Petersburg

Did you know? The flood of 1936 crested over Huntingdon County in the dark, in the small hours of March 18. And on two of our creeks it still did not beat 1889.

The United States Geological Survey had gages running here that week and published every reading two years later. Second feet below is the old way of saying cubic feet of water going past a point every second.

Great Trough Creek near Marklesburg peaked around midnight going into the eighteenth, at about 9,580 second feet. The biggest thing that gage had recorded in the six years before was 2,180.

Shaver Creek near Petersburg reached a stage of 9.32 feet at 3:15 that morning, measured afterward off the flood marks.

Aughwick Creek near Orbisonia crested at 3:30 a.m. at 16,400 second feet, 19.16 feet on the gage.

Standing Stone Creek, three and a half miles up from Huntingdon, topped out around 9:30 a.m. at about 5,070 second feet.

Now the part nobody expects. On Aughwick Creek the Survey records a bigger flood than 1936, and it is June 1889: about 18,400 second feet, 20.5 feet, read off flood marks. On Standing Stone Creek the maximum known stage in the whole record is also 1889, 9.38 feet on the first of June.

Two of our creeks had already seen worse, forty seven years earlier.

Tell us what they said.

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At the south end of Petersburg, where Shavers Creek meets the Juniata, a three arch bridge of cut stone, 134 feet long, carries the railroad's two tracks over the creek. Its faces are cut, coursed, unfinished stone with semicircular arches, and the undersides of the arches were built with step like ribbing for support. The National Register nomination, prepared in September 1989, also lists it under the name Conrail Bridge over Shavers Creek, and the form names the Pennsylvania Railroad as its builder.

Conrail's records put its construction in 1889. The nomination says a date like that often means a bridge rebuilt after the flood of 1889, but that no evidence was found that this was the case here. The nomination says its text was taken from an unpublished report Nancy Shedd prepared in 1988 for the Historic American Engineering Record. Shedd's inventory of the county's engineering and industrial sites, printed in 1991, puts it more strongly, saying the bridge most likely replaced one lost or damaged in the flood. What the records do show is six stone arch railroad bridges built in the county between 1886 and 1889, which the nomination reads as a program by the Pennsylvania Railroad to replace its first generation of iron bridges with heavier masonry.

The most recent major repairs before the form was written, again by Conrail's records, came in 1967, which the nomination says may be when a series of triangular metal brackets was added along the south face to support curbing at the edge of the right of way. Metal safety railings on both sides of the deck were a recent addition in 1989. The nomination says it is the only stone arch railroad bridge still in use in the county whose face has not been covered with concrete supports.

It was nominated under Criteria A and C, transportation and engineering, with a period of significance from 1889 to 1939. The nomination calls it a good example of a nineteenth century multiple span stone arch bridge and of the second phase of bridge building on the Pennsylvania Railroad's right of way. The listed property is a rectangle 134 feet by about 60 feet whose corners are the outside corners of the wing walls, taking in the bridge and nothing else. Two pictures of it are cited: an early photograph on page 30 of Petersburg and Shavers Creek Valley, published by the Petersburg Bicentennial Committee in 1976, and a photograph of the bridge under construction in the John Nelson Thompson collection at the Huntingdon County Historical Society.

Rather, available records show six stone-arch railroad bridges constructed in the county between 1886 and 1889, suggesting that the PRR was engaged in a program of replacing its first-generation iron bridges with heavier masonry structures.National Register of Historic Places nomination, Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge over Shavers Creek (reference 90000395), Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge over Shavers Creek, section 8, p5 · character 5,360 of the scanned text

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The dam spans the Frankstown Branch of the Juniata River at Petersburg. The engineering record photographed it from downstream, looking southwest across the face of the dam and the tailrace.

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