A Century of Marking History: One Hundred Years of the Pennsylvania Historical Marker Program

It’s a safe bet that when Susan Richard of Grantville, Dauphin County, comes across a historical marker for the first time, she’s going to stop her car, get out and read it, and then take a picture for her collection. Richard, a former museum docent, loves everything about historical markers. “Historical markers are so much fun!” she says. “This is history you will...
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Fulton County: Where Country is Still Country

When the first settlers wandered into the Great Cove – a deep basin formed by the southern ranges of the Kit­tochtinny and Tuscarora mountains – they discovered strikingly beautiful valleys, incised with sparkling streams, whose only intrusions were Indian trails and remote pack­ers’ paths. During the two centuries since its settlement, the picturesque mountain ridges and...
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Franklin County

Our forefathers never could have envisioned the Franklin County we live in today. The hardships and struggles to merely survive while trying to establish new homes in a new land on a new frontier created memories that will live as long as man cares to remember. Modern major highways, a wide diversification of industry, fertile farm lands and persons who still care help make Franklin County, the...
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Celebrating Fifty Years of State Historical Markers

On a September day in 1946, three men stood alongside U.S. Route 22, fourteen miles east of Harrisburg, inspecting a distinctive blue and gold sign that had just been erected. They were James H. Duff, chairman of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (who in four months would be inaugurated the Commonwealth’s thirty­-fourth governor), and Commission members Charles G. Webb and...
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First Report of the Historical Commission of Pennsylvania

The First Report of the Historical Commission of Pennsylvania, printed by the New Era Printing Company of Lancaster in 1915, was the first official publication of the Pennsylvania Historical Commission (PHC), forerunner of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC). It is contained in “Administrative and Biennial Reports” (Record Series 13.84) of the Pennsylvania State Archives,...
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