Agnes: Pennsylvania’s Most Devastating Natural Disaster

Posted by on May 13, 2022 in | Comments Off on Agnes: Pennsylvania’s Most Devastating Natural Disaster The late Paul Beers, the longtime columnist for the Harrisburg Patriot-News, once wrote that some Pennsylvanians are “amazingly complacent” about the threat of flooding despite living in a state that is quite vulnerable. Back in the day, around the midpoint of the 20th century, when old-timers in Pennsylvania spoke of “the big one,” they were referring to the 1936 flood — floods plural,...
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The Early Days of the William Penn Highway: How Present-Day U.S. Route 22 Got its Start

Posted by on Nov 30, 2021 in | Comments Off on The Early Days of the William Penn Highway: How Present-Day U.S. Route 22 Got its Start At the dawn of the automobile age, the major roadways crossing Pennsylvania were rutted, dusty, farm-to-market thoroughfares traveled mainly by horses and wagons. Many of these were still privately owned turnpikes, some with wooden-plank road surfaces. Most towns had improved streets, but the paving, if any, usually ended at the city line. Stagecoach lines still operated here and there, but...
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Susquehannock Village at Lemoyne

Posted by on Aug 13, 2021 in | Comments Off on Susquehannock Village at Lemoyne Around 1610 a group of Susquehannocks, an Iroquoian-speaking Native American tribe, established a village perched on a bluff overlooking the Susquehanna River in what is today Lemoyne, Cumberland County. Fast forward to 2007 when archaeologists began excavating that site in advance of a proposed railroad connector project. There they uncovered evidence of the village, including a wooden...
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French Azilum Overlook

Posted by on Mar 25, 2021 in | Comments Off on French Azilum Overlook This scenic overlook in rural Bradford County, pictured in these postcards, provides a view of far more than a horseshoe bend in the broad North Branch of the Susquehanna River. It offers a glimpse of the location of the lost settlement of French Azilum — a historic site with a link to Queen Marie Antoinette of France — from a perch along an early auto tourism route where the Sullivan Trail...
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Chicken and Waffles: The Pennsylvania Story

Posted by on Dec 28, 2020 in | Comments Off on Chicken and Waffles: The Pennsylvania Story In his 1861 local-color novel The Young Parson, German Reformed minister Peter Seibert Davis (1828–92) described chicken and waffles as the “stereotypical” Sunday supper among the Pennsylvania Dutch. How this dish moved from a regional identity food into mainstream American cookery is indeed a complicated story, especially since chicken and waffles reached its height of popularity during the...
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“The Not So Good Old Days”: Disease and the Struggle for Public Health in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Oct 15, 2020 in | Comments Off on “The Not So Good Old Days”: Disease and the Struggle for Public Health in Pennsylvania In 1930 A. J. Bohl was proud to work in the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH). After 25 years there, he wrote an article in Pennsylvania’s Health in which he recalled growing up in the 1880s, when disease and illness ravaged the state. “There wasn’t much attention paid to the communicable diseases. Everybody, as a matter of course, had measles, chicken pox, whooping cough and mumps, and...
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Pennsylvania Polymath: Samuel Stehman Haldeman

Posted by on Jun 8, 2020 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Polymath: Samuel Stehman Haldeman Samuel Stehman Haldeman was a pioneer in American science with an uncompromising empirical bent who made definitive contributions in geology, metallurgy, zoology and the scientific study of language. His groundbreaking lifework touched nearly seven decades of science and included identification of one of the oldest fossils in Pennsylvania, elucidation of a plan for an anthracite coal furnace for...
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Remembering TMI 40 Years Later

Posted by on Feb 3, 2020 in | Comments Off on Remembering TMI 40 Years Later In late March 1979, south-central Pennsylvanians were startled to learn of an accident that had occurred at Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant in the Susquehanna River near Middletown, Dauphin County. In my own experience, the initial news came to me at Dallastown Elementary School in York County after a teacher shouted out to my fifth-grade class to come back inside the school building...
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The Hunt for Pennsylvania’s Timber Rattlesnakes

Posted by on Jan 14, 2020 in | Comments Off on The Hunt for Pennsylvania’s Timber Rattlesnakes In the early 19th century, pioneer adventurer Philip Tome recalled that it was common to see 30 or 40 timber rattlesnakes at a time near his home along the Susquehanna River. “The snakes were so numerous that we used to clear the yard and build fires to keep them away,” he recalled in his 1854 memoir, Pioneer Life; or, Thirty Years a Hunter. “On leaving the house we always put on a pair of...
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“Keeping with the Dignity of the Commonwealth”: 50 Years of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence

Posted by on Dec 1, 2019 in | Comments Off on “Keeping with the Dignity of the Commonwealth”: 50 Years of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence The stately Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence overlooking the Susquehanna River at 2035 North Front Street in the Uptown neighborhood of Harrisburg, Dauphin County, reaches its half-century mark in 2018, a milestone that is being observed with a variety of events and programs throughout the year. The Georgian Revival mansion was completed in 1968, during the term of Gov. Raymond P. Shafer, its...
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