I'm on a quest to photograph and research all of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission's historical markers. This is my quest journal so you can join me on my adventures every Wednesday! Blog owned and written by Laura Klotz. Marker images used with permission of the PHMC. Header image created by Rachel Peeples.
It's a snowy day here, so I hope everyone reading this is safe and warm. As usual with this kind of weather, I'm not feeling my best, so the result is kind of a quiet post this week. To be fair, there's only so much to be said about the subject, which no longer exists, but I will tell you what I can.
A quick congratulatory shout-out to my pal the Hometown Historian, who just reached 1,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel. So proud of you, Jon, keep up the great work!
As I write this, there's just a little more than two months separating me from Zenkaikon, my annual gift to myself. Each year (except when things like a global pandemic prevent it) I travel to beautiful downtown Lancaster to join my fellow nerds from all over in a long weekend of costumes, pageantry, and general mayhem as we celebrate all the different forms of media we love. It's very important to me.
This year, I'm deeply gratified to be able to say that I've become kind of an official and permanent part of the convention, in my own way. At last year's closing ceremony, during the feedback session, an out-of-town participant suggested that the con staff create a sort of primer about Lancaster's history. And since they already have someone right in their midst who will take any opportunity to ramble about history in Pennsylvania, they knew just who to call. About Lancaster City went live on the convention website earlier this week and I'm so happy that they welcomed my unique contribution to the program. Many thanks to the con staff, and especially vice-chair Adam, for giving me this opportunity.
Well, since I was already immersed in the history of the Red Rose City, it seemed only natural that this week's post should continue in that direction. The story of this gentleman begins in Lancaster and ends in Gettysburg, but there are some who claim that his story still continues to this day.
It's very cold today, though at least it's not as gloomy as it was yesterday or is expected to be tomorrow. It has me thinking back to the much sunnier and more temperate day I enjoyed when I was last in Luzerne County.
I had a great time on my visit to Eckley Miners' Village, except for one tiny thing: by the time I had finished walking the length of the little patch town, I was very hungry, and the souvenir shop only sold things like candy bars and bags of chips. I asked our tour guide if he could recommend a place for me to get lunch once I left the village, but before he could answer, another gentleman on the tour piped up and encouraged me to drive roughly three miles to the community of Freeland, and eat at the Freeland Diner.
This turned out to be a great tip and I again thank the gentleman for his recommendation. Not only was the food there very good and quite reasonably priced, but Freeland is home to one of my markers, so I was going to have to go there at some point anyway. (Also, if you visit the diner's website, you can actually see a picture of the booth where I was seated, which amuses me more than it probably should.)
Interestingly, not only did I conduct both the Eckley quest and this one on the same day, but they're actually related.
Happy New Year! It felt so strange not to be updating this blog throughout the past month, but I definitely am glad that I took the time off. It's great to be back in the saddle, though, and we're just going to dive right in with a visit to Berks County.
When I visited the Indian Jasper Quarries marker last fall, I had a little extra time following the event, so I took a drive down the local highway to collect a few additional markers. This one was my actual objective, though I was pleased to grab two others along the way. As of this writing, it's the only historical marker in the borough of Bally, and it all has to do with the origins of that municipality.
Well, here we are again for another end-of-year wrap-up post! As those of you who have been with me for a while know, I like to end the blogging year with a final post which shares some facts and figures related to the blog, acknowledges certain persons, and talks about what I have in mind for the coming year. Also, because I work in retail, I've developed the habit of doing this at the end of November so that I can take the month of December off from blogging. I do miss it and look forward to getting back to it in January, but at this time of year - between helping frantic customers (and coworkers), doing my own holiday preparations, and dealing with unpredictable Pennsylvania weather - I need all the extra sleep I can get.
In last year's post I made the comment that 2022 didn't even sound like a real year. I think 2023 sounds even less like one.
Anyway, let's wrap up the year together!
Here we are, the final blog post of 2022! Well, almost - next week I'll be sharing my annual wrap-up post, where I talk about the statistics of the blog and the new friends I've made and what I've got in mind as I head into the next year. I will then be radio silent, apart from occasional posts on Facebook, for the month of December. (Why? Because as my longtime readers know, my day job is retail. That pretty much says it all.) In 2023, I'll be heading into my fifth year of this blog, which kind of astounds me.
We're going to close out the active blogging year with a visit to a place that has been gone for many years. Unlike many of the buildings I've profiled on this blog, however, this one is like the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia - I've actually been inside. I grew up roughly an hour's drive away from Philadelphia, depending on traffic anyway, and the two big settings for much of anything in those days were Veterans Stadium and the Spectrum Arena. Nothing else really compared to the two. Both were part of the South Philadelphia Sports Complex; both were home to Philadelphia pro sports teams (baseball and football at the Vet, hockey and basketball at the Spectrum); and both were popular venues for concerts and other large-scale events. Both are also gone.
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.
