Forest County: What Better Name?

Never a promised land, flowing with milk and honey, Northwestern Pennsylvania – a part of which later became Forest County­ – seemed to repel early settle­ment. Moravian missionary David Zeisberger, whose diary ac­count reveals the first intimate knowledge of the terrain and the Indian inhabitants, did not extol the area nor its original residents locals to any high degree. Like all...
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Cook Forest

I was about four years old when the first cabins were rented out at Cook Forest, only one to a family, because there were only four or five. My parents decided to rent one of the cabins and a tent for a week for our family of six. My memories of this cabin are that it was very small and dark and that I was afraid to go to sleep at night, although I knew my parents were right outside the cabin....
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“With a Woman’s Instinct”: Mira Lloyd Dock, The Mother of Forestry in Pennsylvania

On a frosty December night in 1900, Mira Lloyd Dock (1853–1945) presented an illustrated lecture to the Harrisburg Board of Trade entitled “The City Beautiful.” Using vivid descriptions and dramatic images, Dock contrasted the “roughness, slime and filth” of the state capital and the Susquehanna River with the well-kept cities and rivers of other American states and European nations. She...
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