Picture Saint Anthony’s Wilderness in the summer, with a mother deer and her fawn watching cautiously from the multiflora rose as a family bikes down the Stony Valley Rail-Trail. The forest is scrambling with life as a squirrel scampers across a fallen log above a ruin on Supervisor's Hill in Rausch Gap. Many of the piles of rock that sit beneath the canopy of trees once were homes, businesses and lifestyles of generations past. Most passersby never realize that these ghost towns in Stony Valley were once thriving villages, much less that the old railroad that gave life to one of Pennsylvania's first rail-trails, went further than the 20 mile stretch of ground it covers today.
Wanting additional markets for their coal (other than the Pennsylvania Canal at Dauphin), the D&S decided to extend their track towards the Union Canal at Pine Grove and the Schuylkill Navigation Company Canal at Auburn in 1853-54. Starting from where the Stony Valley Rail-Trail splits from the Upper Rail-Trail near Rausch Gap, the line wound its way through the remaining sections of the lower anthracite coal regions and then continued through Schuylkill County farmlands, servicing not only coal mines, but iron furnaces and forges as well. A four-mile extension was added to Rockville in 1854 as well, making the S&S a total of 54 miles in length. Unfortunately for the D&S, their line was not as profitable as they had hoped and the railroad declared bankruptcy in 1859.
Complete service across the line was discontinued in 1939, when the Red Bridge (a covered bridge between Pine Grove and Auchenbach) caught fire. The first section other than the bridge, to be abandoned was from Auchenbach to Auburn. A little later in 1945, Rockville to Rausch Gap was abandoned as well. This left a small line from Rausch Gap to Auchenbach (which saw coal traffic until the late-1940s), and a segment less than a mile in length at Pine Grove that was the last to be abandoned in 1965.
After the railroad left, different things happened to the various sections of track. Some was used for driveways to houses and businesses, others became part of public lands like the Stony Valley Rail-Trail or at the Schuylkill County Fair Grounds, and yet others became roads or was left to the hands of nature. On the left bar to the page, you can discover what happened to some of the various towns today, get a glimpse at some of the sites to see in Stony Valley or find out what’s happening in the news along the railroad as well. If you do not see the left bar, please click here and it will redirect you to the website with the bar.
The railroad was called the Dauphin & Susquehanna when it was first being constructed in 1850 from the town of Dauphin (formerly Port Lyon) to the town of Rausch Gap by a local coal company of the same name. By 1851, an extension was added to the town of Gold Mine, three miles to the east of Rausch Gap. This 25 mile track was the original Dauphin & Susquehanna Railroad (or D&S), traveling from just west of Rausch Gap to Gold Mine on what today is known as the Upper Rail-Trail.
That same year it was renamed the Schuylkill & Susquehanna Railroad (S&S); however, by 1861, the Philadelphia & Reading (P&R) practically owned the line. It wasn’t until 1872, that the P&R received official ownership of the line, and from that time on the railroad was referred to as the Schuylkill & Susquehanna Branch.