacts, including arrowheads and hatchet heads, have been found here. Every time the farmer plowed the field where the village was located new artifacts would turn up.

The village itself was established in 1898 and consisted of sixteen or more houses for coal miners. At first the village was called Red Raineytown because all the houses were painted red. The stop here on the Buffalo Valley Railroad was known as the Pine Hill Station, named after the village of Pine Hill about a mile to the south. Local farmers brought their milk here for shipment to a creamery in Berlin. There was a large company store in the village, but it burned down in 1903. In 1921, during the Prohibition Era, authorities raided a still used to make moonshine in the basement of one of the dwellings. Now only two houses remain in Raineytown. 

Route of the proposed bike path looking northeast from Raineytown. Berlin is about two miles from here.

GAPers can return to Garrett via the Mason-Dixon Highway. The truly daring can backtrack .15 of a mile on the Pine Hill Road and then take Weighley Mill Road 1.8 miles to the famously rough and tumble town of Berlin, where, if we are to believe locals, even George Washington feared to tread. The 9-11 Memorial Trail continues from Berlin 12.5 miles to the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville using already existing roads. On September 7, 2024, an organized bike ride took place from Berlin to the Memorial and back, starting at 9:00 a.m. and ending at 2:00 p.m. This is now an annual event. The next “Tour de Trail”, as the event is called—apparently a takeoff on the Tour de France—will take place on Saturday, September 6, 2025.

As of this writing it is not known when the Garrett-Berlin section of the 9-11 Memorial Trail will be completed. 

USA | Allegheny Mountains | Cat People | Catnip

Attention Cat People! See Catnip over at Don Croner’s Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail.

North Macedonia | Tikves Wine District | Demir Kapiya | Popova Kula Winery | Prokupec

It is my fourth day at the Popova Kula Winery, a Thursday, and I am still the only guest here. I checked on the internet and discovered, however, that this coming Saturday night the place is full-up with no rooms available. Luckily I am checking out Saturday morning. Incorrigible misanthrope that I am, I have been enjoying the solitude. Meanwhile I am continuing my investigations of the local vintages. The winery produces eleven different kinds of wine:

—Stanushina

—Vranec

—Prokupec

—Cabernet Sauvignon

—Merlot

—Sauvignon Blanc

—Temjanika,

—Chardonnay

—Zilavka

— Muscat Ottonel

—Muscat Hamburg

Stanushina, Prokupec, Vranec, Temjanika, and Zilavka are made from grapes indigenous to the Balkan Peninsula; these are the only varieties I am interested in. God forbid that I should come to Macedonia just to drink Cabernet Sauvignon or—horrors!— Merlot! 

According to archeological findings, grapes has been grown and wine produced in the area of Demir Kapiya for at least the last 3600 years. The modern history of viniculture in the Demir Kapiya area began in 1927 when King Alexander Karadjordjevic of Yugoslavia (1888–1934) built a winery here to produce wine for the exclusive use of his royal family. Experts assured the king that of all possible locations in his kingdom, which covered a good part of the Balkan Peninsula, including modern-day Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia, this area was the most fertile and best suited for growing grapes and producing wine. He named the property the Winery of The Queen Maria in honor of his wife, Maria Karadjordjevic. The king hired the best vintners available and the winery was soon producing wine of extraordinary quality. Unfortunately King Alexander Karadjordjevic was unable to enjoy the fruits of his vineyards for long. On October 9, 1934, during a state visit to Marseille, France, he was assassinated by Bulgarian revolutionary Vlado Chernozemski.

King Alexander Karadjordjevic of Yugoslavia (click on photos for enlargements)

The subsequent history of the winery is a bit hazy, but apparently it continued producing wine in the decades thereafter, except during the world wars and various local upheavals.  After the Second World the Royal Winery, along with other wineries in what was then Yugoslavia, were nationalized. Over 30,000 families who owned small private vineyards continued, however, to supply grapes to these wine making facilities. It was these people who are credited with  maintaining the high quality of local viniculture during the following decades. After the breakup of socialist Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the emergence of the former Yugoslavian republic of Macedonia as an independent country most if not all wineries were privatized. The royal winery in Demir Kapiya was privatized in 1994 and is now known as the Royal Winery Queen Maria. The current winery has an on-site restaurant and rents out rooms, apartments, and for high-rollers the former villa of Queen Maria Karadjordjevic.

King Alexander and Queen Maria

The Popova Kula Winery is built on lands that once belonged to the Royal Winery. Construction of the winery itself started in October of 2004 and was completed in August of 2005. Construction of the winery restaurant and hotel was not completed until 2009. The name of the winery, “Popova Kula”, means “Priest’s Tower”. Apparently during the time of the Roman Empire an important road ran through the grounds of the current winery. A large tower served as a checkpoint on the road, and this eventually became known at the Priest’s Tower. This original tower was eventually torn down, but the winery has erected a new 55-foot high tower its honor. This tower has become the easily recognizable symbol of the winery. 

Popova Kula Winery

The “Priest’s Tower” of Popova Kula

Curious about this Roman road, I went down to the lobby and questioned the receptionist, a charming woman in her thirties. She in turn questioned one the local workmen who happened to be handy, and this guy said the Roman road in question was the famous Via Egnatia dating to the time of the Roman Empire, which ran from Durrës in what is now Albania east 696 miles to Constantinople, right across the heart of the Balkan Peninsula. This was certainly intriguing. I had already visited numerous cities and towns on the old Via Egnatia, including Thessaloniki, Kavala, and Kastoria in Greece and Orhid in Macedonia but I was under the impression that the old Roman road passed through the Balkans a good bit south of Demir Kapiya. The receptionist called the local wine museum and the woman at the museum suggested I stop by for more information. So I hiked a mile into town and found the museum, a modest two-room establishment in downtown Demir Kapiya. The woman in charge informed me that the Roman road through Demir Kapiya was not the Via Egnatia itself but a side branch of the main highway. Nevertheless, I was thrilled to discover that Demir Kapiya was in fact linked to the hallowed Via Egnatia. I harbor the sneaking suspicion I have traveled this road in a previous lifetime. 

The Via Egnatia in red. The northern extension in green may be the one that passed through Demir Kapiya.

Via Egnatia near Kavala. Photo by Philipp Pilhofer

After trekking a mile back from the museum to the winery I retire to my balcony to sample the wine of the day; in this case Prokupec, a wine apparently indigenous to what is now Serbia but also grown in Macedonia. 

Prokupec

From my balcony can be seen the Iron Gate, a gap in the mountains through which the Vardar River flows. The Iron Gate marks the southern boundary of the Tikves Wine Region. It also gives its name to the town just to the north—Demir Kapiya, which in Turkish means “Iron Gate”.

View from my balcony. The Iron Gate is the gap in the mountains in the middle of the photo. The town of Demir Kapiya (Iron Gate) is in the foreground.

A view of the Iron Gate from Popova Kula vineyards

Another view from my balcony

Halfway through my first glass of Prokupec my thoughts drifted, perhaps inevitably, to the Persian Poet Rudaki (858 a.d – 941 a.d.), the favorite poet of the Samanids of Bukhara, in what is now Uzbekistan. The Elton John of his Age, at one point Rudaki owned two hundred slaves who attended to his every need, and a hundred camels were necessary to carry his baggage when he traveled. His verses, it was said, filled a hundred volumes; he reportedly wrote 1,300,000 couplets. Almost all of his work has been lost. Unfortunately, the poet came to a bad end. He may have fell under the sway of the Ismaili Sect, considered heretical in the domains of the Samanids, and he eventually fell out of favor with the court. His lament:

Who had greatness? Who had favour, of all people in the land? 

I it was had favour, greatness, from the Saman scions' hand; 

Khurasan's own Amir, Nasr, forty thousand dirhams gave, 

And a fifth to this was added by Prince of Pure and Brave; 

From his nobles, widely scattered, came a sixty thousand more; 

Those the times when mine was fortune, fortune good in plenteous store. 

Now the times have changed--and I, too, changed and altered must succumb, 

Bring the beggar's staff here to me; time for staff and script has come!

He reportedly died in abject poverty. Perhaps in his final days he repeated one of his couplets:

Were there no wine all hearts would be a desert waste, forlorn and black, 

But were our last life-breath extinct, the sight of wine would bring it back.

Rudaki

A white wine, Zilavka, that I tried earlier. It is also indigenous to the Balkan Peninsula. I am not a big fan of white wine,  but this one was not bad at all.  It was flirtatious but not presumptuous; sassy, without being impertinent. 

Another view of the winery

North Macedonia | Skopje | Fountain of the Mothers of Macedonia

At the northern end of the famous Stone Bridge across the Vardar River in Downtown Skopje, in Karposh’s Rebellion Square (more on the illustrious Karposh later), and just in front of the apartment building where I am staying, is the charming Fountain of the Mothers of Macedonia.

View of the Fountain of the Mothers of Macedonia from the window of the my apartment (click on photos for enlargements)

Fountain of the Mothers of Macedonia 

Mother and Child

Mother and Child

Pregnant Mother-to-be

Fountain Pool

The pool of the Fountain of the Mothers of Macedonia. The fountain is apparently turned off in wintertime. Is it just my imagination, or is the fountain pool shaped like an enormous Vulva?

North Macedonia | Skopje | Stone Bridge

Macedonia Square with statue of Warrior on a Horse (Alexander the Great, but don’t tell anyone). Click on photos for enlargements. 

The northeast side of 435 foot-long and 250 foot-wide Macedonia Square faces the famous Kameni Most, or Stone Bridge, across the Vardar River.  The 241 mile-long river, which drains at least two-thirds of the country and divides the city of Skopje into two parts, finds its source only about eighteen miles to the northwest of Skopje, near the Kosovo border, but loops far to the south before heading north to Skopje, picking up many tributaries along the way, including the sizable Treska River (home of the famous Matka Canyon resort area), which flows into the Vardar 4.5 miles upstream from downtown, and has already grown into a sizable stream by the time it flows through the city. The river continues on to the southeast and crosses the Greek border near the town of Axioupoli, where is suddenly takes on the Greek name of Axios River, before flowing into the Aegean Sea west of the city of Thessaloniki in northern Greece. The meaning of “Vardar” is much debated, but the name it probably based on an ancient Proto-Indo-European word meaning “Black Water”. 

The Stone Bridge

The Kameni Most, or Stone Bridge, across the Vardar, has become a symbol of Skopje and is found on the city’s coat-of-arms and on the city flag. 

Skopje-coat-of-arms

According to an historical signpost on the bridge itself, the Kameni Most was built by order of Ottoman Sultan Murad II during the years 1421–51 on the foundations of an earlier bridge dating to the sixth century when current-day Macedonia was part of the Byzantine Empire. Other sources suggest, however, that the bridge was by Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror between 1451 and 1469. Perhaps both sultans had a hand in its construction. As for the earlier bridge, the historical record is unclear, but since it was built in the six century, it is interesting to speculate that it was constructed during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (r. 527-565), who was born in the village of Tauresium (now called Taor), twelve miles southeast of current-day Skopje. In any case, as part of the Skopje 2014 Project an imposing 16.5 foot-high white marble statue of Justinian sitting on his throne has been installed on the bank of the Vardar River just a hundred feet north of the bridge. It was made in Florence, Italy, reportedly at a cost of over just over one million euros.

Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (r. 527-565)

Justinian

Justinian is perhaps most famous for building Hagia Sofia in Constantinople (Istanbul), to this day one of the world’s most magnificent edifices (it was first a church, then a mosque, and now a museum), and for marrying the notorious ex-prostitute Theodora. 

Interior of Hagia Sophia

“Glory to God, Who has deemed me worthy of fulfilling such a work. O Solomon, I have surpassed thee,” Justinian reportedly said when entering the newly completed Hagia Sofia for the first time. History does not record what he said after entering Theodora for the first time. 

Four of the twelve arches of the Stone Bridge

The bridge built by the Ottomans was heavily damaged during an earthquake in 1555 and eventually repaired. Further repairs and renovations took place in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, with the last update in 1994. In 1944 Nazi troops who had invaded Macedonia rigged the bridge with explosives, intending to destroy it to cover their retreat, but this plot was foiled and the bridge survived.The current bridge, 702 feet long and twenty feet wide, consists of columns of huge stone blocks divided by twelve semicircular arcs.

View downstream from the Stone Bridge, toward the Bridge of Civilizations in Macedonia, also known as the Eye Bridge.

View upstream from the Stone Bridge. Another pedestrian bridge is under construction.

About two-thirds of the way across the bridge is a column containing a mihrab, or prayer niche, apparently pointing in the direction of Mecca, dating to 2008, although there may have been an earlier version.

Prayer niche on the bridge

A bit further on, on the other side of the bridge is an historical signpost marking the spot where the illustrious Karposh, the Christian leader of an anti-Ottoman uprising in 1689, was executed by the Ottomans. The northern end of the bridge debouches onto Karposh Square, named after the Macedonian freedom fighter.

Sign indicating where Karposh was supposedly executed

Northern end of the Stone Bridge debouching onto Karposh Square

Statue of Karposh

Statue of Karposh

Statue of Karposh

North Macedonia | Skopje

When residing in Mongolia I usually do not break out my winter coat until temperatures fall to –10ºF or colder. Until then a down jacket is usually sufficient. A few days ago the temperature dropped to –16ºF. As I was digging out my winter coat a thought hit me. Instead of breaking out the winter coat why not just head for warmer climes? I checked the weather in various cities and discovered that it was a relatively balmy 62ºF in Skopje, Macedonia, a city that I had visited before and found quite appealing. I immediately booked a Flight On Turkish Airlines to Skopje. The plane left Ulaanbaatar at six o’clock the next morning. After an eleven hour flight (including a one hour layover in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan) I arrived in Istanbul, where I spent the night in a hotel near the airport, and  early the next morning caught the one hour and fifteen minute flight to Skopje. From the airport I took a taxi to my hotel in the Stara Charshiya, the old bazaar quarter of Skopje. 

Macedonia, in the middle of the Balkan Peninsula (click on photos for enlargements)

Macedonia, a former province of Yugoslavia and now an independent country, is officially named the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, an unwieldy name that pleases nobody. Attempts to change the name are now underway (more on this extremely contentious issue later). Located in the heart of the Balkans, Macedonia—most people use the shorthand name—is surrounded  by the countries of Kosovo, Serbia, Bulgaria, Albania and Greece and covers 9,928 square miles, making it slightly bigger than Vermont and slightly smaller than Massachusetts. Put another way, sixty-six Macedonias would fit inside the borders of the state of Alaska, and sixty-one within the borders of Mongolia. The population is roughly 2,100,000, with 507,000 living in Skopje. About 65% of Macedonians are Christians; 35% are Muslims. As of 2012, the country had 1,842 churches and 580 mosques. The vast majority of the Christians belong to the Macedonian Orthodox Church, which became autocephalous, or self-ruling, in 1967 and is not officially recognized by any of the other branches of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia—for the moment.

The city of Skopje is divided into two parts by the 241 mile-long Vardar River, which drains at least two-thirds of the country. The Vardar starts only about eighteen miles to the northwest of Skopje, near the Kosovo border, but loops far to the south before heading north to Skopje, picking up many tributaries along the way. It has already grown into a sizable stream by the time it flows through the city. The river continues on to the southeast and crosses the Greek border near the town of Axioupoli before flowing into the Aegean Sea west of the city of Thessaloniki in northern Greece. The name “Vardar” is probably based on an ancient Proto-Indo-European word meaning “Black Water”.

Center of Skopje. The Stone Bride can be seen in the middle.

The boisterous Varder River

The Stone Bridge connecting Macedonia Square, in the center of Skopje, to the Old Bazaar, where I am staying, is the oldest bridge in the city. The 702 foot-long, 20-foot wide bridge was built by order of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror between 1451 and 1469 on foundations of an earlier bridge dating to the time of the Roman Empire.

The Stone Bridge

One of several pedestrian bridges across the Vardar

Statue in Macedonia Square, in the center of Skopje. It is generally thought to be a statue of Alexander the Great, although that is not its official name. More on this later . . .