Carbon County

I'm not sure how commonly this is known, but did you realize that every one of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania, in addition to being home to many other markers, has a PHMC marker of its very own? I've been trying to figure out the best way to talk about these, but as is so often the case, I'm probably overthinking the matter and I'm just going to treat them like the other markers.

The marker for each county is found in the vicinity of the county courthouse, and the community where the county courthouse is located is known as the county seat. (The lone exception to this rule is Philadelphia County, which consists entirely of the city of Philadelphia - it is its own county seat.) So if you haven't had occasion to wander past the courthouse of a given county, odds are you've never seen one of these markers.

(Edit: Karen Galle, of the PHMC, tells me in a comment below that Montgomery County actually does not have its own marker.)

Rock Ford, Lancaster, Lancaster County

Happy April! Pennsylvania is finally starting to get warm(ish)!

First, another shout out to Karen Galle, the director of the PHMC’s historical marker program. She recently updated their official blog with some info about new markers that are being erected this year, thus ensuring that I will continue to have blog subjects for years to come, and at the very end she gave a lovely shout-out to MarkerQuest! You can read the post, which is quite interesting, here.

If you read my post last year about the First Reformed Church of Lancaster, you may remember that I said I'm in that city at least once a year for Zenkaikon, the local annual gathering of pop culture enthusiasts. We were together once again at the end of March, so a big hello to any of my Z-pals who are reading this! While I was there with my usual guest star party members Rachel and Andrea, we took some time between panels to collect a few more signs for this blog. Today's subject was unexpected - we stumbled upon it while traveling between our hotel and the convention, and of course made the detour to get photos.