Forbes Road 1958
Westinghouse moves the Turtle Creek
In the late 1950s, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation established plans to build a new Power Circuit Breaker Plant in Trafford. This new facility would involve hiring at least 950 employees. Aside from building an enormous new plant, the project also came with plans to move a creek!
These photos give us a glimpse at the scale of that project. Two aerial photographs taken ten years apart show the location of the Turtle Creek and Forbes Road in 1957 (the before) and then in 1967 (the after). The first aerial photo shows the creek running close to the edge of the already existing Micarta Plant. The engineering plans to move the road and creek were drawn up in July 1957 by Thompson Survey Service (then located on Northern Pike in Monroeville). Several photos illustrate the construction that took place in the summer of 1958.
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Thompson Survey noted a small island in the creek that they labeled “Turtle Island.” This island was also illustrated on an early property map shown in this grouping. For those unfamiliar with this location, Forbes Road sits between Haymaker Village and the Shadow Woods townhouse development. Thanks to Paul Bova for donating these photos to the Trafford Historical Society.
