In northern Pennsylvania, feeding a large crew of hungry loggers, 75 to 100 in each camp, was quite a challenge for the lumber company cook and his assistants. Lumberjacks had to be well fed, consuming an average of 8,000 calories a day to provide the energy needed to tackle the rigors of hard physical labor, especially during the cold winter months when much of the logging took place.
The word home, can conjure a flood of memories. Lewis C. Heddens, who was born and grew up on Mill Street in Danville, Montour County, in the early 1900s, shared vivid accounts of the men, women, and children who walked and worked on the main thoroughfare.
Constructed in 1848-49 as a freight handling warehouse, Lewistown Station is described as the oldest surviving structure known to have been built by the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Historians report Conrad Weiser, who acted as an interpreter between the Indians and whites, was envious of the beautiful “island” and traded his gun to Chief Shikellamy in exchange for the Isle of Que.
Known by others for having an eccentric personality, it was a characterization Jerry Church enjoyed. Church became an opportunistic land developer who turned a small village into the successful town of Lock Haven, in what became Clinton County.
An 1881 history of Danville and Montour County included the recollections of a man who lived in the community fifty years earlier. People in the community appreciated shoemakers, tailors, and women who went from house to house spinning yarn.
Goose Day, September 29th of each year, is a time of celebration in the Juniata River Valley. It brings with it both religious and folkloric connections, as well as some romanticism.
What began as a one-day event in 1855, the Bloomsburg Fair enters its 171st year, connected by an enduring thread that drew those first visitors: a chance for neighbors to bring what they have raised, made, and learned for the rest of the county to see.
For generations, the mountains of Central Pennsylvania were filled not only with trails and hunting camps, but with stories. Stories told beside fires. Stories passed from one hunter to another. Such was the case with noted hunter Daniel Karstetter and the silent horseman of the Seven Mountains.
Harvesting had a social character. Men moved from farm to farm, helping one another. And harvest wasn't really finished when the grain left the field. There was cutting, binding, shocking, hauling, threshing, winnowing, transporting it to the mill, grinding it, and finally baking it.
