Monroe County

As my Facebook followers may have seen, last week my husband and I celebrated his birthday by traveling down to Lancaster, one of our favorite cities, and touring President Buchanan's beautiful home at Wheatland. Kevin drove, and because he's an indulgent sort, he kept pulling over every time he spotted a marker, so I was able to catch a couple that I still needed. I also got plenty of pictures for the post I'm going to be doing next month about Wheatland itself.

Moving on to today's quest, I decided to revisit my trip to Stroudsburg from this past spring and learn more about Monroe County itself.

Paul Allman Siple, Erie, Erie County

As I'm writing this, Pennsylvania is obscured by a heavy haze which makes breathing a touch difficult. The western Canadian wildfires have sent their smoke all the way across the continent, much like the California fires did last year. I'm sending my best wishes to everyone affected and I hope that they get things under control quickly.

My longtime readers know that I pay close attention to the weather. I don't have much choice, because I'm one of those 'walking barometer' people; changes in the barometric pressure have an impact on me, sometimes a pretty severe impact. (In fact, I just heard a roll of thunder which explains a few things.) Today, courtesy of my distant cousin Ron Bauerle, we'll be taking a look at the life and work of someone else who paid close attention to the weather for very different reasons. 

Old Chapel, Bethlehem, Northampton County

As of this writing, Moravian Bethlehem is still on the U.S. Tentative List to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site. If you're not familiar with the term, these are locations around the world which have been recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). They have been determined to be unique landmarks with distinctive geographic and historical identities, which have cultural significance "of outstanding value to humanity." Right now, Pennsylvania only has two UNESCO World Heritage Sites to its name - Independence Hall in Philadelphia and Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece outside of Pittsburgh - so if the Moravian Community is selected for the honor, it will become our third. It's a process that takes years; they've been working toward this since 2002. You can keep tabs on the whole thing here - it's very exciting! I have every intention of being there for whatever celebration they decide to have for the occasion.

Well, with all the explorations I've been doing of other counties, I realized that I haven't done a Moravian Bethlehem blog post all year. So I'd say we're way overdue. This one is a little more picture-heavy than some of my posts, because I just couldn't bring myself to stop at three like I usually do.

Barnett's Fort, Lower Paxton Township, Dauphin County

Welcome to July! I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend.

We're going to head back to Dauphin County today, thanks to some photos that were sent to me by John Robinson, a retired employee of the PHMC. Most of what John emails me comes from Beaver County, but this time he also sent a picture which actually connects to a previous post in this blog. My longtime readers may remember when I wrote about the Blue Mountain Forts two years ago, and the post concluded with the observation that I hadn't learned as much about them as I would have liked. It also mentioned the names of five confirmed forts which were part of this chain; there's apparently a sixth but I couldn't find a source which identified it for sure (although it may have been Fort Lebanon). All of those forts have historical markers of their own, and today we'll be taking a look at one of them.