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.
[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).
President Biden’s parks legacy is now complete, and overall he’s accomplished more than the first term of his predecessor, who approved five small park units, cut Bears Ears & Grand Escalante by over a million acres, and removed 19 US Biospheres from UNESCO. Biden doubled the scenic trails units from three to six, and his parks help protect the history of American Concentration Camps, desegregation in education, the Underground Railroad, and Black History.
Biden has also made many other changes that don’t affect the official total of park units.
Mt Tom in Holyoke Massachusetts is a high point of the trail along the Connecticut River (although there are mountains over ten times higher in Colorado). The trail runs along a high ridge with several lookout towers to watch hawks or catch a glimpse of the river over the trees. The Eyrie House Ruins above are of a view hotel that burned down 123 years ago. As usual, I had forgotten about my childhood visit here, until I reached the ruins and climbed a rusty old tower to see the view below.
The trail is 235 miles from Long Island Sound to the New Hampshire border, through native lands, over rugged mountains, through annually brilliant foliage, past reservoirs, waterfalls and quaint New England villages. Last year, President Biden elevated the trail to a full national park unit, along with North Country and Ice Age National Scenic Trails. Hopefully, this step will encourage more people to hike and explore this lovely area of our country.
We are all on the side of the living. I am as I write this, and you are as you read it. We eat, breathe and have a pulse, and we have a common enemy: death. When we are in nature, we feel an affinity with the living creatures around us. When I was a boy, a large deer jumped out of the brush, stopped on the trail in front and looked, silently assessing me for a few seconds. As I looked into his large brown eyes and listened to his breath, I recognized our shared experience in being alive. We eat, breathe and have a pulse, and we have a common enemy: death.
When we encounter other forms of life, we share a living affinity, and perhaps we curiously wonder about our differences. Lichen also photosynthesizes, respirates and circulates nutrients, and it constantly clings to life and struggles to survive. Even predators and prey are on the same side, ultimately. The prey understands the predator’s hunger, even as they evade it. The predator benefits when their prey thrives and multiplies. Both are trying to live and avoid death. Even a parasite or pathogen fights to stay alive in a living host. Every living thing contains within it a recipe, the ingredients and the drive to cheat death and stay alive, even if only for a brief time.
Recognition that all living things are ultimately on the same side is a revelation, a comfort and an inspiration. We are alive, akin to all living creatures who eat, breathe and have a pulse. We are human—all of us the same species, fundamentally members of the same tribe and all on the same team—, so we must want humanity to succeed. We may be a newer species, but we, like all living creatures, evolved in a diverse natural world. Nature sustains us, and our future is inextricably linked to how well we sustain nature.
And yet, somehow, we have chosen to stay on a path that will lead to mass extinctions. Many of us now fail to feel a part of the living world. A few of us are broken, fearful, violent and incapable of empathy, even with our fellow humans. Some are greedy, and selfishly don’t care that they are causing the natural world to become unbalanced. Many deny the need to change sufficiently to stop excess carbon pollution, irrationally believing we can ‘adapt’ to a climate in continuous, precipitous decline. Too many just give up, not bothering to make an effort, which perpetuates the problem. These unnatural views are myopic, and the path we are on leads only to regrets.
Each of us wants to live in a better world, with more life and less death. We don’t want more droughts, floods, hurricanes or wildfires. Our human conflicts are transitory tragedies, that we should try to resolve as a family, however distant or estranged we may feel. But our conflict with nature is existential, with consequences that will last forever.
Each one of us should reduce our carbon footprint, saving both money and life on earth. My car costs less to operate than any internal combustion car. Even when I charge in a state that still burns some coal for electricity, it still produces less carbon overall. Every switch to renewable electricity further simplifies our global task of replacing the fossil fuel infrastructure. And yet, people still resist making any effort to change, even though delay only makes the future worse.
So what madness has tricked us into extinguishing most life on earth? Were the coral reefs not beautiful when they still brimmed with colorful creatures? What temporary insanity has convinced us that making our only world uninhabitable for most forms of life is somehow desirable for us? Have we forgotten that we are part of the natural world we evolved within, inhabit and that sustains us? Do we no longer recognize the beauty of trees? Are we now cruel to animals?
As living beings, we eat, breathe and have a pulse, and our common enemy is death. Why are we allying ourselves with our common enemy against life on earth? When did we switch sides?
”Our survival is affected as the abundance of life is diminished.”
This new park established by President Biden this August is still a fenced off construction area next to the railroad tracks, but there are several art installations dedicated to the riot, including the dove above and a mural at the Children’s Hospital next door. 11th Avenue along the site is known as Reconciliation Way, to commemorate the terrible events here in 1908.
In mid August 1908, in Springfield Illinois, a white mob of five thousand lynched 2 black men, killed 7 others, burned out millions of dollars worth of black homes and businesses and also targeted Jews and whites deemed sympathetic to the black community. The police did nothing to stop the riot. The burning, looting, ransacking and violence lasted 3 days until put down by the state militia, which resulted in 6 dead rioters.
Church leaders blamed the victims for being “sinful”. Although everyone knew the perpetrators and many were arrested, only one 15 year old was convicted after he confessed to stealing revolvers, shooting at black people and starting 15 fires. The others denied any responsibility, the witnesses denied seeing them, and the charges were dismissed. The judge denied that there was racism in Springfield.
Many Americans were shocked by the scale of the violence in Abraham Lincoln’s home town, and civil rights advocates like W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells helped form the NAACP in 1909 in response. In 1910 speaking before the NYC Republican Club (the party of Lincoln), Du Bois argued that if racial hierarchy were the natural order of the world, then there would be no need to use social and physical weapons to oppress a race.
“So soon as the prejudiced are forced into this inevitable dilemma, then the real bitterness and indefensibility of their attitude is revealed; they say bluntly that they don’t care what [slurs] may be capable of—they do not like them and they propose to keep such folk in a place of permanent inferiority to the white race—by peaceful policy if possible, but brute force if necessary. And when a group, a nation or a world assumes this attitude, it is handling dynamite. There is in this world no force as the force of a man determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.”
Before there was a United States, the Spanish were here first. Over five centuries ago, Spanish explorer Ponce de León arrived in Florida, somewhere near St Augustine. That settlement is older than Plimoth and even older than Jamestowne. Hernando de Soto landed in 1539—at the mouth of Tampa Bay near where Hurricane Milton just landed—, and he led his expedition through what would later become 8 US states. Before the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month ends on October 15th, we should take a moment to reflect on the deep Hispanic roots of America, reflected in the Spanish names of many of our city, county and state names.
Arizona is ‘Arid Zone’
California is named after a 16th century Spanish fictional island
Colorado was named for it’s rich colors
Florida is ‘Flowery’ since de Leon arrived on Easter, 1513
Montana is ‘Mountainous’
Nevada means ‘Snowy’ in Spanish
New Mexico was part of the Spanish Empire’s reach to Alaska and the Great Lakes
Oregon was first recorded in Spanish
Texas comes from Tejas for ‘Friend’, used to describe Native American allies
And Utah derived from how the Spanish referred to the natives there
The Spanish began European exploration of our country, beginning by funding Columbus. One reason there are Spanish place names throughout the US is due to explorers like De Soto, Coronado, and Cabrillo. How many Americans know that St Augustine is our oldest permanent European settlement? We love Historic Route 66, but do we recognize that such Old Spanish Trails were mapped by Spanish colonizers like de Anza and de Oñate? At El Morro, early settlers carved messages in the rock in Spanish. Spanish speaking traders were at the ancient Casa Grande and at the still open Hubbell Trading Post. 100 years before we gained our Independence from the British, the Pueblo Revolt kicked the Spanish out of what’s now the US southwest. We know that Jefferson bought Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803, but do we know that Napoleon got it from Spain in 1800? Our Midwest roots are both French and Spanish. The Presidio in San Francisco was Mexican for decades before the US Army took over.
And yet for some reason, we persist in ignoring our Hispanic Heritage. The Canadian River flows from Colorado, through New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma, and it was mapped by Governor Oñate in 1601. The river’s most remarkable geographic feature is in Texas, where it runs through Palo Duro Canyon, the second largest canyon in the US, described as a cañada in Spanish. And yet for generations, English speakers have tried finding non-Spanish explanations for the river’s name, such as lies that the French trappers didn’t know any Spanish, didn’t trade with the Spanish there and confusedly thought that the river came from Canada. Ridiculous!
While the ignorant falsely view Spanish speakers as only recent immigrants, in much of the country the Spanish speakers were here first, remaining for generations, even as wars and borders changed their lands from Spain or Mexico to the US. Over 40 million Americans speak Spanish at home, as they have for generations. Spanish speakers and their descendants should be rightfully recognized as founding members of our country, as their experiences and lives here predate English speaking settlers, and Spanish speaking citizens have continued contributing to our country, despite prejudice against them.
Unlike the war-shrine Alamo, the San Antonio, Tumacacori and other missions today are dedicated to peace and understanding. Despite some politicians trying to divide us, the Mexican border has long been peaceful, with disputes negotiated at places like Chamizal above in El Paso. César Chávez organized the first permanent agricultural union in the US, to lift up the lives of millions of people. And when Brown v Board of Education ended segregated schools for African Americans, it also ended segregation for Spanish speaking students at places like Blackwell School in Texas.
We should learn about our Hispanic Heritage and our past discrimination—including tragedies of mob violence and mass deportations—, so that we reject hatred and division. We can be a more just, inclusive and a better society.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
The trail is not straight. It meanders through Michigan’s wooded hills, green valleys and along its rivers and lakes. The trail begins along the Niagara Escarpment that separates Green Bay from Lake Michigan, then south below Madison, before crossing the Wisconsin River at Lake Wisconsin. Then it passes up across the bluff on the right with its characteristic rough rock glacial remnants on the steep slope to the north beach of Devil’s Lake above before continuing north to the Wisconsin Dells with iconic eroded rocks. Eventually it crosses the state to end at the St Croix River.
President Biden elevated the trail to a full national park unit, but many of the most scenic sections are in state parks or affiliated scientific reserves. Wisconsin Dells itself is quite commercialized, with water parks and pricey tours, even though the layered rock can be seen in several different places along the Wisconsin River. State parks like above or Mirror Lake have fine scenery, camping and miles of maintained trails. I tend to rush around and then spend too much time at supper clubs, but it’s worth slowing down a bit here to enjoy the natural beauty. For more, read my earlier post about the Ice Age Trails.
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