An Auspicious Discovery

"April 12, 1914 - New Germantown: Trace amounts of a rare metal, called unobtanium, have been discovered in rock samples collected near the site of an unfinished and abandoned railroad tunnel on the Conococheague Mountain.

Unobtanium is highly sought after due to it's extensive use in the manufacture of replacement machine parts.

The Conococheague Mountain tunnel was an attempt by the Newport & Sherman's Valley Railroad to expand southward to Hancock, Maryland from it's New Germantown terminus, using a charter granted to the Path Valley Railroad on October 23, 1893.

It appears that the rock specimens were collected by one Phillip T. Watts, who was working as a day laborer at the tunnel site during the last failed attempt to drill the bore. Mr. Watts is now attending Pennsylvania State University pursuing a geology degree, and the rock samples he collected were being analyzed as part of a course assignment.

Whether or not these samples indicate larger amounts of the ore is yet to be determined, but any deposits would have to be quite large indeed to justify the cost of transportation to and from the remote Conococheage Mountain site."

And thus begins our alternate history...