Legends and mystery on Buckingham Mountain

A slave church, the Wolf Rocks,
The Hermit, Gravity Hill and more.

Mary Anne and I once lived on a farm on Holicong Road within view of storied Buckingham Mountain. The road makes a hillbilly climb over the well-timbered hill stretching nearly three miles east to west in Buckingham Township.

As newlyweds, we rented the upper floor of the 19th century of Anna and Charlie Simons’ farmhouse. Our first summer while bicycling, we discovered Mount Gilead A.M.E. Church founded by slaves fleeing the South before the Civil War. The following spring the Simons invited us to the mountain-top church’s Easter sunrise service. In attendance were descendants of the freedom-seeking slaves plus the posterity of farm families who protected them. We witnessed the flow of many tears at that service.

Time moved on. We said our goodbyes to the Simons after buying our own home. We’ve always had fond memories of their working farm, strolling its pastures with a line of horses following behind us, the church and the sleepy hillside roads. It was only years later I discovered Buckingham Mountain’s many legends.

Miracle Cure

Native Lenape Indians called the mountain “Pepachganking”. European settlers thought it meant place of the woodpecker. Further understanding revealed its true definition. “Pepach” means calamus; “gank” means root – the place to gather calamus root, a key ingredient in any medicine man’s pouch. It was a potent pain killer and cure for digestive illness.

Arbutus Wonder

For centuries in late spring, tiny white flowers “tinted in pink like a seashell” carpeted Buckingham Mountain. Family picnics to dig up and transplant them became common, causing trailing arbutus to die out. What a shame.

Wolf Rocks

The soul of the mountain is a narrow gorge carved down the northwest slope. Filling the fissure are a tumble of monstrous stones. It’s as if a primordial giant strolling the ridge poured a bag of monolithic marbles down the gorge. Settlers referred to it as the Wolf Rocks.

The Hermit

In 1838, lovelorn teenager Albert Large ran away from home. For 20 years the musician hid in a two-chamber cave beneath Wolf Rocks. On moonlit nights, music wafted down from the heights. Those investigating found nothing. Other times smoke from the hermit’s underground cooking fire piped to the surface hung over the rocks. Most deemed it evil spirits. Lowland farmers noticed poultry disappearing. Kids picking berries on the hill fled in terror on glimpsing a man with a beard 3-feet long.

In April 1858, a goatherder ventured up there searching for a stray. He heard metallic sounds emanating from a narrow crevice in the rocks. With a crowbar and companions, he belly-crawled into the darkness below when a voice bellowed, “Wretch! You advance to your destruction.”
The men backed off and alerted authorities who started a bonfire to drive out whoever was below. A disheveled man dressed in goat skins and fox furs emerged. Long hair and a wild beard obscured his face. But someone recognized him as Albert Large. The story made international news. The Hermit enjoyed his notoriety for a time but then disappeared, never to be found.

The Doan Gang

A limestone cave elsewhere on the mountain was a hideout for Plumstead’s Doan Outlaws that bedeviled George Washington during the American Revolution. The nocturnal British spies led by Moses Doan tracked troop movements, delivered stolen horses to the Redcoats and robbed tax collectors. On the cave’s discovery in 1858, an explorer found a deeply etched signature on the wall of one chamber: “1775. M. Doan”.

Gravity Hill

A half-mile from Mount Gilead Church is what’s known locally as “Gravity Hill.” By putting your car in neutral at the right spot, it rolls up the mountain, not down. Mary Anne and I tried. Nothing happened. On my bucket list is returning with a geologist to separate fact from fiction.

Sources include “Place Names in Bucks County Pennsylvania” by George MacReynolds published in 1942, and “Weird, U.S.” found on the web at http://weirdus.com/states/pennsylvania/roadside_oddities/gravity_hill/

Carl LaVO, history columnist for The Intelligencer and Bucks County Courier Times newspapers, can be reached at carllavo0@gmail.com