TRAIL TALES: “The many new walking trails now completed and used
daily in the Bradford area form a tremendous asset for the city and
McKean County. Great for exercise and fresh mountain air!”

We agree with our writer, John A. Lane, a long-time Bradford
resident now residing in the Baltimore, Md., area, who has written
a story about some of the hiking trails in our neck of the woods –
now known as the Pennsylvania Wilds.

We turn over to him RTS for today and tomorrow.

He writes: Several years ago in a series of articles in The
Bradford Era on the early history of McKean County, it was noted
that in this area there were elk trails etc., but no trails by
Indians in the area. McKean County particularly had very important
hunting/fishing grounds: big, deep, wide creeks and river
headwaters were wild but no authentic Indian trails as such have
been noted around them.

However, on a ridge in the Smethport-Port Allegany old road
several years ago an authentic weathered flint arrowhead was seen
and dug out of a rutted spring road also used as a deer/turkey
trail.

Woods, elk watering and grazing sites were located in downtown
Bradford along Tuna Creek and the University of Pittsburgh at
Bradford Campus upstream.

Seneca Indians hunted two areas but the huge, towering pine and
hemlock trees and thick forests were constant handicaps, plus the
unpleasant, extreme winter storms. Foreboding, was the word!

Retired Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Conservation
Officer Guy Waldman, of Lewis Run , and retired Pennsylvania Fish
& Boating Commission officer Wilbur Williams of Mount Jewett
wrote and presented many historical facts and features of
“Pennsylvania Wilds” lay of the land and the forests and
world-known Pennsylvania streams, rivers and lakes.

Bradford and McKean County areas are the heirs of a certainly
unique, interesting role in earlier pre-Colonial and modern 2,000
times –

Tuna Creek: Indian name meaning Tunagawant (More on this
tomorrow.)

Oil: oldest operating crude oil refinery in the world,
Bradford.

Civil War: Bucktail Regiment, volunteer famous riflemen.

Oil: Few miles from Pennsylvania line, known the world over, a
Franciscan monk missionary wrote the first printed news over 200
years ago about the famous Cuba Oil Springs in N.Y., and used by
the native nearby Seneca Indian tribes.

John concludes tomorrow.