On Thursday night, the South Bethlehem Historical Society (SBHS) presented an evening of events related to iconic photographer Walker Evans. 

St. Michael’s Cemetery

The night began with a gathering of about 30 community members in St. Michael’s cemetery, a large tract of land that rises steeply from Fourth Street into the wooded slopes of South Mountain. The cemetery was the site of Walker Evans’ famous photograph of a cross framing South Bethlehem and the Steel.

Braving threatening skies and a stiff breeze, a member of SBHS provided a short history of St. Michael’s, the resting place of Catholics from churches throughout the city, and spoke about efforts to document fading or vandalized gravestones and maintain the grounds. St. Michael’s faces a number of challenges: vaultless graves on a shifting hillside; missing, displaced, and buried gravestones; unmarked graves; an encroaching forest that has enveloped the uphill portion of the cemetery; and a lack of adequate funds from the church, the city, or the community to maintain the grounds or document the site before it deteriorates further.

Luckily, there is a positive among these challenges: a group of committed volunteers (led by the SBHS) that is eager to fight for the cemetery. The audience was presented with a “wish list” that will help with this fight, including used lawn equipment, volunteers to maintain the grounds, and donations to help organize the campaign. Most importantly, SBHS encouraged those present to express their interest to the public, walk the grounds, mark the graves of their relatives with flags (or with GPS), write to the newspaper or the City of Bethlehem to express the need to protect the site. Although the land, owned by the Church and hemmed in by Lehigh University property to the north, is not threatened by development, time and neglect have and will continue to take their toll, unless something is done soon.

On a personal note, the view from St. Michael’s is great. It is no wonder Evans decided to shoot from this vantage point, which looks across South Bethlehem,to the Steel and across the Lehigh Valley to the mountains. The amazing thing is that this unique resource does not see more use and receive the attention it deserves.  I would encourage anyone who has not done so to plan a walk through the cemetery; I am already thinking about when I can get back there again.

Walker Evans in the Lehigh Valley

From St. Michael’s the group moved to the Northampton Community College‘s Fowler Family Southside Center for SBHS’s annual meeting and a lecture by noted Evans scholar and photographer Rodger Kingston. Kingston was introduced by Michel Lefevre, of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, who spoke about the need to protect urban cemeteries for their historical importance but also because they represent scarce, open, green space in otherwise densely-populated communities.

This argument for preservation might seem macabre to twenty-first century conceptions of cemeteries as forbidding places of mourning, yet many proponents of cemetery preservation find that encouraging recreational use is one way of giving the community a vested interest in the maintenance of cemeteries.

After Lefevre’s brief introduction, Kingston presented a slide show on Evan’s career and his influence on other well-known photographers to a packed room of 60 to 70 people.

 Kingston argued that Evans’ talent was rooted in his ability to capture the spirit of a town or an individual in seemingly-mundane scenes. He also noted Evans’ desire to represent the nobility and pride in working-class and African-American culture. Unlike some photographers of the period, who sought scenes of abject poverty, Evans’ tried to capture the dignity of marginalized people and places.

Kingston’s lecture was followed by a reception at Time Zones Gallery, just down the street from the Fowler Center.

This was an opportunity to view an unique exhibit of Evans’ prints, produced and collected by John T. Hill, at one time a colleague of Evans at Yale University, and to ask Kingston questions about Evan’s life and work.

This was a great night for the South Bethlehem Historical Society that would not have been possible without a grant from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and the support of the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor and the Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society.

If you are interested in joining the South Bethlehem Historical Society or want more information about St. Michael’s cemetery and how you can help, please contact D&L Historic Resource Specialist (and mastermind behind this successful event) Amey Senape at Amey@DelawareandLehigh.org.

The latest issue of A.T. Journeys, the official magazine of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC), features an article on the Lehigh Gap Nature Center, written by the Center’s director and friend of the D&L Trail, Dan Kunkle. The article highlights efforts to reseed the defoliated Lehigh Gap and the work of the ATC, D&L, Allentown Hiking Club, and Philadelphia Trail Club to build a trail network along the Lehigh River and Kittatinny Ridge.

Also included in this issue is a brief article on Pennsylvania’s recent zoning legislation, intended to ensure the natural character of the Appalachian Trail and its buffer.

Both of these articles are available free from ATC’s member center.

The Fall 2008 issue of the D&L’s newsletter Along the Corridor is now available. This is our way of keeping you up-to-date on the D&L’s accomplishments and upcoming events. Inside this issue you will find articles on Trail Tenders’ work, the Artisan Trail Studio Tour Weekend, the Walker Evans exhibit series, and D&L Trail updates.

If you would like to receive the quarterly newsletter, please fill out the online contact form. On our website you can also find copies of each Along the Corridor dating back to Fall 1999.

Trail surfacing and trailhead redesign work continues at the Lehigh Gap Nature Center. The new trail surface is down and rolled, and the trailhead, located just south of the Rt. 873 bridge, is now under construction.

Anyone who recalls the old layout will recognize the improvements: the trail and the access road will be clearly demarcated, the new trailhead will provide ample parking, and the uniform trail surface will extend the immaculate Slatington section through the Lehigh Gap.

Construction will continue for several weeks, followed by installation of fencing and new signage. For updates, check the blog or call D&L Trail Steward Scott Everett at 610-923-3548.

Rail trails got their start with Congress’ purely pragmatic deregulation of the railroad industry. During the 1970s, the railroad industry was faced with a deteriorating infrastructure, uncompetitive market structure, and the bankruptcy of several large companies. Existing regulations forced companies to hold onto unprofitable branch lines and maintain unreasonable prices for freight and passenger traffic. The United States Congress’ response was the 1980 Staggers Rail Act. The railroad industry welcomed the legislation because it limited regulation of prices in competitive markets, legalized railroad-shipper contracts, and generally increased the financial stability of the industry.

Rail Banking

More important to the development of rail trails was an aspect of the Staggers Act that streamlined the process of selling or transferring abandoned rail lines and property. In 1983 the National Trails System Act was amended to allow for “rail-banking” of dormant lines. Traditionally, abandoned lines were divvyed up between adjacent landowners, in effect becoming private land. Rail-banking was based on the idea that rail corridors (graded, connected, open space) should be preserved, in case the need for rail transportation ever materialized in the future. Meanwhile, these corridors would be made available for recreational uses, such as hiking, walking, and bike riding. The railroad industry and the outdoor recreation community forged an unlikely yet symbiotic relationship: railroads freed themselves from the burden of abandoned lines, and recreationists, in theory, provided maintenance in return for access.

In 1986, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy was founded to provide assistance to trail managers and organizations hoping to obtain oversight of rail-banked corridors and to lobby for favorable legislation in federal, state, and municipal governments. Arguably the most important accomplishment of the Conservancy came in 1990, when it successfully defended the constitutionality of the National Trail Act’s rail-banking amendment, in front of the US Supreme Court.

The Rail Trail Movement

The constitutionality of rail-banking ensured, the rail trail movement began in earnest and long-distance trails appeared around the nation, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. Rail-banking was an important precedent and acted as a catalyst to the rail trail movement but certainly was not the only means of creating trails on old railroad right-of-ways. Out of the nearly 100 rail trails in Pennsylvania, only seven are on rail-banked corridors. The majority of trails are on pieced-together parcels, wholesale transfers or purchases between governments and railroad companies, or old rail beds reverted back to private property and publicly accessed through easements.

Of course, many sections of the D&L Trail follow abandoned rail lines and short spur lines, so our efforts have benefited from the enthusiasm generated by rail-banking and other means of developing rail trails. In some cases, we have successfully cooperated with railroad companies to transfer lands to local governments. In other cases, the interests of railroad companies struggling with insurance liabilities have not coincided with our efforts to expand recreational opportunities. However, as the history of rail trails indicates, there are opportunities for the railroad industry and outdoor recreation community to cooperate, when both of our needs are met.