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Geneva State Park, Jefferson, and the AC&J Railroad - Road Trip 2000, Part 1

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I've been dredging through my archives again, and tuning up a set of photos from a road trip to the Northeast in 2000.

It's broken up into several parts to cover various points en route to see three exhibits then on display of artist Rockwell

Kent's work. I may have/probably have posted some of this before, but if so it's been several. Besides, I have a penchant

for repeating myself, so please indulge me.

 

Geneva State Park, Jefferson and the AC&J Railroad - Road Trip 2000, Part 1

 

All Photographs Copyright © 2007 by Robert E Pence

 

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Geneva State Park, Ohio

 

First night out; Geneva State Park is located on the shore of Lake Erie east of Cleveland. The land is mostlylevel and sandy

with low vegetation and some forested areas, and mosquitoes thrive here. In the evening, I biked down to the beach with

the notion of going for a swim. The no-see-ums almost ate me alive. Sound travels great distances over water. I kept

hearing a dull booming, like strip-mine or quarry blasting. When a storm arrived hours later, I realized that I had been

hearing a thunderstorm when it was still more than a hundred miles away.

 

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In the morning the surface of the lake was still stirred up by the previous night's storm. Near the beach lay a tree felled probably

years ago by erosion, the stump and roots polished by the action of waves and sand.

 

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Jefferson, Ohio - Ashtabula Carson & Jefferson RR

 

The 1872 Lake Shore & Michigan Southern depot at Jefferson, Ohio was derelict and facing imminent destruction when the local

garden club took it on as a restoration project. It now contains museum exhibits. 

 

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On land adjacent to the depot, the historic preservation group has relocated an 1849 church and a barn from the 1890s. There's

alsoa one-room school in early stages of restoration, and the group has acquired a general store that they plan to move to the site. 

 

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The Ashtabula Carson & Jefferson Railroad is a common-carrier short line that moves 750 – 1,200 carloads of freight annually and runs tourist trains behind a 1948 Alco S2 locomotive of former Erie

Railroad provenance. The locomotive still has its original prime mover. It's smoky (what early Alco isn't?) and wheezy, an historic gem. It still wears its 1976 Bicentennial paint scheme. The train

is made up of an Erie heavyweight passenger car, two Long Island Railroad commuter cars, a power car and a caboose. The pretty one-hour ride through mostly-undeveloped  marsh and

forested wetland passes over a former Lake Shore and Michigan Southern high-grade ­passenger line built in 1872.

 

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Well THAT was interesting. Thanks!

"You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers

I hope it didn't get you worked into too much of a tizzy!  :wink:

Oh, it did.

"You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers

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