Wanders on the Great Alleghany Passage | Big Savage Tunnel Opening

The Big Savage Tunnel opened on Monday, March 24. A notice on the internet said it would be opening in the afternoon, but when I got there at noon it had already opened. I was sorely disappointed to miss the official opening but quickly recovered. Three workmen who were still in the tunnel (they said they were looking for a hammer they had lost) said that one biker coming from Meyersdale had gone through the tunnel but then immediately turned around and went back to Meyersdale. I am the first north-bound GAPer from Frostburg through the tunnel. 

Swinging the doors open in 2024. I missed the Grand Opening this year.

Proceeding through the tunnel

At Milepost 23.5, not far from the northern end of the tunnel, the GAP crosses the Continental Divide at an elevation of 2,390 feet, about fifty-five feet higher than the tunnel itself. This is one of the lowest places on the Continental Divide in this area, which is why the train route that the GAP follows crossed it at this point. From here it’s basically all downhill to Pittsburgh, with grades of 0.80% to 0.60% as the GAP descends into Connellsville, at the western edge of the Alleghenies. 

Continental Divide. 

Beyond the tunnel under McKenzie Hollow Road begins the 1,236,370 square-mile Mississippi-Missouri River Basin, the fourth largest river basin in the world, after the Amazon River Basin, the Congo River Basin, and the Nile River Basin. A few hundred yards beyond the Divide, just before Milepost 24, the GAP crosses Flaugherty Creek, the first of ten times it crosses the creek before Meyersdale. According to one history of the area Flaugherty Creek was first known as Wolf Creek, or Wolf Run. Later a “hunter, whose name was Flaherty, or Flaugherty, gave his name to the classic stream that divides Meyersdale into a north and south side. His camp is said to have been near the mouth of the stream [at Meyersdale]. There are, however, some accounts of him which say that he operated a still somewhere on the banks of the stream.”

 

Flaugherty Creek emerges from a culvert under the GAP

The creek is oftentimes not visible in the swamp to the left where it crosses the GAP for the first time. On the right it emerges out of a culvert. From here it flows 7.7 miles to its confluence with the Casselman River. The Casselman River flows thirty-one miles to its confluence with the Youghiogheny River at Confluence (Turkeyfoot). From Confluence the Yough flows seventy-four miles to its confluence with the Monongahela River at McKeesport. From here the Mighty Mon flows 15.35 miles to its confluence with the Allegheny River at Pittsburgh, the beginning of the Ohio River. The Ohio flows 981 miles to its confluence with the Mississippi River at Cairo, Illinois. From Cairo the Big Miss flows 1,132 miles before debouching into the Gulf of Mexico (called by Charles Mason the Gulf of Florida; now, apparently, the Gulf of America). So if you stand or squat at the culvert and urinate into Flaugherty Creek your essence, in homeopathic quantities, will travel downstream 2,241 miles to the Gulf. 

One of nine bridges across Flaugherty Creek.

Another bridge across Flaugherty Creek. Note fresh snow on the hillside beyond. 

I rode on to Meyersdale, then Garrett, and then back to Frostburg, a distance of about forty miles, and I did not encounter another GAPer either coming or going. I guess the below freezing temperatures and snow scared everyone away.