Saturday, June 2, 2012

Brandywine Springs B&O Railroad Station

 

In the time since this blog was created I have wanted to attend a archeological dig on the grounds of the old Brandywine Springs Spa / Amusement Park to take some photos showing the work these volunteers do to help preserve the history of this site and large piece of history in Delaware and The Lower Red Clay Valley. Though I had good intentions of getting there for a dig, I never made it due to one thing or another. At a recent event held at The Wilmington and Western Railroad I ran into Mike Ciosek, President of The Friends of Branywine Springs (FOBS). Mike oversees the digs that go on there and asked him if he had any photos he could share. He sent me some and here is a short part of his email:
 There are photos from 4 archaeology sites. FOBS has been digging in the park since 1994. Our objective is to find and mark the sites of the buildings in the park. This will allow people to take a historical nature walk in the old amusement park.
 I will not include all the photos in this first post but will break it down by subject for now and on future posts. I want to thank Mike for his input and his sharing of these pictures. I do believe these were taken by him and are property of the Friends of Brandywine Springs. I would also like to note, the text below each photo was input from Mike.


 In 1891 an agreement was made with the B&O Railroad to allow them to erect a station in the park. This photo is from a George Wolf postcard of the era and was the only photo we had. Note on the postcard it is called a pavilion so we have kept that designation. The Wilmington & Western Railroad calls it a station.

 
The photo is typical of what we found for the footers. The 18” x 18” x 6” concrete footer cap was cast off site. We could tell this was made by the B&O because there are coal particles as large as 1 inch in size in the concrete. The coal pile must have been next to the sand pile where they did the concrete casting. In the photo you can also see mortar with coal dust between the local rock columns that supported the concrete cap.

  
The photo shows the sign and posts FOBS put in place to mark where the building was located. The current Wilmington & Western Railroad narration points out the posts and signs during their trips up the Red Clay Valley

No comments: