The Paperdale Bridge

 

On Laubach Road north of the Benton Foundry, Henrietta and Elwood Erney live on the land that once housed the summer cottage of J. Paul and Ethel Laubach in Sugarloaf Township. The couple have a spotlessly clean traditional sugar shack made out of three-cut hemlock and they have a covered bridge high in the mountain laurel and under the overhang of some of their maple trees.

The old covered bridge that spanned Raven Creek in Stillwater was moved by Paul Laubach and his crew to this location many years ago. The bridge is still standing on the Erney property, far from any creeks or streams. Some reference books refer to this 46' long bridge as the "Paperdale" Bridge. Built in the 1890s, it was a Queenpost Truss bridge, 13' wide, and easily identified as a Queenpost because of its minimum amount of remaining siding. The bridge is a testament to the solid construction of covered bridges in general. The lack of siding has not seriously damaged the bridge in more than 100 years. In the Pennsylvania register of covered bridges, it is referenced as PA-19-46.

The Road to the "Paperdale" Covered Bridge.
The bridge is in the top right corner.
The Plank/Laubach "Cabin" is in the top left corner.

For about sixty years, the Paperdale covered Bridge spanned Raven Creek, just east of Stillwater on the present Paperdale Road.

Picture courtesy of Harold Sitler

Its primary use was to carry traffic to the settlement of Paperdale and to the paper mill. The covered bridge was replaced in the late 1950s by a steel and concrete bridge, possibly by the Laubach Construction Co. J. Paul Laubach acquired the bridge, had it dismantled and rebuilt in his forested tract of land owned by the Erneys since about 1970, about eight miles from its original location on Raven Creek.

Regretfully, some of the covered bridge supports are rotting away, but Elwood did support the wooden posts on concrete blocks piers to keep further deterioration to a minimum. Elwood uses the building today as a storage shed for his many projects.

Adjacent to the covered bridge is the cabin that Paul and Ethel Laubach used as their excape. Paul's son, Jim Laubach, remembers the "cabin" on the property that is adjacent to the covered-bridge shed. Paul Laubach had bought 77 acres from the Plank family in Benton. The cabin on the property was about half finished, but the roof was caving in.

The Plank/Laubach Cabin

Jim writes, "In order to give winter employment to the men in his construction company, Dad had them rebuild the whole cabin. Dal Baker built the beautiful stone fireplace, and I found a millstone up at Norton Cole's mill which he gave to us and was incorporated into the front porch. I remember the day our crew went up to pick up the stone at Norton because it was a cold December day, and was snowing rather hard, but we also experienced a severe thunderstorm the same time. I rebuilt the hand pump on the hill opposite the cabin so we would have 'running water,' that is run down the hill from the pump and up the other hill to the cabin with our bucket. A group of us also planted thousands of seedlings throughout the bare areas of the woods, but I can't remember if they grew or if the deer got them."

When Jim looked at the pictures we took Sunday, he recalled that he and his sister Janet were very upset when they learned that his Mother had sold the "woods" because she was afraid the cabin would burn down. She did not tell them until after the sale. Jim said they would Have bought it from her in a "heart beat." Jim "loved the woods and cabin and spent numerous days hiking all through the woods, and even being chased by a beaver down at the bottom of the land where there were a number of beaver dams on that stream" in the area where later John "Koon" Diltz built a pond. Just as it always is when we look at something we once loved and no longer have, the picture brought back a lot of memories and some heartbreak to a nurseryman who once lived "Back Home in Benton, PA."

Picture courtesy of Harold Sitler