Pennsylvania Railroad Shops, Altoona, Blair County

Hello and welcome to the second-to-last MQ adventure for 2025! I still can't believe this has been the seventh year of quests, and I really appreciate how many of you have joined me for my adventures in history. I have one more regular post lined up for next week, and then in December I'll be doing the annual wrap-up where we look at statistics and fun facts. After that, as my longtime readers know, I'll be taking the rest of December off because of my day job being in retail.

This week we're heading back out west to Blair County to look at trains. I do like trains.

Reading Terminal & Market, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County

We're bidding farewell to the most beautiful month of the year in just a couple short days, and meanwhile sending my prayers for those being affected by Hurricane Melissa. I never saw a weather radar map which colored a storm black until this, that was really bizarre. 

For this week's quest, I have a confession. I've never actually been inside of this building, which is why I don't have any pictures of the interior to share. But you can see lots of pictures at the various sources I've linked at the bottom, and it's most certainly on my list of places to see in Philadelphia "someday". (I have a lot of things scheduled in that very nebulous timeframe.) I got the marker a few years back, when my mother and my BFF Andrea and I took a double-decker bus tour around the city to see different locations, and today I'm going to tell you about what goes on inside.

Philip Ginter, Summit Hill, Carbon County

Happy October!

I'm still working on the Carbon County marker book - I expect to be finished before too much longer. So it takes up a lot of my mental energy because I'm honestly quite excited for it. (To quote from the recently released trailer for the back half of the Wicked movie, "I'm obsessulated.")

That being the case, here's another preview for my faithful blog readers, revisiting an earlier post. As with the previous post I've done of this sort, this is not the entire chapter, just a truncated version. I have to save some of the good stuff so people will buy the book, after all!

Hummelstown Brownstone Quarries, Hummelstown, Dauphin County

Happy New Year! This post was meant to go up much sooner, but the year has been off to a bit of a wonky start for multiple reasons, including my husband being sick and me struggling with pain issues due to the polar vortex temperatures. (Danged arthritis and sinus headaches.) But I made it through another holiday season in retail with my sanity mostly intact and my hair only a little more gray than it already was, so I'm taking the wins where I can find them. And given how truly awful January has already been for some parts of the country and the world, that's really all any of us can do. 

Meanwhile, we've still got plenty of Pennsylvania history to uncover in the coming year, so we might as well get started. As you may remember, I had a marvelous day exploring in Dauphin County last summer with my college friend AmyBeth, and this is the second of the two Hummelstown markers. Besides, it's so bitterly cold and windy here lately that it does me a bit of good to remember that hot July afternoon.

Cumberland Valley Railroad, Mechanicsburg, Cumberland County

Many thanks to everyone who shared and commented on last week's post! I'm sure the good folks at the Liberty Bell Museum will be grateful that so many people have taken an interest in the museum's precarious situation, and I truly hope that we can make a difference.

Just a quick reminder that it's the first of the month, which means the newsletter has gone out with links to all of the February posts. To read it online, click here - and please do consider subscribing, it's free and sometimes there is exclusive content.

For today's post, I'm introducing the first new county of 2023. This past Saturday, Kevin and I made our way to Mechanicsburg for a meeting of our beloved Sherlock Holmes club, the White Rose Irregulars. After the meeting, we amused ourselves with running around the community collecting markers, and managed to get almost all of them. As a reward for his help, I treated him to some incredible homemade ice cream at Urban Churn Creamery. (I had the honey lemon lavender, and all I can say is that it's a good thing this place isn't closer to our house, because I'd go bankrupt.) This was the first of the seven markers we got that day, and we were a little chagrined that we were about twenty minutes too late to go inside the building in question.

First Iron Rails, Danville, Montour County

It took me longer than usual to finish putting this together, partly because a storm knocked out my internet for a few hours at one point in the week. But it's mostly because we're heading into that time of year where everything happens all at once, especially since I'm in retail, which is why last year I decided to take the month of December off from blogging. I'll be doing that again this year, so look for the annual wrap-up post at the end of the month.

Anyone who's been reading this blog (or any of the other countless sources of information about our commonwealth) for a while knows that Pennsylvania is full of firsts. During my visit to Montour County earlier this year, I encountered this one, which is probably one of the lesser-known firsts, but railroad enthusiasts might be familiar with it.

Railroading in the United States dates back to around 1830, at which time the first locomotives were brought here from Europe. By that point, railroads had been in general use in England's northeast landscape for roughly twenty years. These earliest trains were drawn by horses (hence the use of the term even today of "horsepower"), and then later engines used steam or, more commonly, coal. Railroad tracks, meanwhile, were another story, and they're the focus of this week's quest.

Altoona, Blair County

I say it a lot, and think it even more frequently, but I really do believe we live in one of the most beautiful states in the entire country. My recent trip with my husband was a perfect example of that, since out to the west there is so much open space and woodland and mountainous territory. Kevin and I had such a good time on our trip that I've really been looking forward to doing the next several blog posts - most of August is being dedicated to "county firsts"! 

To kick off that plan, I'm going to share a bunch of what I learned about Altoona. Although it's not the seat of Blair County (that honor goes to nearby Hollidaysburg, with its gorgeous courthouse), it does have the distinction of being the only incorporated city in the county, and has a number of interesting aspects to it - historical and otherwise.

"York House," York, York County

May the Fourth be with you! This post went up quite a bit later than I intended due to... well, it's hard to put this any other way, but due to a kitten emergency. We had a situation with abandoned two-week-old kittens at my mother's house. I'm happy to report that things have been resolved and the babies are in a good, safe home where they're being well fed and loved.

As the subscribers to the blog's monthly newsletter are aware, I'm running a giveaway over at the new Twitter account. Become a follower of the MarkerQuest Twitter by May 31st and you'll automatically be entered. One lucky winner will receive a $10 Amazon gift certificate, because that way nobody needs to give me their mailing address (which seems to have been a problem with the last giveaway). The winner will be announced in the post and newsletter on June 1st, since that's conveniently a Wednesday.

Meanwhile, let's head back to downtown York and have a look at one of their many exquisite historic houses.

Ashland Boys' Association, Ashland, Schuylkill County

Today I'm a bit distracted by the fact that it's my grandfather's birthday. He would have been 91 today, and I miss him a lot. He would, I think, really have loved what I'm doing with this blog; he was fascinated by history (that's probably where I get it) and I'm sure that he would have been bugging me to go on marker-hunting road trips with him. But he's the one who taught me to drive, so in a sense he always goes with me.

Of course, I'm not always the driver. On a recent road trip, my husband Kevin was driving; we missed a turn and were in the process of correcting the course when he asked, "Hey, are we near any of your markers?" We were in a Schuylkill County community called Ashland, and I remembered there was one. Much to my surprise, I turned my head to glance up a side street and there it was. So this week's post is a little bit of serendipity.

Kinzua Viaduct, Kane and Mount Jewett, McKean County

Today's post is full of all kinds of special stuff! Not only am I about to announce the winners of the blog's first-ever giveaway, but it's also our first foray into the western side of Pennsylvania. The whole state is in the 'green phase' now, so it's a little easier to do some traveling to collect markers, but it also means I've gone back to work so finding the time to do that traveling is more of a challenge. 

More on that in a minute, however, because I'm sure that first you want to know who won the prizes! As you might recall, the prizes being offered included a copy of the Spring 2020 issue of Pennsylvania Heritage magazine, a replica of the Commonwealth's original charter, and a reproduction of a map showing the development of the counties. They were all purchased from the online store at Shop PA Heritage, and the purchase supports the continued work of the PHMC. (As noted on the giveaway page, the PHMC neither endorsed nor sponsored the giveaway.) Winners were chosen using the free spinner at Wheel of Names.

Congratulations to the following individuals: Stephanie Brown, John Robinson, and Warren Nast! I'll be contacting you directly via email to tell you about your prize and get your mailing address so I can send it to you. If you didn't win this time around, fear not; there's going to be another giveaway later this year, maybe in the fall as part of my birthday celebration.

Moving on to the focus of today's post, we're venturing west of the Susquehanna River for the first time, to the northern reaches of McKean County. I had fully intended to visit today's subject myself (and may yet), but because of all the shutdowns, a lot of plans got canceled or curtailed. You may recall that earlier this year, I did a post about Ole Bull's Colony in Potter County, courtesy of some photos provided by my sister Liza; the ones in today's quest log were provided by our other sister, Lisa. She stopped there on her way to Erie some while ago, before any of the COVID-19 stuff started happening, and was kind enough to share her photos with me so I could share them with all of you.

Philip Ginter, Summit Hill, Carbon County

Update 10/1/2025: This post has been freshly updated and re-released! Find it here.

For today's adventure, we'll head back to Carbon County - haven't been there in a while - and read about a man whose name is spelled two ways. I first talked about Philip Ginter, or Ginder, in my post about the Carbon County marker, and at the time I promised I'd tell you more about him later. Well, it's later.

Packer Mansion, Jim Thorpe, Carbon County

Before we get into the meat of today's post, I wanted to share a link that was sent to me by Karen Galle, from the PHMC office. She enjoyed my description of the Richard Moore marker dedication and wanted to make sure I knew (and could tell all of you) that there's a calendar on the PHMC website, detailing upcoming dedication ceremonies. If you'd be interested in attending the unveiling of a new marker near you, be sure to take a look and mark your own calendar! Thanks, Karen!

I live very close to the point where the borders of Lehigh, Northampton, and Carbon Counties all meet. Jim Thorpe is not too far from me, and I'm rather fond of the quaint little community. We used to drive through it periodically when I was a child, on the way to visit relatives in the nearby town of Nesquehoning, and the view of Jim Thorpe as we would enter it from its southern end has always been arresting to me. Of particular interest to my childhood fancies was the enormous green house with the red roofs, nestled into the distant hills. What was this fairy tale come to life? Who lived there?