This is Muzette, Pennsylvania, a hamlet in Forest County that I visited some eight years ago in search of the fabled Lamentation Run. The place is surrounded by a beautiful and little-known segment of the Allegheny National Forest, and the North Country Trail passes nearby.
Actually, I use the word "hamlet" loosely. All you see from the road through town is an overgrown farm that was clearly loved and well-kept the last time I went through the area. But that's the way it is in rural areas: an older family member dies, and the survivors tell themselves, "Yeah, someday we gotta get over and get the house ready for auction." It never happens, and things molder.
Click on the photos to enlarge them. Here, beyond the neglected picket fence and the overgrown pampas grasses, you've got a decorative little cluster of birdhouses. It's as if someone just walked away from this place and left everything as it was.
There are trinkets sitting out still on the front porch, too. There are no "posted" signs, but it's clearly private property, and the Allegheny Journal does not advocate or condone trespassing.
If you head south out of the so-called town, there are a few more houses or hunting camps along that road, including the Lucky Buck Lodge--home to a woman who commented on my last article about Lamentation Run. Her comment suggested that I stop by Lucky Buck if ever I'm in the area again, which I did, but no one seemed to be home.
The entire area up there is like Muzette now...the older person dies and the family has an auction and the property is sold to someone from Ohio or Pittsburgh as a camp. about 2/3-3/4 of the houses up there are camps. property taxes are fairly low and the head tax (1%) income is gone as no one lives there or works there so there is literally no money. Everything is leaving...the owners of markets claim (and I believe them) that they only make money in the summer - when campers return. That biz has to be steady year round.
ReplyDeleteSuch is the fate of most of the places you see on your way to Muzette.
I call what it looked like in the late 70's and knew every neighbor. the hosues still stand empty but for tops - 20 days - a year.
The only life the area had came and went 8+ years ago when the Rendell admin was practicing 'tappin and cappin' He sold thousands of gas well leases to the frackers and the only requirment was they prove the well, then they can cap it for the 99 year lease duration, to use it as a savings account then gas futures are high. Such is big business. And the lack of a severance tax means that the wells that are producing, send it down to texas and we get zero once again. Consider yourself lucky that you moved. I moved to pitt 18 months ago and get back every 2 weeks to utter solitude in the winter. no one hunts anymore, fishes, or camps outside of an RV. even the once large Marienville VFD 'tour de forest' is but 1/10th of its old self.