Rock Springs Still Flows

I have written in past blog posts of The Chester Planning Commission. Founded in 1969, the civic group completed dozens of worthwhile projects in town including the installation of the “Rock Springs Park” historical marker and the development of the Virginia Gardens Memorial Park in 1982. Readers may not realize, however, that the planning commission, headed by Chester historian, Roy C. Cashdollar, also worked with state officials to save the spring at Rock Springs Park by having it piped to a new location along Route 30.
The Spring in 1974 just before it was covered with a cement slab and redirected.

Today, the lone spring pipe, bent by mowers, drains unceremoniously into a ditch near The World's Largest Teapot. For several decades after the park was razed in 1974, people would fill plastic bottles from the spring which once spilled 1,000 gallons a day from deep within the mountain into a basin in Rock Springs Park.
Rock Spring in 2009.

Cashdollar noted in his History of Chester: Part II, "Mayor Frank DeCapio and I went to the State men and the Contractors and convinced them to get the spring water piped to an area from which it can still be used. The old spring site is directly under the south bound lane of the highway today but it was covered with a cement slab and the water piped over to the open area near Marks Run."

1908 Postcard image of Rock Springs in Chester.