Near the center of a triangle bounded by Hazleton, Weatherly and Eckley, near the Stockton coal mine collapse of 1869, a 16-mile bike trail is being planned that will open to the public several little known and long forgotten areas. Perhaps the most interesting is a remnant from the atomic age.

The Greater Hazleton Rails to Trails has already opened the first phase of a biking and hiking trail that will connect Hazleton through Eckley Miner's Village forming a spine to the Delaware & Lehigh National Corridor Trail in Lehigh Gorge State Park.The main trailhead, parking lot, and entrance to the trail is along Route 93 near its intersection with Route 424 in Hazleton. Currently, the entrance to the trailhead is obscured due to construction.The opened section of the four-year-old trail is averaging over 35,000 visits a year, which is an increase of about 4,000 visits a year. The section includes benches, picnic areas with tables and a Tree-Adopt program, exercise stations, pine barrens, signs and kiosks. The section follows the Dreck Creek Reservoir the Hazleton City water supply.The first seven miles of the Greater Hazleton Rails to Trails follows the abandoned rail bed of the Delaware, Susquehanna, and Schuylkill line, that in the early 1900s was absorbed into the Lehigh Valley Railroad.It recently acquired a 5,900-foot-long by 25-foot-wide seven-acre old rail bed section that will be used to make Phase 4, the final connection to the Lehigh Gorge Trail. The land was donated by Blue Ridge Realty for $1.The four-mile trail has been completed to the chain-linked fence of the Beryllium Road. A 199-year lease for the right-of-way to extend the trail through the former beryllium plant property has been granted by the current owner of the property, Cabot Corporation."Cabot wasn't the original owners of the property," explained Bob Skulsky, executive director of the Greater Hazleton Area Civic Partnership, developer of the Greater Hazleton Rails to Trails.Beryllium, with an atomic number of 4 and an atomic weight of 9 is among the lightest metals. It possesses an intriguing variety of properties such as high flexural rigidity, thermal stability, thermal conductivity, and low density that make it desirable for aircraft and satellites.But the most important property of this rare material which was first detected in the beryl gemstone, is its transparency to x-rays and radiation, and as a neutron source and plutonium container for the atomic bomb.Beginning in 1943, as part of the Manhattan Project, beryllium was produced in Reading by the Beryllium Corporation. Following the war, it continued to produce beryllium for the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Energy. The facility produced beryllium blanks for the Y-12 plant and Dow-Rocky Flats.In 1957, the beryllium facility was built by the Beryllium Corporation of America - Hazleton. In 1968, BCA and Kawecki Chemical Co. merged to form Kawecki Berylco Industries, Inc. In 1978, Cabot Corp. acquired KBI with the intention of producing a beryllium-copper alloy, changed its name to Cabot Berylco, Inc. and in 1982, merged it into Cabot Corporation.The facility smelted and fabricated products exclusively for the AEC/DOC from 1957 to 1962. Beryllium Corporation received a $23 million, five-year contract to produce 500,000 tons of beryllium. More than 1,200 people worked in the facility from 1957 until it closed.BCA produced beryllium for other clients from 1962 to 1979. The facility ceased production in 1979 and closed in 1981. In the mid-1990s, Cabot reportedly spent $17 to demolish and cleanup the site.Beryllium-containing dusts can cause a chronic life-threatening allergic disease called berylliosis. The disease is similar to black lung disease. When the beryllium plant opened in 1957, it was at the time that the coal mines were closing, so many of the beryllium plant workers were former coal miners.Because the onset of both Black Lung Diseases and Berylliosis are typically the result of perhaps 20 years of exposure, the beryllium plant workers who became sick, at first thought they had Black Lung Disease. Only later, in the 1990s, did they get to understand they had Berylliosis, and by then Pennsylvania's six-year window to file Workers Compensation claims had closed.The AEC set air-quality standards for beryllium dust in 1950, seven years before the beryllium plant came to Hazleton. In 1993, the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, uncovered AEC documents that revealed that air samples taken at the Hazleton plant found beryllium dust levels exceeded the maximum allowed by federal exposure standards. The Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union believe that more than 90 deaths related the elevated beryllium levels in the plant.Meanwhile the former beryllium plant site has been cleaned up and subsequent studies have not indicated any unacceptable discharges from the site. Cabot has been supporting environmental and civic organizations to improve the downstream waterways.Downstream of the site, particularly in Weatherly, the borough is looking to clean up Hazle Creek, also known as Black Creek. Studies have indicated a high level of metals, particularly aluminum, which can be toxic to fish. The studies indicate that the metals are from abandoned mine drainage. A consortium of municipal and environmental groups are studying the problem and hope to make improvements toward making it a trout stream in the next few years.