Save Allegheny Mountain

In Somerset County, the Mountain Field and Stream Club has been hiking, hunting, fishing, and hosting community gatherings since 1936. The club owns 1,400 acres of beautiful, forested land on top of Allegheny Mountain, part of the 180-mile ridgeline known as the Allegheny Front. For decades, club members have helped care for the land by cutting trails, maintaining meadows, and stocking streams where they teach the next generation of kids to fish. 

Fall on the Mountain Field and Stream Club's land

The Club's property sits on top of the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Allegheny Tunnel. This winter, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is expected to select a "preferred alternative" for its plan to expand Interstate 76. Three out of six possible routes involve abandoning the tunnel altogether and, instead, opening up a wide, v-shaped gash through the top of the mountain - and directly through the Mountain Field and Stream Club's forests - to allow for a multi-lane highway. 

PennFuture and the Mountain Field and Stream Club are working to ensure that the Turnpike Commission does not blow a hole through Allegheny Mountain. To learn more, visit savealleghenymountain.org

An open cut through the mountain would create an impassable barrier, fragmenting the landscape. The Allegheny Front extends across Pennsylvania and serves as a migration route not just for birds and mammals but for plant species as well. Furthermore, the Club's land is crossed by Deeter's Run, a tributary to the Raystown Branch of the Juniata River, where native brook trout are abundant. Wetlands, meadows and other essential wildlife habitat dot the property. The Turnpike Commission's proposal puts all of this at risk.  

An open cut in place of the Allegheny Tunnel would be an environmental disaster and could:

• Destroy hundreds of acres of vital forest habitat and wetlands 
• Eliminate important wildlife migration routes
• Risk harming a bat hibernaculum, home to the endangered Indiana bat 
• Damage two high-quality streams
• Threaten the source of Berlin Borough's public water supply

Want to get involved? E-mail Valessa Souter-Kline at souter-kline at pennfuture dot org.

Valessa Souter-Kline is western Pennsylvania outreach coordinator for PennFuture and is based in Pittsburgh. She tweets @ValessaSK.