Bark Peelers’ Festival 50

The Pennsylvania Lumber Museum’s Bark Peelers’ Festival event celebrates its 50th occurrence in July 2025. Referred to as the “Bark Peelers’ Convention” from its inception in 1974 through the 2014 iteration, the festival is the museum’s largest and most well-known yearly special event. Attendance has fluctuated over the years, from a high of approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people during the 1980s...
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The Brunswick Tannery

“One of the largest and most complete establishments of its kind in the world” During the 1870s and the early part of the twentieth century, the hemlock sole-leather tanning industry boomed in northern Pennsylvania. As reported in the Scientific American, January 21, 1882: From Port Jervis almost to Lake Erie, a vast industry is conducted in the manufacture of hemlock sole leather....
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Tioga County: A Last Frontier

Fallbrook, Hoytville, Landrus and Leetonia are names that evoke memories of the past for some Tiogans, while for others, build­ings or a place on a map serve as re­minders of what has been. These names are evidence of the establish­ment, growth and demise of economic centers – coal mines, lumber mills and tanneries – important in Tioga County’s past. Today, these enterprises...
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Delaware County: Where Pennsylvania Began

Delaware County is part of the densely populated belt around Philadelphia, stretching from the city’s western boundary to the circular Delaware state line. Covering approx­imately 185 square miles, it is the third smallest Pennsylvania county yet the fourth largest in population. Its southern boundary is formed by the Delaware River, from which the county takes its name. The site of early...
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Columbia County is Diversity

From the time of the earliest settlements during the Revolu­tionary War era to the present day, Columbia County has been three sepa­rate neighborhoods-the southern re­gion (Catawissa and Centralia); the northern area (Benton and Millville) and the north bank of the Susquehanna River (Bloomsburg and Berwick). They are distinguishable by varied physical environments, ethnic origins and social...
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Wyoming County: A Portrait of the Picturesque

The Endless Mountains region of northeastern Pennsylvania contains the rurally unspoiled and uncrowded Wyoming County, attracting both visitor and sports enthusiast with its picturesque valleys and charm­ing villages. Fed by the waters of the North Branch of the Susquehanna River, which diagonally bisects the three hundred and ninety-six square mile county, this county lies at the northern end...
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Cameron County: Where Legends are Legion

Tucked high away in Pennsylvania’s once foreboding northern tier, the little county called Cameron was a segment of the vast wilderness known for many years as the Com­monwealth’s last frontier. In fact, the county was not for­mally established until 1860, the sixty-sixth of the sixty­-seven counties apportioned and organized by the state legislature. Actual settlement of Ca­meron...
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Perry County: A Sportsman’s Paradise

Despite its proximity to Pennsylvania’s bustling and heavily urbanized capital city, Perry County remains a sportsman’s placid paradise with its thickly forested moun­tains and lushly verdant val­leys. Much like its neighboring counties – Franklin, Cumber­land, Juniata and Dauphin­ – Perry County claims a topogra­phy that is neither unique nor unusual: its mountains give...
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Potter County: At the Edge of the Forest

Potter, one of the Com­monwealth’s larger counties in size, but one of the smaller in population, is located in the center of what is popularly called the northern tier. Its location on a highly dissected plateau with narrow, steep­-sided valleys made travel diffi­cult and settlement hesitant. Even today with modern tech­nology, the pace of life is slower than in Pennsylvania’s more...
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Sullivan County: Picture Post Card Pretty

Named for Gen. John Sullivan, fearless leader of the leg­endary bloodbath, Sullivan’s March, mounted in 1779 to attack the hostile Iro­quois of northern Pennsylva­nia, Sullivan County is today – as it was throughout the nineteenth century – a bucolic, pastoral landscape, best known for the recreational opportunities it has offered generations of sportsmen and sojourners. For...
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