Livermore (BOO!)

This weekend, after planting a box on Saturday, we decided to go check out one of the few remaining letterboxes within a fifty mile radius that was unfound by us.

This Letterbox is located near a VERY historic cemetery and ghost town, unfortunately, most of the history about this place is untrue.

Livermore was named for a guy named Alonzo Livermore, an engineer for the Pennsylvania Canal, which was the life-blood of the town's economy. In the 1950's, the town was dismantled by the Army Corps of Engineers to make way for Conemaugh Lake. All the residents were moved, and the water was let in.


There are an amazing amount of urban legends about this place:

1. George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" was filmed here. This is False. That was actually filmed in Evan's City, PA. The problem with everyone thinking it was filmed here is that the cemetary which holds the long-dead, before-flood, residents of Livermore is frequently disturbed by vandals and occultists. All this has resulted in the cemetary being completely off-limits and you can get fined, by the patrolling state-police for crossing the gate below:


2. The cemetery was uprooted and moved to it's current location. Also false. The cemetery has ALWAYS been here. (Well, at least since Livermorians (?!?!) started dying.) There used to be a bridge that crossed the old rail line to connect the town to the cemetery.


3. When the water is low, you can see the chimneys of the old houses and steeple of the old church. It is really spooky. Nope, false, false, false. The key thing about bullet point number 1 is that the town was DISMANTLED. Everything. Yup, even the church. However, if the creek is REALLY low, you can see some foundations. Big whoop. Here is where the town USED to be:

All of these facts aside, it is a spooky place. The place just feels old and stinks of industrial neglect. The flood basin just piles up huge masses of rotting timber and deposits it along the trail, so at times you feel as if you're entering some place you shouldn't be.

The flowers were out and beautiful (too bad these pictures suck. I gotta start remembering my camera. These are taken with my phone):

And we found the box. Inside was a hitchhiker all the way from California that was part of "The Great HH Race of 2004." We'll send it on it's way up to NY and maybe FINALLY it can reach it's destination.