Bear Run in Winter

Will you build a place of prayer at Bear Run? All three of us would like a focus of attention for the spiritual reality which we know underlies life and work and the joys we share here. Nature is the great restorer, concentrated here to balance our city living. The dignity and beauty of your architecture gives us a way of life in and with nature, beyond our best dreams. Mother brings a choice of flowers and foods and comforts, Father brings broad scope of action and activities, and I some ideas and music; all this combines into a rich life for which we are grateful and humbly so. --- Edgar Kaufmann jr. to Frank Lloyd Wright, 1951

Bear Run is a swift stream, originating as numerous mountain springs on the western slops of Laurel Hill and falling over 1,400 feet in four miles to join the Youghiogheny River. Continuing downstream, the Youghiogheny flows into the Monongahela River, which joins the Allegheny River at Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River. Eventually, the Ohio winds its way to the Mississippi River, which flows to the Gulf of Mexico. Quite a journey.

Small waterfalls, or cascades, dot the length of Bear Run. Streams with waterfalls represent especially dynamic interactions between the geology and hydrology of a site. Waterfalls develop where streams cross resistant ledges of rock. In one type, the stream crosses a relatively flat-lying, resistant stratum and excavates a deep channel in the easily eroded, underlying formations. A series of cascades such as those of Bear Run develop in similar fashion, but because the resistant beds and more erodible beds are relatively thin and cyclically interbedded, the falls develop a characteristic "stair-step" profile. Such falls retreat upstream without appreciably losing their height.

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