Community Initiative Award Recipients Featured in PA SHPO Videos

Posted by on Feb 25, 2020 in | Comments Off on Community Initiative Award Recipients Featured in PA SHPO Videos A core mission of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office (PA SHPO) is to educate the public regarding state and federal preservation programs. The production of testimonial videos is one way in which PA SHPO shares preservation’s positive outcomes and its importance for Pennsylvania’s many diverse communities. In 2018 PA SHPO honored three organizations with Community Initiative...
read more

From the Executive Director

Posted by on Mar 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on From the Executive Director As a trained historian who has devoted his life to the preservation and teaching of American history, I am embarrassed to admit how little I knew about my own family’s history—only a few bits and pieces passed down from my parents. I was told that our family settled in the old Northwest Territory before Ohio became a state in 1803 and that some of my ancestors came from Pennsylvania. I...
read more

Punxsutawney Post Office

Posted by on May 11, 2015 in | Comments Off on Punxsutawney Post Office Although Punxsutawney, Jefferson County, is best known as the home of a renowned weather-forecasting groundhog, it is also a community of notable historic buildings, including the grand Classical Revival U.S. post office shown in this circa 1916 postcard. The Punxsutawney Post Office, with its imposing Ionic limestone columns, was the hub of the community’s mail services from its completion in...
read more

History Cast in Iron: Rediscovering Keystone Markers

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on History Cast in Iron: Rediscovering Keystone Markers From Airville to Blooming Valley, from Camptown to Dornsife, and all the way to Wysox, York Haven and Zion View, Pennsylvania literally claims unusual – as well as unique – place names from A to Z. Most of the Commonwealth’s cities, towns and villages were once marked with cast iron name signs, painted in the rich blue and gold colors associated with Pennsylvania. Manufactured in an elongated...
read more

Civil War Frying Pan at Drake Well Museum

Posted by on Dec 2, 2013 in | Comments Off on Civil War Frying Pan at Drake Well Museum The Reverend Darius S. Steadman (1831–1907), born in Columbus, Warren County, along U.S. Route 6 in Pennsylvania’s Northern Tier, was licensed to preach in 1857. He served congregations in Clarion County before being commissioned, on October 7, 1861, a captain and chaplain of the 105th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry (PVI) known as the Wild Cat Regiment. The unit was raised in Jefferson, Clarion...
read more

Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Bucks County – Photographs of Early Architecture, by Aaron Siskind, with an introduction by William Morgan, has been pub­lished for the Bucks County Historical Society. The collection contains approximately one hundred photographs; it is a pictorial history of Bucks County buildings that existed in the 1940’s when Siskind employed his fixed-lens Voightlaner Avis camera. The book is...
read more

Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf The Philadelphia and Erie Railroad: Its Place in American Economic History by Homer T. Rosenberger has just been published by The Fox Hills Press. The illustrated book is 748 pages and is available for $18.00 from The Fox Hills Press, 8409 Fox Run, Potomac, Maryland 20854. Copies are also available at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Dr. Rosenberger, a noted historian, is a...
read more

Ernest: Life in a Mining Town

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Ernest: Life in a Mining Town In 1904, the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company began deep mining in Ernest, Pennsylvania. In 1965, the industry there came to an end. Between these two dates, people lived out their lives in this small community northwest of Indiana, where for over sixty years every facet of existence revolved around the digging of coal from the hillsides surrounding the town. But what was life like in a...
read more

Historical Sketch of Elk County

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Historical Sketch of Elk County Elk County is named for that noble animal that once abounded in the region in great numbers. The last native elk, however, was shot in 1867 in Elk County by an Indian, Jim Jacobs. Today, Pennsylvania’s only Elk herd roams freely over the area bounded by Elk and Cam­eron Counties. It is descended from the Elk herd imported into Pennsylvania in 1913 from Montana and Wyoming. The history of...
read more

Jefferson County: Of Wilderness Tamed

Posted by on Nov 27, 2013 in | Comments Off on Jefferson County: Of Wilderness Tamed Jefferson County. Its hallmarks are as disparate as Thomas Jef­ferson and Punxsutawney Phil. Village names as dissimilar as Panic and Desire. Inhabitants as distinctive as Indian chief Cornplanter and Moravian missionary John Heckewelder. And a tranquil­ity which masks the turbu­lence of the nineteenth century’s lumber boom that spawned settlement and nu­merous ancillary industries....
read more