The Tracks

Jay from Ellicott City, Maryland wired us this submission via Mutant Mail on August 5, 2006:

I just discovered your site and wasted at least an hour of my Saturday laughing my @&& off.  I should be getting some work done, but Mutant Beach put me in a mind to just sit back and waste the rest of the day...maybe pop a few 16 oz. Old Milwaukee's (do they still sell that stuff?) [MBPS NOTE:  Sadly, they still do make Old Mud.  A wise man once said in jest that Old Milwaukee is the collected overflow of Strohs.  We are not sure that he is wrong!]
 
As a former resident (grew up across the street from Sal's), I was never aware that I was part of such a monumental piece of history being that my generation was the first to experience the wonders of "Mutant Beach".
 
I'm afraid in it's early days MB didn't have the stigma that it now wears.  Campus Drive was a dirt road simply called "The Tracks" and of course there were no "Projects".
 
Keep up the good work.  I'll stop by often.  Maybe I'll pay MB a visit on my next trip to B-town.  Then again.....
 

Jay's follow-up from August 8, 2006 to some of our questions regarding The Tracks:

To the best of my knowledge..... 

Back in the 50's and early 60's Railroad Street ran parallel to Barbour street (behind where Sal's eventually was built) and dead ended at S. Bennett Street (a short stretch of dirt road that is now part of Campus Drive running from Barbour Street south to connect with RR Street).  There was a small bridge crossing the little creek that flows into the Tuna and that was how you accessed "Tracks".  My understanding is that in the 40's there were RR tracks running from Downtown out to West Branch along this route, hence "the tracks".  Just before Dorothy Lane there was a swimming whole called Phantom Deep.  I think they meant Fathom Deep but kids didn't know what that meant.  That's where I learned to swim.  My cousin threw me in....sink or swim. 

I lived in that neighborhood from 1950b till I left B-Town in the mid-70's.

SL responds on August 9, 2006:

I noticed the posting on "the Tracks" and will verify. The tracks started at the foot of Bennett Street and Railroad street and ran past a junk yard called "Uncle Leos". The tracks ran right past where Mutant Beach was to be built and there was always a swimming hole there. At Onofrio street the tracks singled down to a footpath than ran all the way to Harri Emery Airport and the air on the weekends was always full of Piper and Taylorcraft Cubs, because that's where the factory was, at Dorothy Lane.

Anyways, just up from the airfield there was a swimming hole called "Maple Deep". It is now right off the edge of a Pitt Parking lot where there is a delayed harvest sign. I have enclosed a photo taken Aug 2006. Down from the airfield there was another swimming hole called "Phantom Deep" and today it is right along the new bike path near the Pitt Athletic Center. Both were very isolated so they usually sported naked boys and sometimes naked girls. Co-ed nakedness was still politically correct.

Not included in the photos I'm sending was "Crookerhouse" swimming hole, another naked beach.

Also I have sent a photo of "Minnetonka Beach", just down stream from "Mutant Beach", where much swimming was done by the MB crowd. It usually had to be cleared of shopping carts before any dipping or toy truck sacrifice could be done. This is where I think Red Jacket offered sacrifice to Cornplanter the warrior before he headed up to Oriskany for the fight. (Cornplanter was a frequent visitor to Johnson Hall, the fortifications of the British Indian agent Sir William Johnson, and was always rasing hell up in the Mohawk with his friend Joseph Brandt) My gggggrandfather George Wagner took a musket ball in the thigh at Oriskany (his name is on the monument) and was carried off the field with Herkimer and the others. It was a slaughter but nevertheless, The Tryon County Militia saved the day and Fort Stanwix was never captured by Barry St. Leger, and the British attempts to capture Albany were thwarted. Interestingly, his grandson TLV Wagner moved to Bradford in 1844. That's how Wagner avenue off Pitt Field got it's name. The Wagner Cemetery est 1894 still stands on West Washington Street just up the road.

George Wagner's pension papers are on-line. Google "Fort Klock" and go to the section "Morrison's Pensions". One of them is signed by Jelles Fonda, the ancestor to the Fonda family (Henry, Peter, and good-god yes, Jane too). George's father Englehardt was an officer in the Tryon County Militia but did not fight that day.

Anyways, Cornplanter could have killed my ancestor that day but didn't succeed. I love Cornplanter. He frequently referred to Red Jacket as a "sissy", for lack of a better word. When my son was eight years old I took him to see Cornplanter's monument and told him he was a great warrior. He still remembers.

Attached are four photos of the swimming holes. Two now; two later.

SL

For the rest of SL's photos click here

 

 

READERS:  We would like more information about "The Tracks", especially any photos.  What year was Campus Drive paved?

 

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©2006 MBPS

DISCLAIMER:  The MBPS does wish to condone, endorse or promote the painting at Mutant Beach.  We only wish to report the history of the area.  Placing graffiti art on public property is illegal.