South Park

Green Man’s tunnel

Piney Fork tunnel, South Park

Raymond Theodore Robinson was born in Beaver County on 29 October 1910. On 18 June 1919, eight years old, he climbed the trolley bridge at Morado, outside Beaver Falls, going after a bird’s nest, and caught hold of the wire that fed the cars. The Beaver Falls papers expected him to die. He lived. He had lost his eyes, his nose, and part of an arm. He stayed at home near Koppel, where he made belts and doormats, and he walked at night on Route 351 between Koppel and New Galilee so he would not be stared at in the daytime. Teenagers drove the road looking for him. Some brought beer and cigarettes. He died on 11 June 1985 in Brighton Township, and he is buried at Grandview Cemetery in Beaver Falls.

The version told in the South Hills is a different man. He is green, he chases cars, and he lives in a tunnel. The tunnel they mean is the Piney Fork tunnel in South Park Township, a concrete arch built in 1924 under the old railroad bank at Snowden. The township stores road salt in it. Robinson never lived there, and he never walked there.

Sources

South Park