Rices Landing

George Washington and his troops camped here on their way to Pittsburgh during the French & Indian War, and in 1786 John Rice purchased land on the east side of Enoch's Run, a tributary of the Monongahela River, and named the settlement Rices Landing. Abijeah McClain bought land on the west side of Enoch's Run and named it Newport, and while Ben Franklin was mapping the area in 1801, he combined the two under the name Rices Landing. Enoch's Run later became Pumpkin Run, beside which stands a one-story red brick jail with cast iron window bars dating to the 1850s. Abundant natural resources and proximity to the river supported industries and businesses from the 1850s to 1950s, including blacksmithing, coopering, milling, paper making, foundry and machine work, pottery, manufacturing, coal mining, warehouses, hotels, stores, restaurants, a theater, a pool hall, saloons, and the Rices Landing National Bank. With the development of Greene County's first commercial mine in 1902, company houses and a company store were added along Main Street. A 50-by-20-foot frame train station built near Third Street in 1910 gave passengers easier access to transportation, and in 1913 construction of a tunnel and bridge for rail expansion altered the town by removing buildings on the southwest side of Main Street from Pumpkin Run to First Street and shortening Water Street; keystones on the railroad bridge's concrete abutment were made from patterns produced by the W.A. Young and Sons Foundry and Machine Shop. In 1856 the Monongahela Navigation Company completed Lock and Dam No. 6 at Rices Landing, engineered by Slyvanus Lothrop as a fixed crest dam on solid rock with fifteen-foot walls, a protected lock, and a lock keeper who collected tolls; the first boat through the original lock was the Ariadne, a small passenger boat. After the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers acquired the Monongahela navigation system, reconstruction at Rices Landing began in 1914, and by 1916 a new fixed crest dam and two 56-by-360-foot locks had been completed, allowing larger tows, with two houses built for the lock master and chief engineer. The Maxwell Locks and Dams made the Rices Landing Lock and Dam obsolete in 1964, and it was abandoned and its river walls demolished in 1965, though the concrete land wall, the middle wall, and the two houses remain. In 2000 the houses passed to the Rices Landing Borough, and one became the Borough Office and the Lock 6 Museum, which displays a model of the Kittanning, a paddle wheeler used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a model of early Rices Landing, and an air whistle used to signal boats.

Rices Landing, Pennsylvania · United States