Pine Grove Park was a South Mountain Railroad excursion park "in a grove of magnificent trees" [1] established by Colonel Jackson C. Fuller c. 1881 [2] It was located east of the Pine Grove Iron Works near Toland in Cumberland County, south-central Pennsylvania It was in the South Mountain Range of the northern Blue Ridge Mountains System. [3]: 14
Colonel Fuller also owned a farm in the area, and established the railroad's Round Top Park at the Gettysburg Battlefield in 1884. [4]
The park had the "Fuller Cornet Band" for entertainment, [5] and Fuller hosted the American Institute of Mine Engineers in 1881 [6] and "J.C. Fuller’s Fifth Annual Reunion" in 1883. [7] By July 1884 the park included a green field for baseball and other games "at the Park station", water fountains, lunch tables & seats, large dancing pavilion, long bowling alley, children's swings, a carousel (flying horses, etc.), and a nearby 200 yd (180 m) rifle range. [8]
A Baldwin steam car carried visitors between the park and the iron works, [9] and the "first hard day's practice" of the 1903 Dickinson College football team was at the park. [10] Both "Pine Grove Park" [11] and " Pine Grove Furnace" were listed in 1904 as railway stations of the Hunter's Run and Slate Belt Railroad, [12] but the park ended operations c. 1904 and was in "ruins" when the Reading Company laid new tracks in 1912. [13]
A January 1913 plan to restore the private park was superseded by the commonwealth's purchase of the surrounding area, which is now Pine Grove Furnace State Park. [13]
At full capacity, an average furnace used 800 bushels of charcoal every 24 hours … 240 or more acres of woodland
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Archived 2011-09-28 at the
Wayback Machine … in the "An. Rept. Geol. Surv. of Pennsylvania," 1886)