Agnes On The Aughwick

From 1874 to 1956, the narrow gauge East Broad Top hauled the products of Huntingdon County's Lower End from Broad Top Mountain to the Pennsylvania Railroad at Mount Union. Its main line originally ran from Robertsdale to Mount Union, and just north of Shirleysburg it ran beside Aughwick Creek.

The freight trains were long gone by 1972, but the track was still there. A National Register description of the railroad, written after that year, records that a stretch about 1,400 feet long, just north of Shirleysburg and running parallel to Aughwick Creek, washed out in 1972. The grading was stabilized, it adds, and the damage was not extensive.

The description does not name the storm, but 1972 was the year of Hurricane Agnes, and Aughwick Creek felt it. The U.S. Geological Survey kept a gauge on the creek near Three Springs, on the bank by the State Highway 994 bridge, 300 feet upstream of the East Broad Top's own bridge. There the creek crested at 4 p.m. on June 22, 1972, at a gage height of 19.20 feet.

That topped the gauge's biggest flood from 1939 to May 1972, which reached 18.04 feet on November 25, 1950. It came close to the flood of June 1, 1889, which, the survey says, reached a stage of about 19.3 feet, judged from a floodmark.

By the time the National Register description was written, only about five of the roughly thirty-three miles of main line, from Rockhill to Colgate's Grove, were in use, for the tourist trains the new owner had started running.

Checked 2026-10-31 · County histories and primary sources, read in full

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