Before we begin our tour of Glade Run, a brief history lesson is in order.

Most people that have visited the Dunbar Valley think that it is a primeval wilderness.  For the most part, this is not true.  Although there are portions of the valley that likely have not been greatly disturbed, the vast majority of the watershed, especially those parts that most people frequent, are an amazing ghost town of early industrial America.

The Dunbar Valley was once a thriving industrial center, complete with homes, churches, cemeteries, Iron, Coke, Charcoal and Glass Furnaces, Hydro-Power Dams, Deep and Strip Mines, Tunnel and Surface Quarries, Refractory Clay Pits and Brick Ovens.  The valley was part of the massive industrial complex that surrounded Connellsville Pennsylvania in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  Connellsville was the coal fired powerhouse that drove western Pennsylvania's manufacturing giant.  However, the same economic forces that were the impetus for the construction of this extensive industrial behemoth later drove industry and business away from the area, westward to Pittsburgh and beyond.  Frequently, the magnificent structures built to supply the needs of a growing nation were just abandoned as companies either adapted to rapidly changing technology or went bankrupt.

The facilities they left behind were impressive, but no longer competitive.  They were constructed well, but they were no longer economically useful.  It didn't happen all at once, but one by one, structure after structure was abandoned.  In time, the forces of nature reclaimed these facilities that helped build our nation.  Fire, weather and  decay each took their toll and soon all but a few traces of man's handiwork vanished into the forest.  In the intervening years, the recovered wilderness was sometimes left in "pristine" beauty.  Sometimes it was harvested responsibly, sometimes greedily.  Although greatly decayed, there are still signs along the valley that hint of all this history.  There are abandoned dams, furnaces, coke-ovens, strip-mines and (unfortunately) Acid Mine Drainage pollution.  Some of these signs are obvious, but you have to look very carefully to find most of them.