Earl’s handwritten trail journal has been transcribed into plain text.

in 1948 Earl Shaffer was the first person to walk the whole Appalachian Trail in a single outing.  He kept a trail journal logging his experiences as he went but his smudged writing can be difficult to read at times.  Fortunately people have transcribed his cursive handwriting into plain text which is much easier to read.  For example, the pages pictured above have been converted to the following:

they offered to feed me. Had tough time finding trail from Frosty Mt. north. Ranger showed me but still had difficulty.
Got back and I dry camped on slope of Springer Mtn. under large fallen tree. Very tired, began to rain lightly in night. I [[hunted slabs ?]] by flashlight and made shelter.
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5/ rose at dawn. [[wore ?]] poncho. Reached Springer Mtn. lookout about 7:30. one swallow of water [[end page]]

[[start page]] in canteen. About 8:30 found spring stopped and cooked cornmeal mush.
[[strikethrough]] ______________________
At shelter on Oglethorp cooked potatoes onions and bits of jerked venisons
_____________________________
Next day (Tues) 6 [[/strikethrough]] about 11:00 found water and cooked oatmeal. Walked nearly ten miles before learning I was off trail (had followed orange blaze. Had to walk back hiked about 25 miles gained about 5

You can read all of Earl Shaffer’s Trail Journal on the Smithsonian’s transcription website.

The following article from  March of 1972 originally appeared in the Perry County Times and Duncannon Record and is reprinted with their permission.

“The Duncannon Smokestack”

The large brick stack with a base of mountain stone, that once did service for the boilers of a saw mill operation, probably the largest single operation on any timber tract in Perry County, which stands on the site once known as the Gorgas place, about six miles southwest of Duncannon, was erected in the year 1857.

During the summer of that year, Captain Jacob Coulter, and a man by the name of Palmer, began the erection of the stack and the felling of virgin trees on a sixteen hundred acre tract densely covered by virgin growth, a watershed that now supplies the majority portion of the pure, sparkling water for the Trout Run Water Company reservoir. (*Duncannon Borough is currently supplied with well water from this area.) Continue reading →