Pennsylvania Historic Preservation

Blog of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office

Get to Know the State Library!

Last year, PA SHPO staff had the opportunity to visit the State Library here in Harrisburg and learn more about their work and research collections. The Forum Building – built in 1931 and now home to the State Library – had just reopened after a long renovation project.

I asked Kathy Hale, Supervisor for Public Services & Government Documents Librarian if she’d be willing to share the treasures that are the Pennsylvania State Library collections with our readers.

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Untold Stories of PA’s State Parks and Forests at Laurel Hill

Two Black men, Edenborough Smith and John Harshberger appear in the 1850 census on tracts of land now situated in Laurel Ridge State Park overlooking Johnstown’s West End. From at least the 1820s, and possibly as early as the turn of the 19th century, Smith, Harshberger and their families lived in a community of Black, White, and Indigenous people that has been referred to as the Laurel Hill Settlement, Brown Farm and “the Mountain.” Eight generations lived on the Mountain until the property was claimed by the state in 1967.

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