Smicksburg reborn

A dozen small businesses have revitalized the tiny, rural community

Sunday, April 10, 2005

SMICKSBURG, Pa. -- On the edge of town, a sign denotes Old Smicksburg Park. There's not much there, though. A patch of daffodils popping up through the wild grass. A picnic table stuck off in the woods. A couple of markers that show what used to be.

V.W.H. Campbell, Post-Gazette Patty Painter started her business three years ago by buying a 40-acre farm where she grows flowers which she dries and uses to make wreaths, swag and floral arrangements. She hires Amish girls to help pick them and hangs them to dry in a darkened greenhouse and barn. She is in a greenhouse with some of the flower seedlings that will be planted this spring.   On the Internet    Visit www.smicksburg-dayton.com for more information.

Schmick bought a farm on Little Mahoning Creek, laying out the community in lots 45 feet by 200 feet that sold for $10 each. By the mid-1800s, Smicksburg had expanded farther up the hill, but the original 40 acres remained the center of the Indiana County town.

The community reached its peak population of 260 around the time of the Great St. Patrick's Day Flood of 1936, which left much of Pittsburgh under water for weeks.

The Army Corps of Engineers decided that one way to keep water out of the steel-making capital would be to dam tributaries of the Allegheny River, said the Rev. Tim Spence, who wrote "In the Valley of the Fair Mahoning," a history of Smicksburg. One of those tributaries was the Little Mahoning.

Unfortunately for the people of Smicksburg, the area that would be the flood pool was Schmick's entire original site. The Corps bought everyone out and razed 22 buildings, including the creamery, a gas station, a school, the mill and the telephone exchange.

Now, 60 years later, with 17 houses and 48 people left, Smicksburg has transformed itself. It is still very much rural, with cows and sheep grazing in pastures and chickens and roosters pecking along driveways.

	V.W.H. Campbell, Post-Gazette Patty Painter looks at some of the dried flowers in her barn.

The community draws thousands and thousands each year for its fall festival and annual Country Days craft show.

Patty Painter and her husband, Alan, are two of the newest store owners.

For years, Patty Painter, 52, had filled her garden in Irwin full of celosia and statice to use in dried flower arrangements and swags.

"It went from a little garden at home," Alan Painter said. "It kept growing and growing."

First, she took over her brother's garden. Then the Painters bought 10 acres in nearby Dayton. Finally, in 2003, they bought a 40-acre Amish farm.

"We fell in love with Smicksburg," Patty Painter said. "It's the slow pace."

Each year, she grows 10,000 plants. She dries them all in a huge wood-slatted barn on her property. Then she makes her finished product in the wood-frame Amish house she turned into her shop, The Drying Shed, about a mile from Smicksburg.

Many of the shop owners bought their businesses or homes from Amish people. Members of the Old Order Amish, a conservative sect from Holmes County, Ohio, began moving into the area about 1960, Spence said.

Though no Amish live within the borough limits of Smicksburg, there are about 2,000 in surrounding communities. City dwellers get a kick out of the horse-drawn buggies, children walking to school carrying lunch pails, and men using horses to plow their fields. They also delight in buying handmade furniture sold by many of the Amish families in the area.

Bob Steele and his wife, Martha, own three shops in Smicksburg, a restaurant that features gourmet fare, a gift shop and a specialty shop, where employees make their own yarn and knit and crochet sweaters and other items.

The Steeles moved to Smicksburg 13 years ago from Butler. They've always worked in retail.

"We decided if we're going to do something, we want it to be special," Bob Steele said.

At their restaurant, Thee Village Eatinghouse, some of their specialties are a broccoli and cheese quiche, a portabella mushroom sandwich on homemade focaccia, and a tomato and cheese pie.

"The drive from Kittanning to here is gorgeous," said Leah Watt, who had the chicken salad with cranberries for lunch last week. "We saw a new little foal on the way."

She and her friends visit Smicksburg a couple of times each month.

"Often, we go home with nothing more than a full belly, but it's worth it," Mary Station said.

The shop owners of Smicksburg have formed an advertising cooperative, pitching in their ad dollars in an effort to show solidarity in the community and get more bang for their bucks. They produce a brochure, "Destination Amish Country: Shops of Smicksburg," and distribute it throughout the region. They concentrate on people out for a day trip, Steele said.

One of the great things about Smicksburg, he said, is that the retailers don't copy each other. Everyone offers something different.

There are several shops along Smicksburg's main street, Route 954, a byway that can trace its roots to the 1600s, when the road was known as the Great Shamokin Path.

At Smicksburg Pottery, Betty Hedman carries the work of more than 50 local artisans, including glassmakers and painters.

Most of the pottery there is her own; her studio is in the back of the old Smicksburg State Bank building she bought nine years ago. Inside the shop, her Dutch Blue rabbit, Roosevelt, hops freely about. She has various pieces inside dedicated to Rosie, as she calls him. She makes porcelain, stoneware and earthenware, and her pieces include dishes and cookware, birdhouses and vases.

Hedman's terraced garden, in the back of the building, features a fountain shaped like a giant carrot. It faces Old Smicksburg Park. During hard rains, Hedman can see the water, but it's never come close to her shop.

"I've seen the water over the railing on the bridge," Hedman said. "That's pretty neat."

The Army Corps of Engineers' flood-control project was completed in 1945. When the water rises, the entire site of the old town of Smicksburg floods, sometimes coming within six feet of many homes and businesses. But it never goes in, said Spence, who served as pastor at Smicksburg's Salem Lutheran Church for nine years.

"It works great," he said. "When the dam is completely full, it keeps 2 feet of water off Pittsburgh