Mountain Hopping 2016:
Jackson

Jackson is located on Route 950 at Deemer Avenue in Falls Creek, Penn. Latitude and longitude: 41.139238, -78.803989.

It's fascinating to think that this Jackson advertising plate shows exactly the placement of the plant from that bit of paved driveway you see in the photo at the top of this page. Having walked the property and seeing how far back it was set, we can now easily imagine it as it used to be. And of course it was set back, because that's where the railroad line was (shown above), and from reading about the site cleanup, it's apparent there was some sort of water source behind the plant as well. The plate and the plate holder are both prized pieces in our collection of restaurant ware. (Jackson also manufactured the bases for a lot of the flip-top bowls that Susan collects. Click here to see a sampling of them.)

Of all the stops, Jackson China was the most intimidating. It wasn't on the original itinerary because it was almost 100 miles east of Shenango – located in Falls Creek, Penn. – in what is called the Pennsylvania Wilds. And all we knew was that it was on the eastern edge of Falls Creek on Route 950.

That's not a lot to go on when it's getting to be afternoon and from what we could tell from our view of I-80 into those Wilds, it was a whole lot of beautiful ... nothing. Not many towns but truly gorgeous mountains and valleys.

Thanks to this rough map courtesy of the EPA's superfund cleanup at the site, we knew to look for that little notch in the county line on a Google map, and then we noticed that the Pine Inn Restaurant and Lounge on Main Street in Falls Creek seemed to be nearby (though Google the trickster tells us it's really in DuBois).

Regardless, we found it and there were two people sitting at the bar. One of the nice guys interruped his beer and walked us out to the street so we'd be sure to understand his directions. We really were close!

So what is left of Jackson? A big – really big – field. Acres upon acres. If you continue going south a few hundred yards, you'll see the rusting, boarded up, old metal outlet store building, also on the left, set back from the road and down a little hill and seemingly separated from the main plant area. Of course we looked in the windows. No pottery in sight, just a bunch of unrelated stuff being stored. Bullet holes in the window of the main door.

At the main entrance to Jackson, where the superfund warning sign is, there's a paved road that runs a little ways into the site. Then it turns into what seems to be a mown path that winds way back onto the property to a series of monitoring wells to check for lead levels in the groundwater by the EPA.

This link will take you to the EPA's superfund cleanup page for "Jackson Ceramix, Inc." The site was listed in 2005 on the most hazardous waste sites list, thus making it eligible for federal funding for cleanup.

Of all the places we visited, Jackson had by far fewer artifacts to find than any other. We found exactly one shard and one brick. The entire site is planted with lush vegetation, and that might easily have prevented us from seeing the usual shards floating on the surface. And it might be that compared to Carr, the cleanup was more thorough. We don't know. But it was unique and completely worth the visit.

Our only regret about driving to that part of Pennsylvania was not having enough time to drive the 20 miles down to Punxsutawney to see Phil!

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