DuBois Regional

The small western-PA town where, every February 2 since 1887, a groundhog named Phil emerges from a stump on a forested knoll called Gobbler's Knob to forecast six more weeks of winter or an early spring. The tradition descends from German immigrant folklore (Candlemas Day, badger weather-forecasting) brought to Pennsylvania in the 18th century. The 1993 Bill Murray film made the town a worldwide brand. Punxsutawney sits on the edge of the bituminous coal fields that powered Pittsburgh steel. The Knob itself is two miles outside town, an unassuming wooded hill the rest of the year.

When built in 1882 the Kinzua Viaduct was the tallest railroad bridge in the world — 301 feet high, 2,053 feet long, carrying coal trains across the Kinzua Gorge in north-central PA. Rebuilt in steel in 1900. In 2003 an F1 tornado ripped through the gorge and tore out 11 of the 20 towers, twisting them into the trees below. Rather than rebuild, Pennsylvania turned the surviving towers into a skywalk — an open-grate observation deck cantilevered 600 feet out into the gorge, ending at the point where the tornado snapped the bridge. The downed towers still lie scattered in the forest below.

A 220-degree railroad curve completed in 1854 to get the Pennsylvania Railroad over the Allegheny Front without using a tunnel — the line wraps around three sides of a natural amphitheater, gaining 122 feet of elevation in 2,375 feet of track. The curve made it possible to ship freight from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and on to the Midwest, cementing Pennsylvania as the industrial spine of 19th-century America. Norfolk Southern still runs 50-plus trains a day around the curve. The Nazi sabotage plot Operation Pastorius (1942) had Horseshoe Curve on its target list — three German agents landed by U-boat with explosives, but turned themselves in before getting near it.

The Allegheny River (from the north) and the Monongahela River (from the south) meet at the western tip of downtown Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River, which then runs 981 miles to the Mississippi. Point State Park sits at the confluence — 36 acres of riverfront with a 150-foot fountain at the very tip, marking the site of the colonial-era Fort Pitt (1761) and the earlier French Fort Duquesne (1754) that was the casus belli for the French and Indian War. The Pittsburgh skyline rises directly behind the Point — the Steel City's downtown is wedged into the triangle of land between the rivers, a uniquely compact American downtown bordered on two sides by water. The Roberto Clemente Bridge (yellow), the Andy Warhol Bridge (yellow), and the Rachel Carson Bridge (yellow) — the Three Sisters — cross the Allegheny into the North Shore, where PNC Park and Acrisure Stadium sit on the riverbank.