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Friday’s reopening of the Sideling Hill Welcome Center near Hancock follows a lobbying effort by some of the region’s Republican state lawmakers, who say they made it a priority to speak with Republican Gov. Larry Hogan and his administration about it.

Road modernization efforts in the 1960s led to the abandonment of three of the highway tunnels - Sideling Hill, Rays Hill and Laurel Mountain.

To stand in front of the old Sideling Hill Tunnel is to stand before one of the maws of hell.

If the dead road to Sideling Hill is one possible future, then another exists a few miles to the west of Somerset, at the former Laurel Hill Tunnel and the site of what has become the Area 51 of automotive racing.

About 40 miles east of the Allegheny Tunnel - before heading on to Burnt Cabins, the Tuscarora Tunnels and, eventually, the great, broad expanse of the Cumberland Valley - the Pennsylvania Turnpike climbs down Sideling Hill.