Blog of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office

Month: May 2013

National Transportation Week: A Road to the Past

On Saturday, April 27, 2013, I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at a unique dedication ceremony at Fort Halifax Park in Halifax Township, Dauphin County, just north of the Borough of Halifax.  The ceremony was to dedicate numerous London Plane Sycamores recently planted to, if you’re feeling poetic, fix what time has wrought.  You see, these trees were planted to replace missing Sycamores in the National Register of Historic Places-listed Legislative Route 1 Sycamore Allee (see the nomination on CRGIS for more information and for references). Continue reading

Spotlight Series: The Ashland Mother’s Memorial

The Spotlight Series is an occassional series that highlights interesting people, places, programs, and partner organizations working on historic preservation issues.

Erected in 1938, the Mother’s Memorial is situated prominently in the town of Ashland, PA, in the anthracite coal region of Schuylkill County.  The Ashland Boys’ Association (A.B.A.), an organization of men and boys born in Ashland, raised the funds for the fabrication and erection of this monument in 1938.  Continue reading

The Potential of Cultural Landscapes

Peirce Lewis, an American geographer and emeritus professor at the Pennsylvania State University, may have best described the concept of cultural landscapes; “The human landscape is our unwitting autobiography, reflecting our tastes, our values, our aspirations, and even our fears in tangible, visible form.”  Land shows both individual and collective beliefs in a physical manifestation.  Most of us can physically see what we do to our land.  However, stories associated with the “how” and the “why” we do these things are part of the cultural landscape because they support associated trends, events, and individuals.  This is important to state, and restate, because we forget about the depth of information caught-up in the unseen value system that drives the building of communities and use of resources. Continue reading

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