Saturday, February 04, 2006

Posted

I went on a short hike along the Harmony Trail near Wexford. The Rachel Carson Trail Conservancy is working on converting a 4 mile section of what was once the Harmony trolley line from New Castle to Pittsburgh. At one point, the person leading the hike pulled a bright yellow "Posted" sign from a power pole. We were shocked until she explained that they investigated the name and John Knapp of 190 Clay Road in Wexford does not exist. The name does not appear on the tax rolls. The street doesn't even exist in Wexford.

It is known that several land owners along the corridor are opposed to "their" throughway being used as a trail but it is the general consensus that these signs are an effort by a local hunter to keep people off "his" prime hunting ground. We saw a number of well-traveled deer trails and one hunter's tree stand.

It's actually fairly clever to put up "No Trespassing" signs along what they consider to be unused land. Most people would simply believe the signs and stay away. The RCT Conservancy has been carefully looking into who owns what along the corridor and has been negotiating with property owners. When these signs started appearing (and apparently those previously had a different false name) they looked into it and found them to be ficticious.

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