Printable View
Was NOBO south of Darlington Shelter and stumbled onto an old wrecked car next to the trail. Been there years, looks like 1930’s but I’m no expert. Any AT history or car buffs know what this is? Not much left of it.
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...6708aef925.jpg
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...df3b52ba53.jpg
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
Coil springs up front plus hydraulic brakes. Hmmm Coil springs introduced by several manufacturers in 1934..... Not a Ford though because the driveshaft is open and not in a torque tube like Ford used up until the late 40s except in trucks.
Anyone else want to chime in?
Forgot one, here’s the steering wheel.
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...e56a4a9dc4.jpg
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
Not sure of this car's story, but there are numerous similar relics in GSMNP:
Attachment 40565
I've heard that as GSMNP was growing (and Fontana Lake was filling, closing off some roads) it was early 1940's and WWII rubber rationing made it difficult to get tires - and consequently many 1930's-era cars were abandoned. Might be something similar in PA, looks to be a similar vintage auto -
Quote:
Originally Posted by HighlandsHiker
yeah....
this is what ive always heard about the cars in the smokies...
theres quite a few.......
We saw an old Plymouth Suburban in the woods between Caratunk and Monson.
I think it's interesting that if someone leaves trash on the trail, everybody hates them. But if the trash is old enough, like an old car, then it's a historical artifact and starts to acquire value.
Quote:
But if the trash is old enough, like an old car, then it's a historical artifact and starts to acquire value.
i asked this to a PIO of the Smokies years ago---as in, what the age difference between when one thing is trash and the other a historical artifact?
for instance a bottle-----if left now, its trash and can be picked up..
if left years and years ago (like at an old CCC camp)-----its an artifact and cannot be picked up...
but, i didnt get a clear answer when i asked....
In days of old people rode horses and only the rich had cars, now everyone drives a car and only the rich ride horses.Quote:
Originally Posted by illabelle
That's on corridor (i.e. recently acquired former farmland) property. Used to be a manure spreader nearby but MCM hauled it out. Farm families tend to have dumps back in the back corner where trails often get permission to go years later. Finger Lakes Trail passes many such relics, as even its public land tends to be re-bought farmland from the 1930's-1950's.
I've seen an old vehicle or two in places where I wondered how they ever got it up there back then.
Nature reclaims more than the casual visitor realizes. I'm far from retirement, yet there are 25' trees in the field behind my mom's house where I remember silage harvesters alternating years with square hay balers (the kind that kicked the bales up into the wagon). Big trees have grown since the World War II scrap drives ended.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seatbelt
We encountered this vehicle this weekend and I was wondering if anyone had additional insights or information about the wreck.
Given the rough terrain and high elevation, I imagine that this has a really interesting story.
Attachment 48117Attachment 48118
In my Orienteering adventures and trail hikes here in Texas, it's amazing the old rusted stuff found in the woods. There is a trail near me and one gully has an old hot water tank, probably from the 1940's. Plus some other old junk, ice boxes and such. Probably from before WWII when it was private farmland. Something like that broke and you just disposed of it in a wash on the farm.
There is a place on a scout ranch with an old car in a deep water channel. But looking at the history of the place and it was probably driven/crashed into the woods 60 years ago, well before the scouts had it. Then washed by rains into the gully. There might have been an old road nearby also.
My moms family was from central PA. Driving my granddad around out there, he'd point out all the old roads. "See that?" (Looks like a deer path at best). "That's the old Near-Cut over the mountain. I had to put the Model-T in reverse but could get up and over the mountain that way and be down on Bell Street....save off 15 minutes on the trip". When was that Granddad? "Oh, 1927....my buddy Frank said he last did that cut in 1944 with his Hudson".
So yeah, some car/truck didn't make the "near-cut" or broke down or....and there it lays.
I guess I'm not the only one.
Attachment 48119
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
Attachment 48120
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
There's a few old junker cars laying around in the woods near the MST here in Raleigh/Durham, NC. Most of the area was farmland 50 years ago, before the Army Corps of engineers dammed the Neuse River to create Falls Lake. Several old homesteads along the trail too, most now visible only as stone chimneys and neat rows of 100+ year old oak trees. In one area, the forest around the trail was recently clear cut by loggers but they left an old car sitting 50 ft from the trail.
FWIW, I camped near the old car south of Darlington Shelter in PA on my section hike through there a couple years ago. There's a nice spring 50 ft from the trail on the opposite side as the car. It's the first decent camping spot you get to heading north out of the Cumberland Valley.
The best is the school bus that the Manson clan somehow drove up to their hideout in what is now Death Valley NP.
Maybe this is an answer to a classic question:
https://flxt.tmsimg.com/assets/p26527_p_v10_ae.jpg
Of course there was probably not a lot of forest around these hulks when they arrived where they lay. The lack of resources or interest in removing them are probable reasons for their being where they are. We can see future "relics" today around property with a lot of junk strewn around a property. A common history would have the house and/or out building burning down at some point that leads to property abandonment. Scavenging takes away the portable stuff, leaving the hulks of equipment behind for the forest to quickly retake.
Either that, or space aliens contract with Bigfoot to move stuff around in the dead of night.
The picture I posted from Sleeping Bear Dunes was on North Manitou Island. It is managed as a wilderness area. It has been a very long time since there were roads or a car ferry there. It's not a big island. I doubt there were ever very many cars there.