The Hunt for Pennsylvania’s Timber Rattlesnakes

Posted by on Jan 14, 2020 in | Comments Off on The Hunt for Pennsylvania’s Timber Rattlesnakes In the early 19th century, pioneer adventurer Philip Tome recalled that it was common to see 30 or 40 timber rattlesnakes at a time near his home along the Susquehanna River. “The snakes were so numerous that we used to clear the yard and build fires to keep them away,” he recalled in his 1854 memoir, Pioneer Life; or, Thirty Years a Hunter. “On leaving the house we always put on a pair of...
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Historic Districts in Pennsylvania: An Evolving Sense of Place

Posted by on Jun 6, 2016 in | Comments Off on Historic Districts in Pennsylvania: An Evolving Sense of Place Jim Thorpe, originally named Mauch Chunk, is a small and picturesque borough of well-preserved 19th-century buildings perched on the side of a mountain along the Lehigh River in Carbon County. It once served as an important railroad and coal shipping center. As these industries waned in the 20th century, the town sought new economic purpose by marketing its scenic appeal as the “Switzerland of...
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The Brunswick Tannery

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Brunswick Tannery “One of the largest and most complete establishments of its kind in the world” During the 1870s and the early part of the twentieth century, the hemlock sole-leather tanning industry boomed in northern Pennsylvania. As reported in the Scientific American, January 21, 1882: From Port Jervis almost to Lake Erie, a vast industry is conducted in the manufacture of hemlock sole leather....
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Tioga County: A Last Frontier

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Tioga County: A Last Frontier Fallbrook, Hoytville, Landrus and Leetonia are names that evoke memories of the past for some Tiogans, while for others, build­ings or a place on a map serve as re­minders of what has been. These names are evidence of the establish­ment, growth and demise of economic centers – coal mines, lumber mills and tanneries – important in Tioga County’s past. Today, these enterprises...
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The Beauty and Bounty of Penn’s Wood

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Beauty and Bounty of Penn’s Wood Pennsylvania’s beauty – the gently sweeping valleys, the broad rivers, the rugged mountains and the rolling hillsides – is the bounty which lured waves of settlers to the New World more than three centuries ago. Founder William Penn, entrepreneur and seventeenth century land promoter, heavily advertised his province as “the land good, the air clean and sweet, the springs...
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The ‘State’ of Allegheny

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The ‘State’ of Allegheny One of the first centers of the organization of the Re­publican party and scene of its first national conven­tion in February, 1856, Allegheny County was strongly for Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860. As the vote count proceeded, one of the leaders kept sending telegrams to Lincoln’s home in Illinois, keeping him up on the news that “Allegheny gives a majority of …...
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Nessmuk

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Nessmuk George Washington Sears was born in South Oxford, Massachusetts, in 1821, the oldest of ten children. At the age of eight, he was put to work in a cotton mill, frequently escaping to the woods with a young Narragansett Indian named Nessmuk (meaning wood duck or wood drake), who taught him how to hunt, fish, and set up camp. At the age of twelve, Sears escaped to his grandmother’s house on...
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Civilian Conservation Corps

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Civilian Conservation Corps Between 1933 and 1942, nearly 3.5 million young men nationwide, and 195,000 in Pennsylvania, enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as part of his New Deal relief programs to put the unemployed back to work during the Great Depression. The CCC — nicknamed Roosevelt’s Tree Army — was to reclaim land and forests that had been ravaged...
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Rural Electrification

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Rural Electrification While urban Pennsylvanians benefited from alternating current electricity as early as 1883, more than a half century later, in 1936, seventy-five percent of Pennsylvania’s farmsteads lacked electric service. There had been some enterprising attempts to establish “light plants” powered by windmills, steam engines, and batteries, but the equipment was bulky, costly to purchase and maintain, and...
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“With a Woman’s Instinct”: Mira Lloyd Dock, The Mother of Forestry in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on “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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