Cold Springs Township in Lebanon County.

Cold Springs Township (population 50) in Lebanon County. Sean Simmers, PennLive.com. November 11, 2014

(SEAN SIMMERS)

GOLD MINE ROAD — If you ask the folks of Cold Spring Township directions to the municipal building, you might get a laugh, like you're starting to tell them an old joke. Then, if in your innocence you persist, they'll slowly shake their heads and tell you: "There isn't one."

Here's what Cold Spring doesn't have: It doesn't have a road department, snowplows or a pothole budget. It doesn't have zoning, a planning commission, or (as one resident put it) anyone else to tell you when you can't build a shed.

It doesn't have a police chief or parking ticket enforcement; nor is there a sewage or water department.

Cold Spring Township doesn't have a single elected official. There are no local municipal taxes.

The only road is a state-maintained public road – Gold Mine Road – that was named, locals say, not for gold but rather for the coal mines that dotted the region.

What Cold Spring Township does have is about a dozen houses on the shoulder of Second Mountain in Lebanon County, and several thousand acres of State Game Lands 211. It's an incorporated municipal government that doesn't have a government – and it's been that way for as long as the residents can remember (since 1961, according to newspaper records, when folks just stopped running for office).

Folks here do vote by-the-way, in a combined ward in neighboring Union Township – for school directors, county officials, state and federal legislators, etc.

In Pennsylvania there are more than 2,500 individual municipalities – a tapestry of townships, boroughs, cities and one town – that cover every square mile of the state. Cold Spring Township, which has maybe 50 residents, is not the least populated. But it is one of a handful – if not the only – municipality where there isn't at least a semblance of government, even if for appearance sake (even Fulton County's Valley-Hi Borough, population 15, has a mayor).

And the folks here, on the shoulder of Second Mountain are ... OK with that.

If you ask them if anyone ever thought about starting a government or running for office, they'll look at you funny. After all, why would you want to do that?

Above the small hamlet and near the top of Second Mountain is a trailhead for Stony Valley Rail-Trail. It is a smooth, straight and nearly level 17-mile stone trail that runs from Ellendale in Dauphin County out to the Lebanon County Reservoir.

A depiction of the Cold Spring resort in the mid to late 1800s. At one time the small hamlet along the railroad had two hotels to serve those seeking a retreat to the rural area north-east of Harrisburg.

The Dauphin & Susquehanna Railroad rolled along the mountains for decades, primarily to access timber and the coal seams found along the mountain range. Most of the coal extracted from the mountains was shipped down the line to Reading and Philadelphia, where it fueled not iron furnaces but home heating furnaces.

At the time, the railroad passed through the communities of Ellendale and Rausch Gap, and through the small resort town that was Cold Spring Township's namesake.

Cold Spring itself was settled by 1850 and consisted of a tavern house and a hotel for vacationers from Harrisburg, Lebanon and the surrounding area. It was expanded to include a second hotel in the late 1880s, but was later destroyed in a suspicious fire at the turn of the century.

The area was used on and off through the early years of the Cold War as a military training facility, a YMCA camp and a mineral water bottling location.

For more history of the area and Stoney Valley, check the rail-trail's webpage here, or this history of St. Anthony's Wilderness (as the area was once known).

Further down the trail, where the Stony Valley and Appalachian trails meet, Rausch Gap once had a population approaching 1,000 people. At their height those small towns, which were part of the township, had a total population above 2,000.

When the coal seams emptied so did the towns, and the township's population dwindled to what it is today.

Today both time and the forest slowly are swallowing these early settlements and, if you don't know what you're looking for, it's very easy to walk right past them.

Cold Spring Township (population 50) in Lebanon County. A wall thought to be part of a dam near the former resort of Cold Springs. Sean Simmers, PennLive.com. November 11, 2014

There is an access road to what was Cold Spring that runs north out of Fort Indiantown Gap. As you climb into the mountains, past the artillery firing rangers, the road turn to gravel and the trees slowly begin to press in.

The road crests the front range then plunges into a somewhat narrow mid-range valley running east to west, completely covered by a forest that – this time of year as losing its leaves to winter -- is more bare tree branches than green.

At the bottom is a short wooden bridge across a creek, a small pond to the right. An old stone wall runs parallel to the road, perpendicular to the creek. It is the only obvious sign that anyone once lived here. Leaves and the surrounding forest, at least on this fall day, cover the other stone foundations.

One day the stone wall itself will fade into the trees, the last reminders of man's passage slowly succumbing to the passage of time and the inexorable march of the forest. More than one hundred years ago, the forest had been clear-cut to feed the furnaces. Now, the trees have nearly reclaimed their mountain home.

It is almost as easy to miss Cold Spring Township itself. Aside from a sign on the side of the road, there's nothing to call attention to the small township, which is just how the folks up here like it.

The recent big to-do in the township was leaf raking and sounds of pheasant hunting down in the valley below.

Walking down the Stony Valley Rail-Trail is in part a step back in time, to when this area was known as St. Anthony's Wilderness. Along the way, old rail-holders line the trail, and other signs of man's passage and work can still be seen.

As you walk back toward Yellow Springs, Rausch Gap and Cold Spring, cellphone coverage slowly dies, the only sounds the wind in the trees and the rustle of the underbrush.

It's quiet on the shoulder of the mountain, even quieter on the trail to Cold Spring.