Baden's First 100 YearsPage Fifty-twoAmong the most beautiful views to be seen anywhere in Beaver County is that from the hills of Baden overlooking the Ohio. The wide sweep of the river - sparkling blue under the sun and flashing silver by moonlight - and the panorama shown on its hills from Jones & Laughlin's Steel Mill is spread out like a painting. "Beautiful Ohio" in song:
These are names for Ohio, Dead are the scalping warriors; But the music of the river, And the sweet, syllabic rhythm of its name, Shall live forever, Men may come, and men may go, But I go on forever. Baden no longer possesses a water-front; the old Ohio River Beach is gone. The shelving expanse of pebbles that intermittently extended from Logan Beach to below Martin's Store at Jerry's Crossing, with the partially willow-covered frontage farther down-stream, has completely disappeared under deep cover of earth and cinders deposited there by the steam shovels that provided the Railroad's new right-of-way. Another natural feature is thus sacrificed in the march of progress. Time was when the river and it's Logan and Jerry's Crossing Beaches were the delight of many Baden boys and girls both great and small; one might say the chief delight, for strange as it may seem to the present generation, the river and its interests once occupied a foremost place in the affections of the youth of Baden. At all seasons of the year it furnished recreation of one kind or another, swimming and rowing in the summer, and skating in winter, while in spring and fall the beach with its piles of driftwood invited to the enjoyment of roaring fires where wieners and potatoes were toasted and baked and eaten with much gusto. The first swim of the season sometime in March, and the last usually in late October though too cold for real enjoyment, where the occasion of much pardonable boasting, while in the summer season no day went by, Sunday included, without its troop of youngsters splashing and shouting in the river. To run barefoot on those beach pebbles called for soles like shoe leather, but they were soon acquired since all boys in those days said farewell to shoes in early spring. Bathing suits were, of course, unheard of, excepting when older folk resorted to the river - and then such improvised bathing suits did then appear! It was no great feat to swim the river in time of low water, and when the river was particularly low, it could be waded afoot. In 1880 there were 600 of these "lights along the shores" located on the river banks between Pittsburgh and the Mississippi River. They were all numbered, beginning with Number One at the Mississippi and on up to Pittsburgh. The Lighthouse at Logstown Bend and Green Bar on the northeast side of the river was about one-half mile from French Point, now Economy Station. The lighthouse consisted
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