History & local legend
On November 24, 1934, two men working on South Mountain found three girls dead on a blanket beside what is now PA 233. The youngest lay in the oldest girl’s arms. They wore new coats, and a nearby suitcase contained a doll with a broken arm.
Thousands of people passed through a Carlisle funeral home hoping to identify them. The investigation eventually connected the girls to a man and woman found dead near Altoona. The children were Norma, 12, Dewella, 10, and Cordelia Noakes, 8. They had traveled from California with Elmo Noakes and his niece, Winifred Pierce, in a blue Pontiac.
The discoveries left investigators piecing together the family’s last journey and the circumstances of five deaths. The girls were buried at Westminster Cemetery in Carlisle on December 1, 1934. A roadside memorial marks where they were found, preserving the story long known locally as the Babes in the Woods.
Sources
- Cumberland County Historical Society, Babes in the Woods, identification, family and funeral
- Friends of Kings Gap, account from the Cumberland County Historical Society, clothing, blanket, belongings and blue Pontiac
- Dickinson College, Digital History exhibit on the South Mountain case
- Historical Marker Database, On This Spot Were Found Three Babes in the Woods
