The Historic National Road

Posted by on Dec 1, 2023 in | Comments Off on The Historic National Road Distinctive seven-sided toll houses like the one shown on this early 20th-century postcard marked the route of the National Road in southwestern Pennsylvania. The National Road was the first highway planned and funded by the federal government and was intended to connect the East Coast with the country’s western frontier by opening a route through the Allegheny Mountains. Construction of the...
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Six-Shooters in Somerset: The Curious Tale of a Northeastern Western

Posted by on Dec 1, 2023 in | Comments Off on Six-Shooters in Somerset: The Curious Tale of a Northeastern Western Nestled among the hills of Somerset County, the one-street village of Baker-Whiteley epitomizes the many small-scale coal company towns that proliferated throughout southwestern Pennsylvania at the turn of the 20th century. Eclipsed by the grandeur of the region’s more imposing operations, these humble communities toiled in anonymity to unearth the fuel essential to the nation’s growing...
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Quecreek: Remembering the Remarkable Mining Rescue 20 Years Later

Posted by on May 13, 2022 in | Comments Off on Quecreek: Remembering the Remarkable Mining Rescue 20 Years Later The site of a massive multigovernment rescue effort to save nine miners trapped hundreds of feet below the earth’s surface is today a placid meadow with a memorial park and a museum dedicated to telling the story of four desperate days in July 2002. “It’s been a life-changing 20 years,” says Bill Arnold, executive director of the Quecreek Mine Rescue Foundation, located at the rescue site, part...
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Trailheads

Posted by on Jun 7, 2021 in | Comments Off on Trailheads This year marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that resulted in airliner crashes into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Anyone old enough to remember 9/11 can recall the wall-to-wall news coverage and vivid sense of national grief about the destruction and lives lost. The...
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The Man for the Moment: Tom Ridge and the 9/11 Inflection Point

Posted by on Jun 4, 2021 in | Comments Off on The Man for the Moment: Tom Ridge and the 9/11 Inflection Point   On the cloudless, blue-sky morning of September 11, 2001, Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, unaware the State Police in Harrisburg were looking for him, was at his Erie home enjoying the crisp air while he cleared his raised flower beds of dead stems and dried leaves. Gardening was a favorite pastime for the Vietnam War veteran and former congressman. For Ridge, that peaceful moment in his...
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Col. Paul J. Evanko’s Field Notes from 9/11

Posted by on Jun 3, 2021 in | Comments Off on Col. Paul J. Evanko’s Field Notes from 9/11 The United States was changed forever on the morning of September 11, 2001, when it was attacked by members of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. One of the four airliners that was hijacked as part of the attack was United Airlines Flight 93, originally scheduled from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, California. Flight 93 crashed in a field in Stonycreek Township, near Shanksville, in...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Jun 3, 2021 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter Twenty years ago, Pennsylvania became the setting for one of the most tragic but heroic episodes in recent U.S. history, when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a meadow in Somerset County after passengers fought back at al-Qaeda hijackers who had planned to use the aircraft for an attack on an unknown target in Washington, D.C. In this issue we mark the somber anniversary of 9/11 with the...
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Trailheads

Posted by on Feb 10, 2021 in | Comments Off on Trailheads What is there left to say about 2020? In previous issues, we’ve chronicled the response of PHMC’s Trails of History sites to the COVID-19 pandemic. As of early October, it looked unlikely that sites would reopen by the end of the year. The uncertainty surrounding reopening sites and welcoming visitors in person has caused a great deal of frustration on all fronts. Nevertheless, our staff and...
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Fort Dewart on the Forbes Road

Posted by on Feb 5, 2021 in | Comments Off on Fort Dewart on the Forbes Road Fort Dewart, which straddles the border of Bedford and Somerset counties in southern Pennsylvania, was a British military redoubt built in August 1758 during the French and Indian War, the North American conflict in the global Seven Years’ War (1756–63) between Great Britain and France. The small fortification was part of a chain of defensive forts and supply stops built by the troops of Gen....
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William Curtis Truxal’s Footlocker

Posted by on Nov 12, 2019 in | Comments Off on William Curtis Truxal’s Footlocker William Curtis Truxal (1882–1960) was a 34-year-old attorney residing in Somerset when the Pennsylvania National Guard unit he commanded, Company C of the 10th Infantry Regiment, was mustered into federal service for World War I on July 15, 1917. A graduate of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, he had first enlisted in the guard as a private in February 1914, and by October of that...
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