We spent July 4th holidays as kids on picnics at swimming holes. That’s all there was, and it was plenty. Rural Pennsylvania rivers kept us busy and contented throughout childhood.
A favorite town swimming hole was a small, remote wide spot in Bear Creek called Rattlesnake Dip. It was six miles from town into the Allegheny forest, and swimmers had, continuously over the years, added rocks to the modest wall that created the pool. The pool and the crowds grew every year.
It took little to turn this patch of bank into a popular dip. A makeshift diving board protruded out over the deep end of the swimming hole at 5 feet. It was an old plank of wood jammed under a pile of heavy rocks. “Dive shallow” was the rule, and no bouncing! If someone bounced before diving, the rocks would topple and the board would follow the diver into the water. If someone dived too deep, they broke their neck. All the little kids jumped.
Rattlesnake Dip had no facilities or amenities, no picnic tables or bathrooms, just ample space under the poplar trees in a flat grassy field along a bend in the riverbank. A handful of well-used fire rings gave the only sense of boundaries as people filled in with their picnic supplies.
Families from town would drive out the six miles, their cars stuffed with kids and neighbor kids already in swimsuits since they left home. People brought folding tables, towels, chairs, and tailgate kitchens.
There was not an over-abundance of rattlesnakes around Rattlesnake Dip, just the usual amount. Joke was that locals called it Rattlesnake Dip to keep the crowds away. Teenagers and drunks were well warned, no fishing and no bottles in the pool, only cans, and don’t sink them. It was a family swimming hole.
We had another series of swimming holes along Big Mill Creek closer to town called Sandy Beach. Only three miles from town, kids could walk to it alone. There was no sand and no beach, just grassy river banks thick with trees. “You kids stay in the second hole!” parents would advise as we tromped off into the woods.
People had shaped three holes along a half-mile stretch of river, a shallow kiddie hole way upstream, followed by the main swimming hole, a big-beached shallow and deep pool in the sun and shade.
A third pool existed downstream, but children were forbidden to go there. We were told it was too dangerous. Of course, on our first chance, friends and I walked the three miles out and down to the third hole. It looked dangerous: nothing but stone-bruise soil, deep water and the crappiest, flimsy diving board I’d ever seen in my young life. We found rusty beer cans in the grass along the trail in, cigarette butts, and a few broken bottles. Busted fishing line in the reeds warned of fish hooks wedged under bottom rocks.
We didn’t go near the board, but we did dive wide and swim all afternoon. We floated the whole time. Years later we found out it was a raging party spot for local teenagers who kept their shoes on. A little bird told us.
Another great swimming hole in my childhood summers was the Trestle along Toby Creek. It was a deep dugout pool in the river beside an ancient stone bridge trestle 20 feet high. Swimmers had crafted a permanent ladder so people could climb up and jump off the top into the old excavation pool. To get to out there from the road, you had to leave your car and walk along the railroad tracks for a half mile. Bring your pennies! Watch out for skinny dippers.
The granddaddy swimming hole of them all, hands down, was Simon Shutters clay mines. My brother-in-law took me there when I was 16. I became a regular. It was 20 miles of backroad to get there, but worth it. The mine was half full of crystal clear water so deep only a few attempted to touch bottom by jumping with rocks.
The barren beach was a sloping precipice that started at the water’s edge and rose up to 40 feet in the air then off into the woods. The stony cliff dropped straight into the deep blue green. People could back way up, run full tilt, and jump or dive into the water at any height they wanted, from getting their toes wet to knocking themselves unconscious. No lifeguards. Not a lot of adult supervision. No one knew who Simon Shutters was.
If asked to sum it all up — my summer recreation as a child surrounded by swimming holes — I’d have to say: meatloaf. My mother made the juiciest, tastiest meatloaf, but mostly for picnics, so as kids we harangued her regularly to take us swimming. Little did she know, we were doing it for the meatloaf.

Steve Gibbs is a retired Benicia High School teacher who has written a column for The Herald since 1985.

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