Tobagganing at Pinchot State Park

    Was wandering along the Pinchot Trail last week, taking pictures of some snow scenes at Gifford Pinchot State Park. It was a beautiful windless morning, a bright blue sky overhead, and light snow covering tree branches like icing on a cake. Winter scenes have always been a particular challenge to me, and I've never been able to capture a picture-worthy scene as well as I can see it.  So I keep working at it.

  There is just one set of partially snow covered footprints on the trail. A pair of bright scarlet cardinals are talking to each other on my left, a tiny chickadee or two hollering ahead of me, hopping from branch to branch. There's a whiff of a fox, and then its footprints crossing the 1.4 mile Pinchot Trail. There's a deer trail.

   To the right, there's something strange and out of place. A partial concrete foundation, and a line of  smaller vertical, concrete piers or pillars standing maybe two feet out of the ground. There was forest and woods all around, so whatever was built here was ancient, or at least, a very long time ago, I'm thinking.
  Took a few quick pictures, and marched to the park office where office manager Tammy listened for all of 10 seconds and explained very matter-of-factly-- like this is the fourth time today that she's heard this-- that the piers were the foundation for a short-lived toboggan slide. Tammy's worked at Pinchot Park for 30 years, and there's not much about the park she doesn't know. She drags research from files, plops it on the counter and goes through it like a family scrapbook.

   The toboggan run, she explained, was built shortly after the park was dedicated in 1961, named for former two-time Pennsylvania governor (1923, 1931) Gifford Pinchot. Of  local note, York County's George M. Leader was governor in 1958 when the park was planned, and construction for the  Pinchot Lake dam began.
   The toboggan run cost $20,000 to build and was completed October 11, 1963, ready for operation in January 1964. Almost a quarter mile long with a 72-foot vertical drop, the run used 95 concrete piers. The foundation was part of the machinery shed and there was also a concession stand for hot food.

   Rides cost 35 cents or three rides for $1. A hay wagon  transported riders back to the top of the hill. January 20, 1965 must have been loaded with tobogganers,  with 1,200 people paying. The next month, in all of February 1965, only 214 tobogganers slid the hill. In January, 1968, operations ceased. Tammy heard that because run was built on the south side of a hill, the sun melted the ice too easily, forcing closures.

   Park ranger Wanda Pritulsky took me on a quick search to find sleds that Tammy thought would still be around. They weren't in the shed, so outside we went, and found a half dozen sleds in a pile under the snow. About 44 years ago, the sleds stopped sliding and found a home here.

   What was most remarkable about this treasure hunt was that the woods so quickly reclaimed the toboggan run. The run wasn't dismantled until April 1974 and Mother Nature quickly covered up most of the signs.