This is how the Zeno, or Glade Run, trestle looked around 1908 when it was modernized with cement pillars. The original all wood trestle was erected in the 1880s. Below, a view of the same site as it looks today, providing a spot for cattle to relax.

When he bought his home four years ago, Mike Frady thought he was moving to Parker. But according to the map, his house in Allegheny Township sits in a settlement called Bonus.

With the only dwelling at Parker Pike and Allegheny Church Road, Frady and his family could well be the settlement's only inhabitants, sharing the former store and post office with a few wood bees and the woodpeckers that feed on their larvae.

Though the Fradys live alone in Bonus, many join them in their geographic bewilderment: A host of place names dot the map, leaving few clues about their origins and demise.

According to Chuck Stowe, Bonus is among the many settlements that appeared in the 1870s during the region's oil boom.“They sprang up and the oil dried up and everybody left,” said Stowe, 60, an Allegheny Township supervisor for 32 years.A few miles northwest of Parker, Bonus likely formed as an offshoot of the then-booming city, which peaked at 20,000-plus residents, but soon dwindled to less than 1,000.Dick Lawers, 72, lives a few hundred yards from Bonus on Allegheny Church Road, where even the church has vanished.Lawers recalls his childhood, when his current homesite still featured a pump house with a single-cylinder engine, called a barker because of its raucous noise when pumping natural gas off multiple wells. Two matronly sisters named Knox ran the Bonus post office and store.“The house was old when I was a little kid,” he said of the weathered wood building the Fradys now call home.

According to Stowe, a web of township roads connected the thriving settlements. After being abandoned in 1932 by Allegheny, Parker and Washington townships, the roads reverted to four-wheeler trails. One such road links Bonus to Eldorado, a sleepy hamlet in Parker Township that once boasted a Nickelodeon theater, post office and hotel.As stories go, the town was named after a shortlived gold mining investment scam that took place there. Eldorado developed in 1871 when a hotel was built, likely in conjunction with the region's oil activity.Before the settlement was known as Eldorado, only a few farms occupied the land. They sat several miles from three furnaces that operated at the time of the Civil War. Located in the long forgotten village of Maple Furnace in Allegheny Township, the furnaces made iron by heating limestone, iron ore and charcoal from charred trees.“There were several iron furnaces along the Allegheny River,” Stowe said, explaining how water wheels often powered the bellows that fueled the flames.“I imagine what (eventually) happened was the iron ore wasn't that good quality. They were probably running out of timber to make the charcoal, and it became unprofitable. They (later) made iron out of coal ... and the process made more money.”Landowner Dick Blausser said two of the furnaces at Maple Furnace likely were destroyed by strip mining. The remains of a third linger not far from his property. For those who know where to look, it is visible off the privately owned trails that began as public roads.“There is an old (stone and) cement bridge with the (county) commissioners' names on it,” Blausser said of other signs of infrastructure lingering in the secluded woods.“Back in the 1920s and '30s, an old railroad went through there.”

According to Wayne Cole, a myriad of rail beds once snaked through the Butler County landscape.Cole, 67, of Beaver Falls, has written 13 books on the state's rail history, many of them in his “Ghost Rails” series, which he will discuss at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Evans City Library.Cole said many place names on the map denote former rail stops. Of those, many are long unpopulated but still exist on railroad land. One example is Houseville, shown to be a short distance down Tower Road in Clinton Township, presumably near gated tracks owned by the Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad, now owned by a Canadian firm.In other locations, the tracks have vanished. Those include Redmond, a mining town off Route 108 near Slippery Rock, which folded up around 1920.Another is Zeno, a stop on the B&O line that ran from Callery to Butler.“Zeno at the most was just a couple of homes. But it was also a location of the Riverview Oil Company,” Cole said, explaining how the tracks were removed in the late 1930s.

“Zeno at the most was just a couple of homes. But it was also a location of the Riverview Oil Company,” Cole said, explaining how the tracks were removed in the late 1930s.According to Zeno McElhinny, 72, whose family now farms the land on Brownsdale Road in Forward Township, the property was owned by a man named Zeno Markle, who sold it in 1930 to McElhinny's father.“I guess at the time you could flag that train down. You could ride it to Butler for a quarter,” McElhinny said.“I heard from an old neighbor lady (Zeno) was the ugliest place on God's Earth.”When first used by the McElhinnys, a poultry shed was built where the tracks once approached the station. Potato storage, then farm equipment, occupied the site of the station itself. And evidence remains.The station's survey marker still flanks the storage shed, and remains of the tall Zeno trestle, also called the Glade Run trestle, are visible on a nearby farm on

“This was an enormous trestle,” Cole said. “It was 1,000 feet long, maybe 80, 90 feet high.”Alvin Vogel, who owns the farm, said although the trestle originally was made of wood, it later was refurbished with cement pillars.“(The railroad) blasted the big two or three pillars, there's still one standing on the far side of the creek,” said Vogel, who stores machinery in what remains of the trestle's underpass.“We sold probably half of the ashes from it,” he added, noting the ashes were spread beneath the parking lot at the Clearview Mall.Not far away on private land, neighbors say the dilapidated railroad tunnel also can be seen. Not surprisingly, that land is off Tunnel Road.

Lou Yost, executive secretary of the U.S. Board of Geographic Names at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va., said it's no big surprise that extinct places remain on the map.“They were found to be in existence when the field work was done,” Yost said of the government land surveys, which ran from the late 1800s through the mid-1980s.“We consider any place that has a permanent population of one or more to be a populated place,” he said.“Some of these places may have been bigger in the past and have dwindled, but they still fit our classification of a populated place.”With active field work no longer done, Yost said the USGS relies on the public to petition the board for changes.Although individual map editors can modify each map to their own liking, Yost's board decides which location names are recognized by the government.

When individuals or groups propose changes, the USGS staff does background research, contacting state names authorities, county boards of commissioners and townships, taking into account local use or acceptance.Although the USGS database contains more than two million place names, Yost estimates receiving only 300 to 350 change proposals each year. Most are for additions. In the event of a subtraction, Yost said the place names are retained in some form.“We would still keep a record even if the feature was no longer there,” Yost said. “We would mark it as historical. (But) it likely wouldn't show up on maps.”In Butler County, many existing and extinct places can be researched in the book An Historical Gazetteer of Butler County, Pennsylvania, written by Butler Library genealogist Luanne Eisler, Glee McKnight and cartographer Janet Smith.The book was published in 2009, and proceeds from its sales benefit the Butler Public Library.

<b>WHAT: </b>Author Wayne Cole presents a program on the B&O Railroad titled “The Tunnel Hill Route from Callery Junction to Butler.”<b>WHEN: </b>7:30 p.m. Monday<b>WHERE: </b> Evans City Library<b>INFO: </b>Contact the Evans City Historical Society at 724-538-3629.<br></br><br></br><br></br>

Zeno McElhinny of Forward Township shows an old poultry barn in Zeno that was built near the site of what had once been a rail station.

The station's survey marker can still be seen flanking the shed. The tracks in Zeno are believed to have been removed in the late 1930s.

Doug Custead, retired Butler School District librarian and a member of the Butler County Historical society, looks at a plaque that was attached to the side of a bridge on a long abandoned road at Maple Furnace. The bridge carries the name of the Butler County commissioners of that time.

Dick Blausser shows the remains of an old iron furnace at Maple Furnace in Allegheny Township. It is believed that at one time there were three furnaces there, but two were lost to strip mining.

Zeno used to stand at this spot between Callery and Butler in Forward Township. It served as a stop on the B&O rail line and consisted of just a few houses.