This is the entrance to the "Tipple" operations of the P. M. Moore Company in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania circa 1980. Aggregates were brought by the Aliquippa and Southern Railroad from the Dravo sand and gravel barges on the Ohio River. The aggregates were dumped into bins below the hopper cars, or elevated into the bins used for charging the mixers. The cement was brought in by truck and elevated into the cement silo behind the aggregate bins. Ashes from the coke operations of J&L were also brought here for sales or trucking to the ash dump in South Heights. I worked here during various summers from the time I was 16 until I was 20 or so. I worked on labor crews atop the tipple which emptied the hopper cars, using shovels and 20 foot long metal pipes inside the car. Once Dave MacKenzie, the Tipple Foreman, came to me as I went back to school in the Fall and said "well you certainly proved that you were a man this summer." I was in great shape then, and I tried my best to do better than Bill, the 40 year old Greek immigrant, Ernie the 50 year old Greek immigrant, Frank the 55 year old former steam engine threshing crew driver kind of man. Various truck drivers would work there when things were slow, but they were more for shooting the bull than actually working effectively on the Tipple. The entrance to the South Mill of J&L (LTV Steel at time of picture) is at the left. The picture is taken just after passing "through the tunnel" at the "Y" end of Franklin Avernue, main street of Aliquippa. Woodlawn had become Aliquippa, a booming steel town of the first half of the 20th Century. Aliquippa was named for Queen Aliquippa, and Iriquois Chief who was know by George Washington from one of his early surveying expeditions into Western Pennsylvania (Beaver County).
Rhona McMahan