Junction Hollow is a small wooded valley bordering the west flanks of

Schenley Park Schenley Park () is a large municipal park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located between the neighborhoods of Oakland (Pittsburgh), Oakland, Greenfield (Pittsburgh), Greenfield, and Squirrel Hill. It is also listed on the Nat ...

and the campus of

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

and the southern edge of the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...

's campus in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

. The valley runs south to north approximately . It begins where Four Mile Run empties into the

Monongahela River The Monongahela River ( , ), sometimes referred to locally as the Mon (), is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 15, 2011 river on the Allegheny Plateau in nor ...

and runs through the neighborhood of Four Mile Run north into

Oakland Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...

along Schenley Park, Carnegie Mellon, and the

Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh is a nonprofit organization that operates four museums in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The organization is headquartered in the Carnegie Institute and Library complex in the Oakland neighborhood of Pitts ...

, and ends at Neville Street behind Central Catholic High School. It is spanned by four major bridges; from north to south they are the Forbes Avenue Bridge, Schenley Bridge, Charles Anderson Memorial Bridge, and Frazier Street Bridge. Junction Hollow is often confused for Panther Hollow, which at Panther Hollow Lake veers off from it to the northeast into the park.

History

Junction Hollow is named for the Pittsburgh Junction Railroad, which first laid tracks there in the 1880s, and the idea of a Junction Hollow spur line was to divert rail traffic north through Schenley Tunnel (beneath Neville Street) to a rail yard along the

Allegheny River The Allegheny River ( ; ; ) is a tributary of the Ohio River that is located in western Pennsylvania and New York (state), New York in the United States. It runs from its headwaters just below the middle of Pennsylvania's northern border, nor ...

, thus avoiding rail congestion in Downtown. Prior to the railroad the area was known as the Four Mile Run Valley, for its stream that was named on account of its distance from The Point. Today the stream is piped underground to the river. In the 1950s and 1960s planners created a grand proposal to fill the hollow with a research complex extending from the

and

to the river, but it was never realized. Since the 1990s, the Eliza Furnace Trail extends into the hollow, where it is called Junction Hollow Trail.

References

* * * {{Pittsburgh Geography of Pittsburgh Greenfield (Pittsburgh) Valleys of Pennsylvania Landforms of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

History

See also

References