Settlement in the Shade and Dark Shade watershed dates back to 1745, when Edmund Cartlidge, a trader, built a trading post in a swampy area known as Edmund’s Swamp. In advance of General Forbes’ expedition, Colonel Bouquet’s forces constructed a small fort here in 1758. The fort became the most important post along the Forbes Road between Fort Bedford and Fort Ligonier. Cartlidge did a thriving business selling supplies, especially hay, and grass, to the military forces and civilian travelers. The first school in Shade Township was built about 1760. In 1800, George Lambert built the first sawmill in Shade Township on Little Shade Creek, about a half-mile south of its junction with Dark Shade Creek. Lumbering would be a growth industry for a century in the area named Shade Township due to the density the forest cover.

Extractive industry soon followed. The first iron furnace constructed west of the

Allegheny Front was built about 1807 along Shade Creek near a natural outcropping of iron ore. John P. Milnor, manager of the Furnace and Forge properties in 1820 wrote, “from 70 to 100 men are constantly employed and 15 women to bake and wash for the men, and 6 boys to clean the cabins.” In 1820, Shade Forge was constructed about three-fourths of a mile downstream of Shade Furnace, and in 1841, Rockingham Furnace was located along Dark Shade Creek, about two miles upstream of the original furnace.

The first coal mine on record in the township was opened by George Lambert in 1820 on Little Shade Creek, just south of the current Central City Borough. Nonetheless, the area remained overwhelmingly agrarian through the nineteenth century, with over 80 percent of the male residents owning or working on a farm according to the 1900 United States Manuscript Census of Population.

The biggest industry around the turn of the century was timbering. Edward Vose Babcock and five associates chartered the Babcock Lumber Company in 1898 after purchasing 17 tracts with 6,415 acres in Somerset County for $100,000. A sawmill was constructed along Shade Creek and equipped with a new Allis double-acting band saw, which enabled logs to be cut from both directions. A standard-gauge logging railroad was constructed through the Clear Shade area, and the town of Ashtola grew. In 1901, Babcock Lumber Company grew by incorporating the James Curry & Son operation. The company became the fourth largest producer of lumber in the state, producing 64 million feet of lumber in 1905. In 1913, the last log was cut at the Ashtola mill. In just 15 years, the Babcock Company had clear-cut the large virgin forest along the Allegheny Front, which today is known as the Babcock Division of Gallitzin State Forest.

In 1912, S.E. Dickey & Company of Johnstown purchased the Jacob McGregor farm and laid out the community of Cairnbrook for Loyal Hanna Coal & Coke Company. Between 1912 and 1920, the company constructed about 200 houses, commercial and social buildings, and a modern drift entry mine with accompanying extractive buildings and structures. In 1995, the community was recognized as a National Historic District.

At virtually the same time, three Johnstown businessmen created Central City Realty Company. They mapped out and sold land in the planned community of Central City, which became a bustling coal town of families working at Reitz Coal Company. The community grew and soon boasted a large park with a public swimming pool and a baseball diamond with a grandstand. The former bathhouse at the pool is now a community-meeting center.

On July 1, 1914, the Somerset Herald marveled at how Central City and neighboring Cairnbrook a mile downstream along Dark Shade Creek had “sprung up as if by magic,” foresaw the coming environmental impact: “In days long past, McGregor’s dam was widely famed as the home of mountain trout and was visited during the season by anglers from Pittsburgh, Johnstown and Somerset. It is feared that fish will be unable to sustain life in Clear and Dark Shade Creeks when the waters from the mines are drained into them, but some sportsmen are said to be rash enough to believe that they will be able to induce the state authorities to preserve the purity of the streams even at the cost of stopping development of the rich coal beds through which they flow.” As it turns out, their fears were well founded.

Development in Cairnbrook and Central City were enhanced by the extension of the Pennsylvania Railroad from Windber to Cairnbrook and Central City between 1914 and 1920. Central City Borough, completely surrounded by Shade Township, was incorporated in 1918. World War I fueled major expansion of the mines, but the Babcock Company completed the clear cutting of the forests surrounding the Central City area by the 1920s. Employment and population in the area declined slightly from the Great Depression, but production boomed again during World War II and then again declined in the 1950s when the mines began to close.

In 1957, the Reitz No. 4 mine, once the largest in the area, shut down, and a coal cleaning plant was erected at its surface site in Central City. Berwind-White Corporation absorbed Reitz. The last area mine closed in the early 1960s, and area residents were left to find work elsewhere. Many commuted to jobs in Somerset, Windber, or Johnstown, while some simply left.

From 1930 to 2000, Central City lost 59.7 percent of its population and Shade Township, 48.3 percent. But, the dramatic drop in population is only the tip of the iceberg of social decline. Somerset County, typical of rural areas, lags the rest of Pennsylvania and the nation in economic indicators; for instance, the median family income for the county in 1999 was $31,993, while the median for Pennsylvania was $40,106. The Shade-Central City community has significantly higher poverty, lower incomes, lower property values*, older homes*, and more elderly population than the county as a whole.

The Delaware and Shawnee Indians used this general region of the Alleghenies as hunting grounds. However, the Delaware Indians were primarily agrarian, so they tended to settle in low-lying areas with suitable soils for growing crops. The Native Americans would have traveled through and hunted in parts of the Shade Creek watershed, but their visits likely would have been transitory, not permanent. However, there has never been a comprehensive survey of potential prehistoric archeological sites in the region, so potential prehistoric sites are not known.

The following listing of historical features in the Shade Creek watershed has been extracted from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, an Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, by Scott C. Brown, Frances C. Robb and Elaine Will, published by America’s Industrial Heritage Project and the National Park Service, 1994.

• Border Dam, constructed circa 1900, is built of timber cribbing and is 9 feet high. The dam was built in part because the intakes from the Stonycreek River at Johnstown were increasingly polluted from mine drainage, and in part because of the growing need for water.

• Stony Creek Viaduct of the Pennsylvania Railroad, constructed in 1901 by the Pennsylvania Railroad, is a 540-foot, single-track, deck plate-girder structure resting on five steel towers. The bridge is 0.25 miles east of Seanor.

• Shade Furnace was built in 1807. Today, only the stone foundations and the ore pit mines and piles of ore remain. The Historical & Genealogical Society of Somerset County own the site, located near the Village of Miller Run.

• Cairnbrook National Historic District, with 140 contributing resources, including utilitarian industrial buildings, six types of vernacular residential dwellings, and a few buildings of the Prairie School of architecture was officially designated in 1994

• Gahagen, a village in Shade Township, was a company town for Gahagen Coal Company, and end of the line for the Shade Creek Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The town features 20 two-story, double houses with full-width, one-story porches.

• Gahagen Coal Company also built Rockingham, another Shade Township Village. The houses are two-story and side-gabled with full-front porches.

• Reitz, Reitz No. 2, Reitz No. 3, Reitz No. 4 and Reitz No. 5 are all small coal-mining villages constructed by Reitz Coal Company. All contain houses and mine-related structures.

• The Foust Mill, constructed in 1812, remains in the village of Seanor in Paint Township.

• The Daley Family Cemetery, developed by early settlers, is maintained by the Pennsylvania Game Commission on State Game Lands 228.

A Profile of Somerset County, published by the Somerset County Planning Commission in July 1992, also notes that early settlement structures in Shade Township include at least three log houses and the stone Statler House dating from 1834. In addition, Central City Borough is highlighted in literature promoting historic areas within Somerset County due to the its many styles and sizes of former coal company-owned housing and some old coal company buildings.