Pennsylvania

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Moravian Church Settlements—Bethlehem

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This is a model of the Gemeinhaus or community house of the Moravians in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, built between 1741 and 1743. The model is inside the original building, the largest 18th century log structure in continuous use in the US. There are several Moravian buildings from the same period in the historic district in Bethlehem, including housing for men and women, a pump house—the first municipal water system in the US—, a chapel, and a tavern, and all are now recognized as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site that includes similar Moravian sites in the Denmark, Germany and the UK. Their school buildings are now part of Moravian University here.

The Moravians, a Protestant sect that predated Martin Luther, originally came from Moravia, now the Czech Republic, but their prime benefactor was a Saxon (German), Count von Zinzendorf, so their Bible is in old, low German. They created settlements around the world in order to do Missionary work, and in Pennsylvania, they were famous for their hospitality, music and for their early efforts to learn Native American languages and hold peaceful conferences with both native and colonial leaders.

The Gemeinhaus was multifunctional, especially before other buildings were finished, and one use was as an inn. The knowledgeable docent led me into the large simple chapel on the second floor, a music room with various instruments that predate the famed Bach Choir of Bethlehem, and explained various exhibits with original items, including fine silk needlework, kitchen items and more. While many of the later buildings are still in use by the University and as housing, the core building’s remarkable preservation makes this is an exceptional way to step back over 250 years into colonial, and early American history. But also walk around the fascinating historic town, which includes an 18th century Native American house.

But my favorite building is the Sun Inn tavern from 1758, where George & Martha Washington stayed, Sam Adams drank ale, and an impressively long list of revolutionaries met over many years. It seems likely to me that Ben Franklin would have met members of the Iroquois Confederacy here, along with Moravian translators, inspiring him to incorporate their ideas into his design of our US democracy which balanced the needs of both the states and the country. There’s no better way to experience history than to raise a glass to our founders in one of their favorite drinking establishments!

Pennsylvania in Photos

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Celebrating all the parks in the Keystone State! Allegheny Portage Railroad NHS, Benjamin Franklin NM (affiliate), Delaware Water Gap NRA, Edgar Allan Poe NHS, Eisenhower NHS, Fallingwater WHS, Flight 93 NMEM, Fort Necessity NB, Friendship Hill NHS, Gettysburg NMP, Gloria Dei (affiliate), Hopewell Furnace NHS, Independence NHP, Johnstown Flood NMEM, Steamtown NHS, Thaddeus Kosciuszko NMEM, Upper Delaware SRR and Valley Forge NHP are all above, plus Pennsylvania has 8 National Heritage Areas, parts of the Middle and Lower Delaware River parks, parts of the Appalachian, North Country and Potomac Heritage NSTs and of the John Smith Chesapeake, Lewis & Clark and Washington Rochambeau NHTs.

Gloria Dei National Historic Site

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So, a couple years ago, I visited Old Swedes church, the oldest original Swedish church in the new world dating back to 1698, and I confirmed that it was a national park site before taking the interesting tour complete with silly ghost stories. And I checked it off my list and posted it on this website. But I was wrong. A careful reader messaged me—to avoid public humiliation—and explained that I had the wrong Old Swedes church.

So, last month, I went to Philadelphia and finally visited the Old Swedes church above, built in 1700. I spoke with the pastor, and he explained that this is the oldest Gloria Dei Lutheran church in America and the oldest surviving church in Philadelphia (not Delaware where I foolishly was before). The pastor forgave me, and I hereby offer my humble public confession.

The moral of the story is that if you look up NPS Old Swedes church, you are likely to get the one in Delaware, which is an affiliated part of the First State NHP, but if you look up NPS Gloria Dei church, you are likely to get the affiliate NHS church above in Philadelphia. Also, the stone and brick work on the two facades are obviously different. As an act of contrition, I offer the following photo of the inside of the Philadelphia Old Swedes, complete with the Kalmar Nyckel sailing above the congregation.

Susquehanna National Heritage Area

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The Zimmerman center above is the launching point for summer boat rides on the river in the background, a colonial era museum, the trailhead through a Susquehannock tribal area, local HQ for the Captain John Smith Chesapeake NHT, and the HQ for the Susquehanna NHA. I’m glad I stopped here last month, since the staff cleared up some of my misconceptions.

The museum here does a good job in describing the contact between the colonial explorer John Smith and the natives. The staff also confirmed my suspicion that Captain Smith could not have traveled to all the points up river shown on his trail. Even his small exploring boat could not sail up waterfalls and over rocky shoals. So Smith’s historic trail map does not match the explorer’s actual historic trail. The NPS describes the trail as “a water-based trail following the coastline of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributary rivers”, which would be great, if this were a scenic trail, but it’s a historic trail, named for a real explorer. [No word yet from the NPS on fixing this.]

Amidst handling school groups with aplomb, the staff also nicely answered my questions about the broad heritage area. If you’re interested in the colonial era, you should visit the county history museum in York, which has several colonial buildings, including a tavern, where our revolutionary leaders, the Continental Congress, fled during the British occupation of Philadelphia from 1777 to 1778. While exploring, you will likely see both Mennonite and Amish community members, such as around Loganton in the scenic area up the west branch of the river.

Benjamin Franklin National Memorial

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His large marble statue sits in a marble rotunda at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, a private museum that promotes science, making this an affiliate site. This 20 foot statue was made in the ‘30s by Fraser, sits on an imposing pedestal, in a room modeled after the Pantheon in Rome. There’s an expensive new light display, which accounts for Ben’s odd pallor, and there are some quotes. The memorial is free, as is parking for a short time.

Franklin’s print shop and post office are 2 miles away in Franklin Court—as is the recommended Benjamin Franklin Museum—, which is part of Independence National Historical Park. There’s also an older, well known bronze statue of Franklin at U Penn, which he founded. He also founded the colonies’ first successful public lending library, first public hospital, and first insurance company. Franklin was Governor of Pennsylvania and led the state’s abolitionist society. He helped draft the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and the Constitution. He was an author, printer, inventor, scientist, musician, diplomat and founder, when he wasn’t busy doing other things. We will never see the likes of him again.

“Well done is better than well said.”

—Benjamin Franklin

Heritage Areas in Pennsylvania

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Pennsylvania has eight National Heritage Areas, by far the most of any state, and I have visited them all by EV. Kudos to their politicians, but Pennsylvania does have many unique areas worth visiting.

The Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor includes the National Canal Museum with summer canal boat rides and different trails and bike paths along historic routes for coal and early American industry. The trail runs (with a few gaps) from the Lower Delaware River, through Allentown and will eventually connect with Wilkes Barre on the Susquehanna River.

The Journey Through Hallowed Ground NHA covers Civil War sites across four states, with Gettysburg being the star in Pennsylvania.

Lackawanna Valley NHA’s star is Steamtown above, but the area includes electric trolleys, as well as historic coal, iron and industrial sites.

The Oil Region NHA includes Drakes Well and other sites related to the birth of the modern petroleum industry in the Quaker State.

Fort Necessity and Friendship Hill are both in the Rivers of Steel NHA, but the historic focus is best seen by visiting sites like a blast furnace or a foundry & machine shop that explain how the steel industry began.

Schuylkill River Greenways NHA includes Hopewell Furnace, Independence NHP and Valley Forge NHP, but there are also over 100 miles of river to explore paddling, hiking or driving. (Say SKOO-kil meaning ‘hidden river’; so Schuylkill River is redundant.)

Susquehanna NHA focuses on the river valley and colonial York more-so than the Amish communities of Lancaster County, and there are many beautiful natural places to explore.

The Path of Progress National Heritage Tour Route is currently a bit DIY, but it includes Allegheny Portage, Fallingwater and Johnstown Flood sites along picturesque, winding historic roads.

Oil Region National Heritage Area

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[Apologies for posting this a day behind schedule.] Light sweet crude oil (above) means a thin, low-sulfur, unrefined oil, and at one time the global price was set here in western Pennsylvania, where it was found in 1859 at 70’ in a lucky strike by Edwin Drake. Of course, the Seneca had already discovered the oil where it seeped into Oil Creek, and they had long used it for various purposes, including as Vaseline, but Drake built a well to extract oil as fast as it could be pumped out. His backers already knew of many commercial uses, including replacing whale oil which was used for lamps. The industry helped the Union win the Civil War. Quaker State and Pennzoil were born near here, and John D. Rockefeller was an early customer. Ida Tarbell, daughter of a local independent forced out by the monopoly, went on to write a critical history of Standard Oil.

The hub of the heritage area, the Drake Well Museum has a variety of equipment over 100 years old and many exhibits explaining the different oil products produced by refining at different temperatures and occasional demonstrations of (recycled) oil pumped up by the reconstructed historic well below. If you want to learn the story, you can look up the 1954 Vincent Price movie about “Colonel” Drake on YouTube; it was made by the American Petroleum Institute. With Halloween almost upon us, nothing could be more appropriate than watching a movie about the oil industry starring an actor famous for horror movies.

No matter how cleanly carbon is burned, it is still dangerous, as running a car inside a garage proves. In only 165 years, we extracted and burned millions of years of accumulated oil, and we changed the composition of our atmosphere. Carbon levels have risen at an incredibly fast rate back to where they were about 3 million years ago, ten times as long ago as when human Homo sapiens (wise) evolved. Considering the mass extinctions our carbon burning will cause and our inexcusable refusal to stop, we should probably rename ourselves Homo stultus (foolish).

Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area

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To say the gap is in the Poconos is redundant, because ‘pocono’ means water gap in the Lenape language. The whole area was supposed to be inundated by a flood control project, but that was deemed too expensive. Which is great, because the park service preserves big, beautiful, wooded, hilly land on both the New Jersey and Pennsylvania sides. There are at least seven named waterfalls with trails—above is one of two easily seen on Dingmans Creek Trail—, more hikes including a section of the Appalachian Trail, an exceptional bike trail, many campgrounds, some historic buildings and more. A brown bear crossed the road in front of me, so there’s definitely wildlife here too.

Technically, the 35 of 40 miles of river itself is a separate park, and the gap is the land plus 5 miles of recreational river. If it were up to me, I would combine this with the Upper, Middle and Lower Delaware River parks, and make all four into one National Park. That’s been proposed, but some residents oppose it. Traffic or something. I found it easy to drive around, but crossing the river gets you a toll. If we want to preserve species, we need to start being much more aggressive about preserving our rivers and forests.

Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River

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Inside the Zane Grey museum in Lackawaxen PA, there are a couple of photos Grey took that make me extremely envious. One is him in 1920 sitting under Rainbow Bridge—which is a park site that I honestly can’t figure out how to visit—, and another is of his three masted schooner Fisherman in 1932, on one of his many adventures at sea. Grey introduced the world to the great American West, writing dozens of novels selling millions of copies in several languages along with movie and TV adaptations. I consider myself a bit of a traveler now, but many times I’ve reached a remote place, only to find that Grey beat me there by 100 years, on horseback or by boat. My grandfather and uncle inspired me with their travel stories, and I now have their journals of their trips out west with me to compare notes (thanks Nim!). I also have a decent collection of Zane Grey ebooks, although I read them mostly for the journey descriptions. Zane and his wife loved this place on the Delaware River, and I’m sure he’d have loved to see so many people taking their families out on small boats right off his front porch.

Middle Delaware National Scenic River

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This is the middle of the river, in the middle of the park, in between the upper and lower sections of river, between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Fortunately, it was calm enough that I got a mostly undistorted panorama, but there are a few fun class I rapids on the 10 mile section I paddled from Bushkill Access to Springfield Beach ($10 parking). The river is gorgeous, and I saw at least a half dozen bald eagles. It was surprisingly easy to catch the free hourly summer weekend ‘river runner’ shuttle to bring my kayak upstream. The driver let me bring mine inside folded, but other paddlers I saw put theirs on the canoe/kayak trailer.

The bus is also called the ‘Pocono Pony’, and it’s a lot of fun to chat with other riders. I was bragging about how many parks I had visited, when the guy next to me said he had been to all of them. He’s a riot, and he was on TV for #413. We chatted on the bus & river and compared notes. Well, mostly he chatted. In his old job, I think the conversations were mostly one-sided, since he’s a dentist. I enjoy meeting interesting folks, especially when they’ve got a great sense of humor and can teach me more about our parks.