Mt. Pisgah Plane

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Mt. Pisgah Plane In 1827, the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company opened the Mauch Chunk Railroad — later known as the Switchback Gravity Railroad — in Carbon County to efficiently transport anthracite over a precipitous distance of nine miles from mining operations on the top of Sharp Mountain at Summit Hill to the Lehigh River below at Mauch Chunk (renamed Jim Thorpe in 1953). The nation’s second oldest...
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New York Central Railroad Station, Philipsburg, Pa.

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on New York Central Railroad Station, Philipsburg, Pa. Until railroads reached Philipsburg in the mid-nineteenth century, the small Centre County community was primarily a hub of local commerce. Founded in 1797 on the east side of Moshannon Creek by a thirty-year-old entrepreneur, Henry Phillips (1767–1800), the community owed its economic boom of the second half of the nineteenth century to the proverbial coming of the railroad. Philipsburg was...
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Foot of Main Street, Phoenixville, Pa.

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Foot of Main Street, Phoenixville, Pa. “Am spending a few days in this beautiful little city,” wrote Harry to a Miss Clara Waterman of Angola, New York, on April 5, 1909. He penned his message on the reverse of a penny postcard bearing an image entitled “View from the foot of Main Street, Showing Dam, Phoenixville, Pa.” A century ago, at the time of Harry’s visit, the Chester County community was...
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The Piney Dam and Spillway on Clarion River

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Piney Dam and Spillway on Clarion River A tributary of the Allegheny River, the Clarion River snakes through northwestern Pennsylvania for 110 miles, draining the mountainous region of the Allegheny Plateau of the Ohio River watershed. For much of the nineteenth century, loggers used the river to raft lumber to market. Historians believe that James V. Cassatt piloted the last lumber raft on the river from Clarington, Forest County, to...
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Curwensville, Winter 1910

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Curwensville, Winter 1910 A postcard titled “Winter 1910” lacks a postmark, addressee, and signature, but the image of children enjoying the aftermath of a snowstorm freezes a frame in small-town America a century ago. “Do you know who we are?” the correspondent asks. “We are all well and hope you are, too.” The identity of the writer is lost, but the photograph preserves a glimpse of everyday life in Curwensville,...
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Lock Haven Hospital, Lock Haven, Pa.

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lock Haven Hospital, Lock Haven, Pa. This burned since you were here [and] suppose you read of it,” wrote a Mrs. A. McClintock to Mrs. E. H. MacKee, of Buffalo, New York, on a postcard depicting the Lock Haven Hospital in Lock Haven, Clinton County. The postcard was postmarked September 2, 1908, at Lock Haven. Built in 1903 at a cost of $42,000, the Lock Haven Hospital was destroyed by fire five years later, on July 28, 1908....
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Carpet Mill, Bloomsburg, Pa.

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Carpet Mill, Bloomsburg, Pa. The Magee Carpet Company in Bloomsburg, Columbia County, was an outgrowth of James Magee and Company, a small factory of twenty-five looms founded in Philadelphia by James Magee at the close of the American Civil War. Magee’s son and namesake, James Magee II, began working in his father’s mill by sweeping floors. He eventually worked in a number of departments and earned the position of plant...
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Hotel Bone, Cambridge Springs, Pa.

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Hotel Bone, Cambridge Springs, Pa. This is the hotel which burned to the ground Tuesday. Some fire too,” wrote individuals identified only as Mother and Carrie on August 12, 1915, from Cambridge Springs in Crawford County to Florence Miller of Jamestown, New York. Previously known as the Hotel Kelly, the Hotel Bone was originally owned and operated by banker Amos Kelly and his sons, one of whom served as mayor of the borough. The...
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United Brethren Church, Mechanicsburg

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on United Brethren Church, Mechanicsburg “X Indicates my home,” wrote C. K. on a postcard, post- marked August 18, 1909, depicting the United Brethren Church in Mechanicsburg, Cumberland County, to a Miss Hazel Sterner of Selinsgrove, Snyder County. “This is the church I attend. This is located along the trolley line to Harrisburg and near the center of town. I have lived here 20 years and am used to it. Mabel sends her regards.”...
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State Street, Harrisburg

Posted by PA Heritage Staff on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on State Street, Harrisburg One hundred years ago, on May 20, 1911, a self- proclaimed “business man in the Capitol City,” identified only as C. O. S., wrote to Lial Phillips of Leechburg, Armstrong County, on a postcard bearing an image of Harrisburg’s State Street, looking west from the State Capitol toward the Susquehanna River. Although the sender’s remarks are brief and desultory, the postcard’s image is not. It...
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