Last Friday, Northern Lehigh Future Focus (NLFF) and the Borough of Slatington held two press conferences—one to unveil five interpretive panels along the Slate Heritage Trail and a second to dedicate two kiosks at the Slatington Trailhead of the D&L Trail. All of the signs had been produced in partnership with the D&L, who paid half the cost of the signs with a DCNR grant and offered technical support for writing and designing the signs.  The Slatington signage joins over 500 signs produced by the  D&L through our Visually Speaking signage program.

Robert Stettner of Northern Lehigh Future Focus dedicates the new signage.

The five interpretive signs along the Slate Heritage Trail had been in the works for a few years. Nick Sander, then a Kutztown history major, and Dave Altrichter, a local historian, did most of the preliminary research and writing of the text a couple of years ago but nothing more was done with the materials, and the signs were put on hold. Within the last year, NLFF, a local community group, spearheaded the effort to see them through to completion. As a result, Marilyn and Buddy Kaul, with whom the D&L has worked on signage related to the Walnutport Canal, began supplying historical images and text ideas to Amey Senape—our historic resource specialist. Amey helped compile the materials, rework the text to fit word limits and layout requirements, and usher the signs through the production process. Friday’s unveiling, therefore, was the culmination of a long process that involved the D&L, NLFF, the Northern Lehigh Historical Society, and the Borough of Slatington. The result is an attractive series of signs that interpret Slatington’s rich community and industrial history.

Nick Sander unveils one of the interpretive signs he helped author.

The kiosks at the trailhead had followed a more typical path between conception and completion. Two of the panels—Exploring the Corridor and From Rails to Trails—came from the D&L and explain the basics of the D&L and the process of converting old rail beds to trails. The third panel was designed by Northern Lehigh Future Focus and features a detailed regional map that shows trail connections and former railroad lines. The larger kiosk also includes a bulletin case for trail and community information. These two kiosks are only the latest edition to a popular trailhead. Located at the intersection of the Slate Heritage and D&L trails, the trailhead is within walking or riding distance of most Slatington and Walnutport residents. When the trail section between Slatington and Laurys Station is completed by Lehigh County and the D&L, the Slatington Trailhead will serve as a prime spot for launching long distance hikes and bikes to the north and south.

Silas Chamberlin, Gary Fedorcha, and Dale Freudenberger pose in front of one of the new kiosks.

As part of my remarks at the press conferences, I noted that Slatington is a model for how a community can embrace trails to improve the lives of residents and attract visitors. With two multi-use trails in town, the Appalachian Trail a mile or so to the north, Lehigh Gap Nature Center’s nearby footpaths, and the Walnutport section of the D&L Trail across the river, Slatington is becoming a regional destination for people who want high-quality trail experiences.  Now the trail experiences of residents and visitors alike will be enriched by the new signage.

Interested in signage for your site?  Visit the signage section of the website, and contact us for more information.

Written By Silas Chamberlin

Patrick Brown’s new book Industrial Pioneers: Scranton, Pennsylvania and the Transformation of America, 1840-1902 is a much-needed study of a city that played a disproportionately formative role in nineteenth-century American industrial history. Scranton was at the center of iron rail production, anthracite coal mining, and steelmaking, and, at a time when electricity was a fantastic novelty, the pragmatic city began operating the first electric street car system in the nation. “Scranton was,” argues Brown, “the Silicon Valley of the nineteenth century (p.2).” Because Scranton was on the cutting edge of industrial innovation, it was also forced to deal with many modern problems, such as immigration, labor strife, and the myriad evils of rapid population growth. As Scranton struggled to come to terms with what it meant to be an industrial city, the nation watched and learned.  This book chronicles the many changes to Scranton’s people, industries, and landscape, providing interesting quotations and well-chosen historic photos along the way.

Patrick Brown is the author of a new industrial history of Scranton.

As an undergraduate at Georgetown University, Brown studied under Joseph McCartin, the well-known historian of the industrial democracy movement. McCartin’s influence is clear in the pages of Industrial Pioneers, the majority of which Brown wrote as a senior history thesis. In a sense, Brown frames his narrative as a declension from the independent village blacksmith and egalitarian society of the 1840s to the alienated and—despite the mixed successes of labor organizers—ethnically divided industrial workers of the late nineteenth century, who lived in a city disrupted by a transient population, capital mobility, and chaotic national markets. Within this generalized framework, however, Brown does justice to the many exceptions to the decline and presents a realistic vision of a city that has continuously “reinvented” itself. Perhaps this fair treatment of the period is why Brown was awarded Georgetown’s prestigious Morris Medal for the work.

Brown makes the interesting observation that Scranton continues to be a bellwether for the nation’s political climate—simply witness the attention focused on the city during the 2008 Presidential season. Just as Scranton was among the leaders of industrial innovation for much of the nineteenth century, it has become synonymous with deindustrialization in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Now, as Scranton struggles to reinvent itself once more, the work of Brown and other historians is more necessary than ever, so the mistakes of the past are not repeated.

I recently had the opportunity to ask Patrick Brown a few questions about his new book:

Silas Chamberlin: Is it easier or more difficult to write the history of the place where you live?

Patrick Brown: While I currently live in Mississippi, I was born in Scranton. My father’s side of the family comes from Scranton, and my roots in the city make Scranton’s rise even more interesting. Writing this book helped me to understand where I come from—I even stumbled on some family history in my research. My ancestor, John Reedy, was elected vice-president of a meeting held in 1877 to protest the conviction of the Irish Democratic Party leader, Frank Beamish (whom a political opponent labeled as, “a smaller edition of New York’s Boss Tweed”).

Silas: Does Scranton have a lot of good archival sources? If so, which sites did you visit? Did you need to go elsewhere for your material?

Patrick: I was extremely fortunate to have access to the Lackawanna Historical Society and the Albright Memorial Library in Scranton, both of which provided me with invaluable resources about the early history of the city. The Terence Powderly collection at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. also proved amazingly helpful. I benefited greatly from the fact that I conducted my research in 2009, because older histories of Scranton (Hitchcock, Throop, Logan and others) are now available for free through Google Books, and as a result are full-text searchable.

Silas: What was the most surprising thing you discovered in the course of your research?

Patrick: Before I began my research, I knew that Scranton housed many immigrant communities in the nineteenth century. I was shocked, however, by the extent to which foreign-born workers defined the city in its early years. The Hyde Park section of the city was a “mini-Wales” in which “Welsh postmen walked along Welsh-named streets to deliver letters from Wales to Welsh homes,” and ethnic tensions between Welsh, Irish, German, and British immigrants ran high. By 1854, fourteen years after the Scranton family arrived in the city and began producing iron, only 27 percent of Scranton’s residents were native-born Americans. The process of researching this book has put today’s immigration debate in perspective, and convinced me that America is a nation that constantly reinvents itself. It would be difficult for a thoughtful reader to get through “Industrial Pioneers” without constantly reflecting on the links between America’s transformation in the nineteenth century and the challenges we currently face in a rapidly-changing world.

Silas: You are now employed by Teach for America. Has a degree in history or your research on Scranton given you a unique perspective on difficult social issues or on American society in general?

Patrick: I teach 10th to 12th grade social studies at Greenville-Weston High School in the Mississippi Delta. The parallels between Scranton and the Delta are remarkable: both face the loss of manufacturing jobs and struggle to retain talented young people, and both have residents who retain an intense sense of place and care deeply about their communities. While Scranton’s industrial history shaped America in the nineteenth century, the civil rights struggles in the Delta shaped America in the twentieth century. I find that my understanding of Scranton’s complex social history has helped me begin to understand the equally complex history of the Mississippi Delta. More broadly, researching Scranton served to crystallize the basic idea that I try to communicate to my students: history tends to draw on itself, and that those who understand the past will define our world.

Silas: Finally, do you have any plans for future research?

Patrick: The history of the education system in the Mississippi Delta fascinates me, and Americans outside the Delta know very little about this part of the country. Stay tuned.

Notes:

• The quote in question 1 is from page 493 of Frederick Hitchcock’s History of Scranton and its People.
• The quote in question 3 is from page 27 of William Jones’s Wales in America: Scranton and the Welsh, 1860-1920.

Patrick Brown’s Industrial Pioneers is available for purchase from Tribute Books.

For a week in late July, 350 cyclists from across the nation made their way through eastern Pennsylvania as part of the 2010 Greenway Sojourn, sponsored by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC).  During the sojourn, which has grown into a very large and popular event, cyclists pedal dozens of miles each day and enjoy meals and activities provided by the RTC with the help of local organizations. Sojourners typically camp at predetermined sites along the way, but they do enjoy some nifty conveniences—like a set of portable showers on the back of a flatbed truck!

Sojourners camp outside Allentown's American on Wheels

Starting out from Philadelphia, this year’s group pedaled along the Perkiomen Rail-Trail and Schuylkill River Trail for three days. Arriving just north of Reading, they piled into buses for a short trip to the northern reaches of the Corridor at White Haven, Carbon County. From White Haven, the cyclists followed the long stretch of D&L Trail through Lehigh Gorge State Park. At the end of the park, they used the new Carbon County trail section to access Historic Jim Thorpe via the Nesquehoning Trestle.

The 2010 Greenway Sojourn passed through 250 miles of PA's finest land.

After spending a day in Mauch Chunk Lake and the museums and restaurants of Jim Thorpe, the cyclists-come-swabs took to the low but pleasant waters of the Lehigh River for a rafting trip. They spent the night camping inside and around Allentown’s America on Wheels, where–in addition to the regular museum exhibits–they were regaled with photos of D&L Trail projects, an eclectic bicycle display, and the music of folk singer Jay Smar.

In Easton, DCNR Secretary John Quigley helps rededicate the Delaware Canal.

The next morning, the sojourners followed the canal towpath between Allentown and Easton, where they participated in the long-anticipated rededication and reopening of the Delaware Canal. DCNR Secretary John Quigley was on hand to celebrate the completion of extensive flood repairs and watch as water from the Lehigh River once again filled the canal. After grabbing some ice water and baggies of the D&L’s famous trail mix, they continued down to the towpath. After biking 50 miles that day, they camped on Bull’s Island in New Jersey’s Delaware & Raritan Canal Park. Sticking on the east bank of the river for the final leg of their journey, the sojourners headed for Trenton, where they hopped a short train ride back to their starting point near Philadelphia. In all, they traveled 250 miles of rail trails, towpaths, and roads.

Sojourners pass on the towpath, as kayakers embark on the rewatered canal.

D&L staff helped with various aspects of the sojourn, from laying out the route to sponsoring water breaks to providing entertainment at evening camps. It was a great experience for all of us who were involved. More importantly, the work of the RTC brought 350 cyclists to the D&L Trail and allowed them to experience the natural and historic resources that make the Corridor such great place. We hope they enjoyed their stay!