657 - Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike
Today I explored an abandoned highway.
After living in the DMV for nearly 3 years, most of my time exploring has been spent either south or east. I’d hardly even considered the entire world north of my location, more formally known as Pennsylvania.
And after a quick search on Atlas Obscura, it turns out there’s a whole abandoned highway just 2 hours away from me. Thirteen miles of pure, rotting, roadway.
I loaded my bike in the trunk and was on my way.
Now unlike the Hell House, I actually did my research this time before showing up. This place, which actually exists on Google Maps under the surname "Pennsylvania Abandoned Turnpike,” used to be one of America’s busiest highways but it was bypassed in the late 1960s and left alone ever since.
The local government stepped in to clean it up slightly, mainly by putting blockades on either end of the highway and turning it into a “bike path.” But there’s been little done to maintain the bike path, and many of the maintenance corridors and rooms are blatantly open to the public if you know the right entrances.
There’s also two abandoned tunnels on the route, one of which is over a mile long and completely dark in the middle.
Needless to say, I brought a couple flashlights and nerves since this was gonna be a solo mission.
The first part of the highway was standard abandoned fare. Messy concrete, plants in the road, traces of graffiti, yadda yadda yadda. Nothing too special. It wasn’t until I got to the first tunnel where things started to get interesting:
That’s the primary shot I wanted out of this whole thing. The eerie tunnel leading into the dark with plants growing all around it. And those vines were just so conveniently placed.
Now it was time to go in the tunnel. Luckily this was the shorter of the two (coming in at roughly .66 miles long,) and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, literally.
But I was in the mood to procrastinate. The dark wasn’t calling me quite yet. I wanted to find the maintenance tunnels first. The obvious solution was the room to the left of the tunnel, which you can see the windows of very faintly in this picture.
The only problem was that it was just a room, and the staircase in the back corner that clearly led upstairs was destroyed. Sure, I could rock climb up the thing if I really wanted to, but it was mostly chunks of old metal I’d be dangling off, which I didn’t want to experiment with while I was here solo.
I went back out and decided to go up the hill to the right of the tunnel, to see if I could get in from above somehow.
Aaaaaaaand it paid off. The backend above had a busted door that I crawled right through, which led me to that window system you see above the tunnel. Which led me to get this photo:
I’m guessing that was the cooling system for the tunnel. AKA… what pushed air through the tunnel so it wasn’t stagnant fumes from the cars driving. Definitely a solid find, despite the dark holes in the floor that led to god knows where and the tick that mysteriously appeared on my leg.
Danger was lurking.
I decided to dip back down and do the tunnel once and for all. Let’s see the rest of this highway.
It wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be, especially because I had a bright headlamp on and a backup in my bag for peace of mind. It was just a couple minutes of pretending like something wasn’t lurking in the next shadow.
Suddenly, I was on the other side. Phew.
The next ~5 miles were pretty standard abandoned fare, basically more broken concrete, fallen trees, and whatnot. I snagged a pic of my favorite segment, which lets you see pretty far down the road:
And fun fact, they actually filmed segments of the movie The Road here.
The second tunnel was rapidly approaching, and by this point, I was overcome with decision fatigue. Do I ride the ~1.5 mile tunnel in the dark just to see the other side, and then immediately head back through it?
I opted not to. Call me a puss, call me a wuss, call me a duss. But 3 miles solo in the dark didn’t feel like the move. Especially for a tunnel entrance that seemed to look the exact same as the initial photo I got.
I rode back in mild shame, but still aware of the fact that I’d made it pretty much the whole way and gotten some solid shots out of it.
But in the end, curiosity got the best of me.
I drove my car to the other side of the highway using the real highway to see if it was any different over there.
Turns out, I was dead on. The other side had the exact same tunnel system as the first, down to the cooling systems. I did manage snag this pic at the door though, because I love me a big leaf:
And a good textured graffiti wall:
Finally, it felt like it was time to dip. I’d been three hours now and I'd seen pretty much all I could.
The moment I got back in my car, the rain came down. In and out, baby.
