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

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on 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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A Century of Conservation: The Story of Pennsylvania’s State Parks

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Century of Conservation: The Story of Pennsylvania’s State Parks Pennsylvania’s state park system is celebrating its centennial as one of the country’s largest and most popular recreational attractions. Each year, thirty-six million people visit one (or more) of the Keystone State’s one hundred and fourteen parks to picnic, hike, swim, boat, camp, ski, snowmobile, fish, hunt, or raft white water rapids. This sprawling collec­tion of open...
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Celebrating Fifty Years of State Historical Markers

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on 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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Soaring Above “This School in the Clouds”

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Soaring Above “This School in the Clouds” Each fall, when north­west winds blast down from Canada, knowledgeable bird watchers hurriedly make their way to the Appalachian Mountain ridges that zig west, then zag south through the center of the Keystone State. Binoculars in hand, they climb and hike the rocky ridge tops to await the thousands of hawks, eagles, and falcons flying south­ward. Autumn’s winds have beckoned people to...
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Wood on Glass: The Lumber Industry Photographs of William T. Clarke

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Wood on Glass: The Lumber Industry Photographs of William T. Clarke William Townsend Clarke (1859–1930) photographed the forests of northcentral Pennsylvania during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, producing stunning images that tell the story of the logging industry in the vast stands of old-growth white pine and hemlock trees which Henry W. Shoemaker (1880–1958) called the “Black Forest” of Pennsylvania. Shoemaker was a prolific writer,...
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