New Paris
Pennsylvania
June 2015
Ask a random sampling of people which super power they would choose to inherit, given the chance. #1 on many lists would be the ability to fly, to defy gravity, or at least to ignore it.
Short of flying as a super power, some folks who stand more steadily on the ground might go so far as to book a seat on a spaceship. To me, that’s impractical. By the time you rent your space suit, feed the dog and drive to the launch site, it might not be worth the trouble. Plus, you’ll drop north of $250,000 to buy your ticket, and possibly a whole lot more, depending on who is piloting. For considerably less money, we choose to visit New Paris in Pennsylvania to seek out an anomalous patch of ground called Gravity Hill.
Gravity Hill Road runs from Buckeye Road to Bethel Hollow Road, 1.2 miles as the crow flies, 1.3 miles as the crow drives. It parallels Dunning Creek among the farms, many golf courses, a corn maze, game lands, parks and forest. We’re 67.4 miles east of Pittsburgh as the crow flies or 93.3 miles as the crow drives.
Roughly 200 people live in New Paris on the west side of Chestnut Ridge, not many of whom visit this place. It is mostly forested with Gravity Hill Road bracketed on one side by trees and hillside and the other by grassy lowland.
To experience this bewildering phenomenon, it would help to have a vehicle that rolls on wheels. A car would be ideal.
To begin, park at one end of the road.
Someone has helpfully spray painted “GH START” on the pavement at this starting point. Put your car in neutral and take your foot off the brake pedal. Enjoy the ride!
Okay, really? What’s going on here? As you can see by the speedometer, we are coasting uphill at eight miles per hour!
The experts will tell us that this is an optical illusion, where what you see isn’t what you get, or what you see and what you think you see are not the same. Good optical illusions are fun, but they can give you a headache.
Some claim that a car rolling uphill is a phenomenon of magnetic forces or supernatural influence. There are less fanciful explanations, such as you might encounter in real life. For one, you need a completely or mostly obstructed horizon. Without this reliable visual reference it is difficult to accurately judge the slope of a surface, especially when we normally assume that trees, fence posts and signs are perpendicular to the ground, which they are not.
On the other hand, when the road appears to be slanted uphill in every direction, it may, after all, just be magic.
Or perhaps we’ve developed a superpower. Yippee!
Look at this, further evidence. May I introduce you to Perelman, my second longest friend. Part of his family and my family have arranged a rendezvous here at Gravity Hill, roughly halfway between his home and ours. In this photo, it is most obvious that he is taller than me, always has been.
Now, just moments later, he and I switch positions. Do you see the spooky thing that has happened? Suddenly, gratifyingly after all these years of being the short guy, I am now taller than Perelman. Ha!
Clearly magic of some sort. Don’t you agree?