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Welcome new members Dave and Linda Friant and new business member Staiman Recycling! We're pleased to have your support.
Thanks to our vendors, volunteers and attendees and magician Richard Benninghoff for a wonderful experience at last week's Wine in The Wilds. The LHU field Hockey team did a great job setting up and taking down and storing all the tables, emptying the trash and sweeping the floor.
We are especially grateful for our sponsors for helping us make it all possible: Ambassador Home Improvements, Adventure Realty, Fraternal Order of Eagles, Aerie #4298, First Citizens Community Bank, Journey Bank, Lea Ann Plessinger, CPA, LLC, Sons & Daughters of Italy, Loggia Giosue Carducci Lodge #146, Woodlands Bank, SWC Realty, Kliney's Home Furnishings, It Is What It Is, The Bus Stops Here.
Our two cabooses are open for overnight reservations! Here's the link! https://www.clintonpahistory.org/castanea-rail-road-station.html.
Situated at the Bald Eagle Valley Rail Trail in Castanea, it's a convenient and unique spot for everything in Clinton County! The Rail-trail continues to be developed and will connect with the renowned Pine Creek Trail!
FROM THE COLLECTION
By Kathy Arndt (researcher extraordinaire)
A 1906-1907 city directory listed 21 hotels in Lock Haven. If a person stood on the corner of Jay and East Church streets in the late 1800s and early 1900s, there were, at various times, 11 hotels within a two block radius.
The Clearfield House, built in 1879, located on Jay Street where Domino's Pizza now stands. During the major 1889 flood, members of the local Germania Orchestra performed a concert for nearby residents from the porch roof of the hotel. The U.S. government later used both the Clearfield House and the Hotel Russell (the former Keller Hotel) on Grove Street to house women working for the war efforts in local industries during WWII. Both the Clearfield Hotel and the East Main Street Irvin House, built in 1838 by John Moorhead who hoped that it would become the next Clinton County Courthouse, were razed in February 1973.
Many of the hotels such as The Fallon, the Irvin and the Central Hotel had stables and sometimes blacksmiths for the horses of their guests or the horses that the hotel proprietors kept to transport their guests to and from the two local passenger railroad depots. The stables behind the Eagle Hotel on East Bald Eagle Street served as a refuge during the minor 1911 flood for the horses and cows owned by some of the residents of First Ward. Four stables in Mary's Alley, including the one owned by the Eagle Hotel, burned a few years later.
In addition to stables, several of the local hotels had other guest services including reading rooms, bars, restaurants, barber shops and the occasional billiard table. The Central Hotel was on the south west corner of East Main and Grove streets where the Masonic Temple has been located since 1923. Built by Dr. Lichtenthaler as his personal residence, the Simon Brothers who owned a large general store just a few doors west of the doctor's home bought the building and converted it into a hotel. In 1913, the Central Hotel's restaurant, then run by Justin Wheat, featured a Sunday dinner that included chicken noodle soup, roast beef, stewed chicken and waffles, French creamed peas, French asparagus tips on toast, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, celery, coffee, tea, milk and a choice of chocolate, mince, or apple pie. The cost was 25 cents.
Besides the Eagle Hotel there are still two of the early hotel buildings still standing. The Old Corner bar on the north west corner of East Church and Grove streets was one of two Beck Hotels in Lock Haven. The other, now gone, was on East Clinton Street between Henderson and Washington Streets near the P.R.R. passenger depot. That Beck Hotel was later renamed The Venetian Gardens, an unlikely name for a hotel on the Barbary Coast. The Lindsay Place on the south east corner of Jay and East Water streets was known as the Hotel Riverside which was located on the first plot sold by Jerry Church in 1834.
As you can see, things have changed in Lock Haven over the years. We no longer have dozens of hotels in the city, nor cows and horses in the First Ward, and not a single restaurant serving meals for 25 cents. History is still being made here every day. Keep on learning.
New to the Collection: we received many items from Cindy Bryan, and some are on display in the Poorman Gallery including a BEN band badge from 1979, a number of books on early Pennsylvania and its natives, two history books by Henry Shoemaker, and a 1965 calendar from Kyle's Dairy. We have quite a number of Kyle's milk bottles on display at the Barton Street School.