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| Found this on the pier in middle, date unknown |
It was a warm Friday morning, and I somehow managed to get an unexpected day off from work, so I thought I'd take the long way home in celebration. I got off the new road, then made my rounds through downtown Brownsville, as word on the street is they were in the process of ripping down even more buildings on the main drag, Market Street.
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| View from the rear |
A few of the buildings look to be in the process of being gutted, and there is some revitalization on another building close by. We'll be back to follow up on this subject, but I got bored with it today, and had been meaning to stop by the little town of Denbo for a while.
Now, a few years back, I did a blog on the construction of the new Route 43 turnpike bridge,
the bridge that was the final nail in the coffin of the Fredericktown Ferry, or more commonly known as Fred.
Denbo is a small town along the Monongahela river, and once was home of the Vesta 6 mine, which supplied coal to the mighty furnaces of the Jones and Laughlin to the north in Pittsburgh. Vesta 6 shut down in 1946, and since then, it is just another patch town along the river.
Sometime in the 1980's (unsure of these dates, not a whole lot of info out there, feel free to correct), Sullivan D'Amico of local Pechin's fame opened a marina from a former lumberyard on the main street through Denbo. I'm no expert, but it looks like he used the existing Vesta structures for barge load out, as a part of the marina layout. From what people have been commenting on our Facebook page, this Pechin's too, was also famous for its low food prices.
I'm not sure when it closed, but the signs on the marina show a 412 area code, and we haven't used that here since 1998, so maybe before then. As I walked out on the big pier in the center of the below picture, I found these four postcards just laying in the middle of the catwalk, so I took that as a sign to do this post.
I found an old article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette about a fire truck auction at the old marina in 2006. For those of you familiar w/ the Pechin name, you know what a
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| The same area today |
What follows are a bunch of pictures of the overgrown and abandoned marina today. It's currently for sale, so who knows, maybe the 3 dollar steak dinner will return (thanx Jeff Mann for the reference).
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| The catwalk where I found the postcards |
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| Alicia load out, across river |
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| old boat ramp |
Feel free to offer any memories, corrections to the blog....
Before Pechan bought it, a man named Ed Carson or Carlson from Pittsburgh owned it.He studied the river, designed docks, and had the best docks on the river. We docked there from 1986 to 1991. Then Pechan bought it. There was great fishing there.
ReplyDeleteBefore Pechan bought it, a man named Ed Carson or Carlson from Pittsburgh owned it.He studied the river, designed docks, and had the best docks on the river. We docked there from 1986 to 1991. Then Pechan bought it. There was great fishing there.
ReplyDeleteThis place was so beautiful at 1 time. My dad (Ron Roberts) use to run the marina for Sullivan D'Amico . I use to love sitting on a bench on the hill and just watching the boats.
ReplyDeleteWhat a waste of a great place
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ReplyDeletePeople I work with in Fayette Co. tell me the Pechin dynasty is all but gone.
ReplyDeleteThe yards across the road from the river used to house storage tanks owned by Gulf Oil Company. The pier shown in some of the pictures was there when I was little, so it is probably 70+ years old. I remember that the storage tanks were repainted in the early 1970s but Gulf was gone by that time.
ReplyDeleteThe buildings, et al across the road from the river were part of the Gulf Oil company’s buildings there. I remember in the early 1970s that the storage tanks were repainted, but Gulf had long since gone by then.
ReplyDeleteWhere exactly? I looked at old aerials, and I see a mine load out over there, close to where the current one is, but I see no tanks?
ReplyDeleteEdgar Carlson owned it which was my grandfather. He sold it to Pechan. I worked there for my grandfather for a couple summers repairing docks and putting them in and also taking them out.
ReplyDeleteScott Carlson
Family friends of ours just bought the river property. We just had our first Fourth of July party there a couple days ago still need lots of work
ReplyDeleteThats cool. Are they opening it again to public?
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