Tour Through Time: Made in Carlisle Week showcased local industry in 1947

A Carlisle Tire and Rubber employee mans the company display during Made in Carlisle week in August 1947.

There was no need to fret if you were in Carlisle the week of Aug. 11, 1947.

You were just a hop, skip and a jump away from the 3,540-pound frog on display at the Gulf station at High and Pitt streets in the downtown.

Reinforced by manganese inserts, this railroad device got its name because the four ends of its two crossed rails resembled the legs of a frog, The Sentinel reported.

The device was the main feature of a display of products manufactured by Frog, Switch & Manufacturing Co. – one of 44 employers that participated in “Made in Carlisle Week.”

A project of the Retail Merchants Bureau of the Carlisle Chamber of Commerce, the event was an opportunity for local companies to showcase the diversity of their manufactured products.

The bureau enlisted the help of local merchants to host displays of goods made not only in Carlisle, but in nearby Mount Holly Springs.

The newspaper did its part by publishing a series of short stories detailing the background of each manufacturer – their address, number of employees, product lines, history, etc.

“Getting acquainted should be an easy process, requiring no more than a leisurely stroll through the downtown section,” The Sentinel reported in a preview story that ran on Aug. 9. Each exhibit site had a sticker in the window.

Carlisle Tire and Rubber Co. had inner tubes on display at the Smith Music House on High Street. A few blocks away, at Bixler’s Hardware Store, there were toys, novelties and furniture made in the wood shop of A.L. Schaller, 84, a retired machinist. Self-employed as his own boss, Schaller was the oldest worker representing the smallest company to participate in “Made in Carlisle Week.”

By contrast, the Carlisle Shoe Company was the second largest company in town at that time. It employed about 750 workers in the manufacture of high-end footwear including examples of the Mademoiselle line on exhibit at the Montgomery Ward store on North Hanover Street.

One of the newest companies in town was M&Z Quality Shop which made upholstered kitchen nooks, tables and chairs. Its display at the J.C. Penny store on North Hanover Street included a cross-section of a seat showing the different layers of internal construction of wood, burlap, rubberized hair and cotton.

Meanwhile, the Carlisle Baking Co. had something to celebrate. The newspaper led off its profile with word of a new oven being installed at its plant at Pitt and South streets.

The bakery made over 40 products under the brand name of Molly Pitcher that was distributed to retailers in Cumberland, Perry and York counties. Its display was at Dutrey’s Shoes on North Hanover Street.

Tour through Time runs Saturday in The Sentinel print edition. Reporter Joseph Cress will work with the Cumberland County Historical Society each week to look at the county through the years. Send any questions, feature ideas or tips to [email protected].

Children participate in the Peanut Carnival during Summerfair in 1978.

Inflation and high gas prices fueled enough discontent to kick-start the beginnings of the Summerfair tradition back in late June 1977.

Wayne Powell was the publisher-editor of The Sentinel newspaper, which took the lead in organizing the multiday event built around the Fourth of July. Then as now, the goal was to provide local families with an option to traveling elsewhere for holiday fun.

Powell saw how local residents had rallied the year before for events that supported the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence. His hope was that excitement could build and carryover into subsequent years, but the spark from the Spirit of ’76 fizzled out.

“We couldn’t allow Carlisle residents to become apathetic, uninvolved or disinterested as were the people in most other communities throughout the country,” Powell said in an editorial published June 26, 1978. “The time had come … to return something to Carlisle.”

For him, the first step was to invite community leaders to a conference to discuss the feasibility of a summer festival. Those in attendance included David Stetson, executive director of the Carlisle Chamber of Commerce; David Swartz, former superintendent of Carlisle Area School District; and Susan McCallister, former secretary of the Cumberland County tourism bureau.

Powell introduced the concept as a return to the old-fashioned July 4 festival complete with a community picnic, a parade and band concerts leading up to the traditional fireworks display. A steering committee was formed in August 1977 to organize events, start subcommittees and recruit volunteers and community support.

“If we can secure involvement now in the early stages of the planning, we can have one of the best July Fourth celebrations the area has ever known,” Powell said. “Fortunately, we have many people in our community who have experience at organizing a project of this nature. We will need their expertise to make the summer festival a success.”

There were naysayers convinced a multiday event was not feasible. They were skeptical that enough support existed to organize a wide range of activities spread out over different venues. “But eternal optimism is both a strength and weakness of mine, so we prodded ahead for the full five days,” Powell wrote in the June 1978 editorial.

Hours of planning and preparation culminated in a stay-at-home celebration that ran from June 30 through July 4, 1978.

That first Summerfair premiered a schedule of activities that have become tradition over the years such as the ice cream social, a craft fair, a community picnic, a fishing derby at LeTort Park and a performance by the Carlisle Town Band. There have been such staples as the Peanut Carnival where children use peanuts to play games and “Anything Floats” where local teams of residents build homemade watercraft to compete in races.

But that first Summerfair also had a flair for ingenuity in two stage performances of an original pageant titled a “Summer Fair-y Tale.” The pageant took a light-hearted look at the history of Carlisle by using popular show tunes. Organized into scenes, the production included barmaids singing “Belly Up to the Bar, Boys” in the Eagle and Harpe Tavern and a chorus of townspeople singing “Who Will Buys?” in the Old Market House on the Square.

There was an “Anything Goes” competition that featured 10 fire and ambulance companies in events that tested their agility and strength. Plus, there was a “Feudin’ Fiddles” competition where each fiddler played two to three tunes in 10 minutes during the qualifying round. Judges then selected finalists for the second round of competition.

This photo of the Whip Ride at Willow Mill Park dates from the 1950s.

The Department of Prenatal Care provided a beautiful setting for mothers-to-be to have their babies.

At least, that’s how the brochure described the rustic retreat along the Conodoguinet Creek just north of the present-day Carlisle Pike off Route 114 in Silver Spring Township.

What started as a mill complex and industrial hub has morphed over the past two centuries into a spiritual resort, an amusement park and a venue for passive recreation.

Much of the history of Willow Mill Park is detailed in the 2015 book “Water-Powered Mills of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania,” published by the Cumberland County Historical Society.

First owned by John Walker, the creek side property was passed down to business partners Thomas Fisher and Jacob Haldeman in 1809. They owned it together until 1815 when Haldeman died. Fisher then continued to run the operation until 1835 when it passed to George Bucher who kept it up until 1880. At one point, the mill complex had machinery to grind wheat into flour, saw logs into timber, press seeds into oil and crush limestone into powder for plaster.

In 1880, James Saxton Huston purchased the operation that burned to the ground in 1881. That fire forced Huston to build a second mill, which burned down in 1885 with an even greater loss, according to the Mill book. Determined, Huston built the mill that exists today and the property stayed in the family until the death of his daughter-in-law Annie W. Huston in the late 1920s.

After the Huston family, Willow Mill passed to Raymond DeWalt in 1928. Having developed a line of power tools, DeWalt was familiar with manufacturing and savvy enough to realize the days of the water-powered mill as an industry driver were numbered.

DeWalt and his family capitalized on the mill’s natural and historic setting to develop a pastoral retreat promoting simple country life. He maintained the mill as a curiosity using its machinery to supply electricity to an adjoining inn and to grind corn meal that was served to guests. His clientele was a departure from the mainstream for the early 20th century.

“A special brochure was developed to attract members of a Rosicrucian group called the ‘Architects of Human Development’ who felt that Willow Mill Farm was an appropriate site for the study of ‘occult laws’ driving from ‘Lemuria, Atlantis [and] the halls of ancient, mystic Egypt,’” according to the Mill Book. The brochure mentioned such features as the Department of Prenatal Care, a Girl’s Camp and opportunities for group members to pursue metaphysics and the Secret Schools.

During the 1920s, the property was the setting of the Miss Pennsylvania Pageant and served as a popular spot for swimming and roller skating. Gradually, Willow Mill developed into an amusement park complete with bumper cars, a giant slide, a carousel, a miniature golf course and kiddie versions of cars, fire engines and airplanes.

In June 2004, The Sentinel published an article about the roller coaster that operated for decades at Willow Mill. Described as tame by modern standards, the Blue Streak wasn’t very high but stood out as the park’s feature ride, according to Richard Hupper, who worked at the park during and after his high school years from 1954 until the early 1960s.

“It was a fun ride,” he said. “The cars were all painted blue. It had black handrails you held onto in the front. It was tricky because when it got back [to the station] the operator had to apply the brake to it.”

Any miscalculation in the amount of tension could result in the train stopping short or overshooting the platform. The brake would lift the train off the track.

Hupper remembered how the park offered nickel days after September where the rides, hot dogs and popsicles all cost five cents.

The Blue Streak was severely damaged by Hurricane Agnes in 1972. The owners rebuilt the coaster, brought in red trains from Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters and renamed the ride the “Red Streaker.”

In 2004, Ray Ueberroth was an archivist with American Coaster Enthusiasts. He described the Red Streaker as a family coaster with a track shaped like a flattened oval with a lot of dips. The largest drop measured about 35 feet tall.

The coaster’s train included two cars with four benches per car, a rare sight in contemporary parks. Another feature was the little train that went under the Red Streaker.

Floodwater from Agnes destroyed 80% of the amusement park including the carousal. Though the owners rebuilt and reopened the park for the 1973, it closed in the late 1980s due to declining attendance and the rising cost of liability insurance. Silver Spring Township purchased the land in early 1995 and has since converted it into a public park. As for the Red Streaker, it was dismantled between September and December 1994 and placed into storage.

Pictured is a street scene at the intersection of Main and Market streets in Mechanicsburg, showing a crowd at Jubilee Day around 1955. A banner reading Jubilee Day June 12 hangs across the street.

The mime was an easy target for children out for a laugh.

Dressed as a house painter, the street performer had to stand absolutely still in front of a hardware store.

“All the kids in town heckled him to try to make him smile,” said Richard Snelbaker, a lifelong Mechanicsburg area resident.

“My own kids would meet me there,” he said. “I could turn them loose and they did not get into trouble. I don’t know how many goldfish we won throwing pingpong balls.”

Jubilee Day has developed into such a tradition that former Mechanicsburg residents from across the country schedule vacation time around the one-day street fair. High school reunions are organized in conjunction with the annual event that can trace its history to 1923.

That year, a group of local businessmen attended a townwide celebration in Gettysburg. They were so impressed by what they saw they decided Mechanicsburg needed a fair.

They formed a committee to organize an event to thank customers for their patronage. Originally known as the Farmers and Merchants Jubilee Day, the first one was held on May 10, 1924.

Eventually, the date shifted to late June. By then, school was out and farmers were in the midst of a traditional lull in their springtime workload.

The first two years, Jubilee Day was confined to Main Street from Market to Frederick. That changed in 1926 when the Automobile Dealers and Merchants Association, principal sponsors of the event, expanded the exhibit area from High to Arch streets on Main Street and from the railroad crossing south to Locust Street on Market Street.

Association leaders decided it was time to create a permanent year-round organization to run Jubilee Day. Thus was born on Oct. 10, 1927, the Mechanicsburg Area Chamber of Commerce.

The early years of Jubilee Day celebrated this tie to agriculture with livestock and farm equipment displays and the judging of chicken, butter, eggs, corn and cattle. This connection to farming gradually faded over the decades as commercial development came into the outlying townships.

The chamber continued to hold judging of the Cumberland County 4-H livestock divisions until 1973. Over time, Jubilee Day has played host to flower shows, wildlife displays, industrial exhibits, craft demonstrations, baby parades, bicycle races and annual contests for honorary Jubilee Day Queen.

By the mid-30s, the chamber shortened the name to just Jubilee Day and settled on always holding the event on a Thursday. It had been a tradition for Mechanicsburg businesses to close early on a Thursday afternoon as a way of giving their employees time off to compensate for having to work late on Saturday evenings.

The traditional June date was only changed twice. In 1928 it was moved to August so the celebration could coincide with the borough’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of incorporation. Almost 50 years later, Jubilee Day was held on July 1 to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial.

There have only been two periods in its almost 100-year history where Jubilee Day was not held. The first was from 1940 to 1945 because of World War II and the need to ration fuel. The second was in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Jubilee Day has been held rain or shine except for 1955 when the event was totally rained out.

The launch platform for the motor boat Bellaire on the Conodoguinet Creek, circa 1900.

Hiawatha had a knack for making waves pleasing to Bellaire Park visitors.

The speed boat was tied to the shore so that its powerful motor could stir the waters of the Conodoguinet Creek.

The opportunity for bathing was a unique feature of this resort located a mile and a half upstream from Cave Hill Park, a wooded area at the end of West Street extended in Carlisle.

In a February 1989 article, The Sentinel quoted excerpts taken from the Official Souvenir Book of the Cumberland Centennial Celebration and Old Home Week.

The excerpts said generations of Carlisle area residents were accustomed to having picnics at Cave Hill, a patch of wilderness that included a draw based on a shady chapter in local history.

Legend has it that Lewis the Robber once took shelter in Cave Hill and buried treasure in a chamber called the Devil’s Dining Room. In the 1890s, a regular trolley service dropped off passengers every half hour.

In 1908, this scenic spot was developed into a staging area for boat rides up the creek to Bellaire Park. The souvenir book touted the benefits of a visit.

“Instead of the rough and steep hill your fathers had to scramble down to reach the creek, a walk … has been built to the water’s edge, where a beautiful terraced lawn and substantial water front … have been constructed together with a dock for the Bellaire Park boats,” an excerpt reads.

The book describes Bellaire Park as “second to none as an ideal place for a pleasure ground.” The resort had seats, swings, a restaurant, a brick fireplace and a dance pavilion on a hill overlooking the creek. But bathing in the Conodoguinet made it different from other parks in the area.

“An up-to-date bath house and sand beach have been installed, together with spring board, diving tower, chute and other appliances to afford amusement to the bathers,” the excerpt reads.

On March 11, 1908, The Sentinel published an article that said planned upgrades to Cave Hill included the construction of a modern trolley station and a waiting room at the boat landing.

Three motor launches were purchased to shuttle passengers from Cave Hill to Bellaire Park and then back again. The boats were named Bellaire, Hiawatha and Louise.

Not every outcome was a happy one. On July 15, 1911, the motor launch Bellaire collided with a rowboat near the entrance to Pike Pond. John Graham, 41, of Carlisle, was knocked into the water with his 7-year-old son Charlie. Though the child was saved by a Bellaire passenger, the father drowned.

On July 28, 1933, The Sentinel reported that motor launch service from Cave Hill to Bellaire Park ended between 1925 and 1927 due to the advent of the automobile.

In 1963, The Sentinel reported that the local Kiwanis Club purchased Cave Hill for the purpose of turning it over to the borough for development of what is today a park and nature preserve.

Cave Hill is listed as a take-out only access point to the creek because of its location just upstream from the Carlisle Raw Water Intake Dam. For more information, visit www.cavehillcarlisle.org.

A couple enjoy a boating trip back when the present-day Children's Lake was the site of the Boiling Springs trolley park.

Wanted: Only those of good moral character. ... The best of order must be maintained.

The owners of the Boiling Springs trolley park had latitude to be picky about their clientele.

Their dance pavilion was not only a popular destination for the younger crowd it was a marvel to behold.

In Feb. 1989, The Sentinel interviewed local historian George Diffenderfer for a special section of feature stories detailing early 20th century living.

Diffenderfer was 83 at the time and remembered how public dances were held in Boiling Springs every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at the pavilion.

The structure had a dance floor that extended over a portion of the present-day Children’s Lake along with a stage that hung from the ceiling to allow more room.

The book “Historic South Middleton” said the pavilion was lit with over 200 electric lights. A tree-lined Lovers Lane led away from the building, across a bridge and down to the Pumping House at the lower end of the spring-fed lake.

“The opening dance at Boiling Springs under the auspices of the Germania Orchestra will be held this Thursday evening, June 7,” The Sentinel reported on June 6, 1900. “We again take pleasure in announcing that no one without a good character will be allowed on the [dance] floor.”

A ticket was 13 cents for the roundtrip trolley ride from the Square in Carlisle. The price per couple was 25 cents, good for any time after 5 p.m. the evening of the dance.

The Cumberland County Historical Society opened a two-floor exhibit displaying photos, artifacts and uniforms from the early history of sports in Cumberland County to the present Friday evening.

Even those who didn’t dance were welcome. “Quite a few benches have been taken out and placed on that beautiful lawn where you can sit and enjoy the music,” The Sentinel reported.

In the early 20th century, dance steps like the Bunny Hug, the Turkey Trot, the Grizzly Bear, the Fish Walk and the Maxie were all the rage. It was a time when dancing was looked upon by many religious leaders as wicked and sinful.

The history of Boiling Springs revolves around its water resources, according to the Gardner Digital Library, an online resource maintained by the Cumberland County Historical Society.

In the 1750s, 20 springs were dammed up to create a seven-acre lake that produced water power for what became the Carlisle Ironworks operated by Michael Ege.

Much later in its history, Boiling Springs grew into a commercial center for the surrounding area. A trolley line was extended to the village in 1895 and a trolley park operated from 1905 to 1930. This park brought thousands of visitors to the east side of the lake for recreation.

A search on newspapers.com turned up some interesting tidbits on visitors to the park:

On Aug. 14, 1912, The Sentinel ran a classified ad for the upcoming Farmers Industrial Picnic in which park superintendent H.B. Markley said Professor H.A. Surface of Harrisburg would give a short lecture on “The Best and Cheapest Way to Maintain Soil Fertility.” Later, the Honorable W.F. Creasey “will be on hand with a spicy talk for the farmer,” Markley said.

The annual Granger picnic in Williams Grove served as a political forum for such women’s issues as suffrage and temperance. Pictured are some Carlisle-area women gathered in front of their clubhouse during the picnic.

Health officials nowadays would have a conniption over a fond memory of the Great Grangers’ Picnic Exhibition at William Grove in what is now Monroe Township.

The childhood experiences of Rolla F. Lehman Sr. were the focus of an August 1968 article by Martie Kunkel that was published in the Carlisle Shoppers’ Guide.

“It was quite the gathering place,” Lehman said. “Most of the time you had to line up to get a drink. There was a bunch of tin dippers hanging from chains. When your turn came, you’d just grab the dipper.”

A Dillsburg man who grew up on a farm near Oakville, Cumberland County, Lehman started attending the annual picnic in 1908. One of his regular stops was a pagoda-like structure that sheltered a spring with cold refreshing water.

Four hurricanes are marking big anniversaries this year. AccuWeather meteorologists reflect on how Agnes, Andrew, Sandy and Harvey changed the forecasting landscape.

Lehman said everyone present drew water from the same tub. Once their thirst was slackened, they poured back what was left. There were even some people who wiped off the rim of the dipper with their shirt sleeve.

“A funny thing though we didn’t seem to catch any more viruses, bugs, than we do now. Not so many really,” Lehman said.

In its heyday, the weeklong agricultural festival drew upward of 100,000 guests from more than 30 states to Williams Grove in Monroe Township mostly by way of the railroad or horse and buggy.

The exciting part for Lehman was being on a passenger car jammed with people inbound to the festival that operated from 1874 to 1916.

The origins of this summertime destination go back to 1873 when the Cumberland Valley Railroad leased a 28-acre grove of trees along the Yellow Breeches Creek from the Williams family, according to Warren Gates, a Dickinson College professor who wrote a paper on the Grangers picnic for a 1983 symposium on rural America.

The Pennsylvania State Grange also formed in 1873, with its first secretary being Col. Robert H. Thomas, a Mason with political connections and the publisher of the Mechanicsburg Farmers Friend and Grange Advocate and the Independent Journal in Mechanicsburg.

The summer saw the first gathering of Grangers at the grove. Back then, the outing took the form of a joint picnic of several local chapters. The second Grangers picnic in August 1874 saw the first appearance of vendors displaying their wares and offering special event pricing.

This trade show approach provided a base upon which Thomas, as the manager, developed the picnic into an annual opportunity for farmers to observe changes in farm equipment, witness field demonstrations and compare notes with their colleagues. The vendor fees not only covered the costs of running the event, but paid for special programming.

Very soon, crowds were drawn by the combination of free admission and the variety of exhibits. Gradually, the one-day event morphed into a three-day event and then a weeklong event attended by campers, hotel boarders and cottage renters. This rapid growth prompted the railroad to expand the infrastructure and develop the grove into a resort destination. Upgrades included enlarged railroad sidings and passenger shelters, additional recreation space, an enlarged amphitheater and the development of a tent and cottage area.

There was so much demand that the railroad had to lease additional engines and equipment from the Pennsylvania Railroad to provide for 25 or more special passengers trains in and out on peak days.

From the start, the picnic became a venue to showcase new farming methods and technology. The expansion to multiple days gave Thomas the flexibility to schedule notable speakers on a broad range of topics.

All this turned the Granger’s Picnic into a forum for state and national figures to drum up support for their causes among rural Americans. Because the Grange conferred upon women the same membership rights as men, the speakers included leading advocates for women’s suffrage and the temperance movement. Future President Woodrow Wilson spoke at the picnic in 1912 while he was on the campaign trail. But, by 1916, societal changes ended the picnic exhibition.

Distribution patterns for farm equipment changed to where manufacturers relied more on catalogs to process orders. Defense production related to World War I led manufacturers to roll back or eliminate exhibits. A polio outbreak decreased attendance and made exhibitors nervous about participating in a potential super spreader event.

Thomas died in 1908 leaving his son, Richard H. Thomas Jr., to take over running the event. But when the son died, there was no successor so the picnic ended and the Cumberland Valley Railroad surrendered its lease of the grove.

The Sentinel offers “Graves in the Valley” throughout September, looking at some of the famous and infamous people buried in cemeteries of the Cumberland Valley:

THE HISTORY: Army Sgt. 1st Class Randall Shughart was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, on Aug. 13. 1958, moving with his family to the Newville area and later graduating from Big Spring High School. He is one of two of the first snipers in history to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.

A farm boy from North Newton Township, Shughart gave his life in defense of a downed helicopter crew during the Battle of Mogadishu, Somalia, on Oct. 3, 1993. The U.S. Army Ranger was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism during battle in Somalia in 1993, actions later featured in the book and movie, “Black Hawk Down.”

According to pbs.org, during the battle, Shughart and his team leader volunteered to be inserted on the ground to protect wounded soldiers, and after his third request they received permission. Once they reached the crew members, Shughart and his team leader continued to offer protective fire until he depleted his ammunition and was fatally wounded. Shughart's actions saved the life of pilot Mike Durant.

HOW THEY DIED: Shughart was fatally wounded during battle in Mogadishu, Somalia.

GRAVESITE: Westminister Memorial Gardens, 1159 Newville Road, Carlisle

The Sentinel offers “Graves in the Valley” throughout September, looking at some of the famous and infamous people buried in cemeteries of the Cumberland Valley:

THE HISTORY: Amelia S. Givin Beall was born Oct. 31, 1845.

According to the Gardner Digital Library, Amelia’s father and his brother, Samuel, were the founders of a paper mill in Mt. Holly Springs, and the Givin family lived nearby until 1865 when their home burned to the ground.

Amelia was the last surviving member of the prominent Givin family of south-central Pennsylvania. She was a philanthropic worker and provided the funds to build the Amelia S. Givin Public Library in Mt. Holly Springs, the first public library in Cumberland County. She also endowed a perpetual trust for the library.

The Amelia S. Givin Library was built during the public library movement of the late 1800s and has been in continuous operation for over a century. In her will, Amelia also bequeathed large sums of money to the Second Presbyterian Church and the Carlisle Hospital.

HOW THEY DIED: Died Oct. 5, 1915, in her home.

GRAVESITE: Buried in Ashland Cemetery, Carlisle, Cumberland County.

The Sentinel offers “Graves in the Valley” throughout September, looking at some of the famous and infamous people buried in cemeteries of the Cumberland Valley:

THE HISTORY: Staff Sgt. Bruno Verano, a Pennsylvania native, served at Carlisle Barracks during the days of the Medical Field Services School.

According to the book "Carlisle Indian Industrial School: Indigenous Histories, Memories, and Reclamations," two of Verano's infant sons died during his time at Carlisle Barracks and they were buried in the Carlisle Indian School Cemetery. When he died a few years later in 1945, he was buried in row F, near his two sons.

At this time, arrangements had been made for military personnel to be buried in Ashland Cemetery, but Verano chose to be buried close to his sons. The Veranos have the distinction of being the only family with two generations interred in the Carlisle Indian School Cemetery.

HOW THEY DIED: Staff Sgt. Bruno Verano died in 1945, cause of death is unknown.

GRAVESITE: Indian School Cemetery at Carlisle Barracks.

The Sentinel offers “Graves in the Valley” throughout September, looking at some of the famous and infamous people buried in cemeteries of the Cumberland Valley:

HISTORY: Gov. Joseph Ritner was born March 25, 1780, in Alsace Township, now Reading, Berks County.

Ritner, a member of the Anti-Masonic Party, was the eighth governor of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania from 1835 to 1839. Controversy surrounding his 1838 electoral defeat led to the Buckshot War. Upon his retirement from politics, Ritner lived in Mount Rock, south of Newville, Cumberland County.

According to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Ritner was elected to the General Assembly in 1820, serving five terms. On June 23, 1829, the Anti-Masonic Party in Harrisburg selected Ritner as their candidate for governor and would again in 1832. Ritner lost both elections to George Wolf, but defeated him in a third try, taking advantage of a divided Democratic Party.

As governor, Ritner spoke out against slavery and defeated General Assembly attempts to repeal the new free public school law. Education was especially important to Ritner, and under his administration, common schools in Pennsylvania grew from 762 to 5,000.

The Ritner Highway between Carlisle and Shippensburg along Route 11 in Cumberland County was named after the former governor and dedicated on July 27, 1938.

HOW THEY DIED: He died at age 89 on Oct. 16, 1869, in Mount Rock.

GRAVESITE: Mount Rock Methodist Churchyard, 598 Mount Rock Road, Newville.

HISTORY: Master Sgt. Clarence F. Barr was interred at the Indian Cemetery in August 1984, and his widow was also granted burial rights alongside her husband.

According to the book “Carlisle Indian Industrial School: Indigenous Histories, Memories and Reclamations,” Barr retired from military service in 1946 and had served 18 years at Carlisle Barracks in various positions from cook to first sergeant. Barr assisted in the relocation of the cemetery to the current site due to construction on the post.

In 1983, Barr requested special permission to be buried at the Indian Cemetery before his death in May 1983, and it was approved in July 1983 by the Department of the Army Mortuary Affairs. This burial is the last at the cemetery which now holds 228 burial sites.

HOW THEY DIED: Barr died on Aug. 23, 1984.

GRAVESITE: Indian Cemetery on the Carlisle Barracks.

HISTORY: The Babes in the Woods murders took place near Pine Grove Furnace on Nov. 24, 1934. The bodies of Norma Sedgwick, 12, Dewilla Noakes, 10, and Cordelia Noakes, 8, were found under a blanket in the woods along Centerville Road.

Investigators believed the three girls were suffocated by Elmo Noakes (father of Dewilla and Cordelia, and stepfather of Norma). The following day Elmo continued his killing spree by killing his niece Winifred Pierce and then himself with a .22 rifle. Their bodies were found at a station on the Hollidaysburg Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Blair County about the same time the bodies of the three girls were spotted in the woods in Cumberland County.

HOW THEY DIED: A preliminary autopsy on Nov. 24, 1934, revealed no apparent cause of death. Later it was determined the girls died from either strangulation or suffocation and that the murder weapon may have been a soft cloth, a pillow or a blanket. Investigators believe they were suffocated by Elmo Noakes and their bodies placed in the woods along Centerville Road. Another theory says the girls died from inhaling exhaust fumes in the car.

A publication of the Noakes family history states that Winifred Pierce died at the age of 18 and that “Elmo J. Noakes and his children died in an auto accident.”

GRAVESITE: Westminster Cemetery, 1159 Newville Road, Carlisle.

THE HISTORY: James Williamson Bosler was born: April 4, 1833, to Abraham and Eliza Herman Bosler in Silver Spring, Cumberland County.

According to archives.dickinson.edu, Bosler attended Dickinson College as a member of the class of 1854 but did not finish his degree. Bosler moved west and taught school in Columbiana County, Ohio, where he also built his first store. After moving to Iowa, the businessman eventually started a real estate company and a bank before building his fortune in the cattle market.

Bosler returned to Carlisle in 1866 and married Helen Beltzhoover of Boiling Springs. They had four children and were continuous supporters of Dickinson College.

According to archives.dickinson.edu, Bosler pledged $10,000 to the college and after his death in 1883, Helen Bosler donated nearly seven times that amount to build a new hall to house a library, insisting that only the finest, most durable materials be used in the construction.

The James W. Bosler Memorial Hall was completed in 1886, and housed the college’s library until 1967. Today, Bosler Hall is home to the modern language departments. The Bosler Memorial Library in Carlisle is named after James W. Bosler’s brother, J. Herman Bosler.

HOW THEY DIED: Bosler died on Dec. 17, 1883.

GRAVESITE: Buried in Ashland Cemetery, Carlisle, Cumberland County.

THE HISTORY: Take the Tail “Lucy Pretty Eagle” was among the first of almost 10,600 boys and girls sent to the Carlisle Indian School to take part in a social experiment to assimilate Native American children into the mainstream culture by removing them from tribal influences.

After only one winter at the school, she died. “Take the Tail’s time at the boarding school made her more vulnerable to disease for many reasons, including depression brought on by homesickness,” Carlisle Indian School biographer Barbara Landis said in her essay “Putting Lucy Pretty Eagle to Rest.” “Lucy’s health declined in part because of radical changes forced on her.”

Lucy Pretty Eagle was the daughter of Pretty Eagle and from the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. At the age of 10, she arrived at the Carlisle Indian School on Nov. 14, 1883. Lucy was one of 190 Native American children to be buried in the Carlisle Indian School cemetery.

Rumors circulated that the building that was her dormitory is haunted by her spirit. According to a Sentinel article by Joseph Cress in 2014, Landis is quick to point out that researchers proved the Coren Apartment building was never used as a girls’ dormitory but rather as a quarters for teachers. Many of the ghost stories related to Lucy hinge on her being a resident of that building during the Indian School years.

Pretty Eagle is one of the Rosebud Sioux, a South Dakota tribe that made a push to have the remains of 10 tribe members returned to their native land to be reburied after appropriate native prayers and services. In May, the U.S. Army promised to pay to move and re-bury the remains of at least 10 Native American children who died more than a century ago at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

HOW THEY DIED: Lucy Pretty Eagle died May 9, 1884, and her cause of death is unknown.

GRAVESITE: Carlisle Indian School Cemetery.

THE HISTORY: At just 5 years old in 1753, Hugh Henry Brackenridge and his family emigrated from Scotland and settled on a small farm in York County. At the age of 15, Brackenridge taught at a frontier school and subsequently enrolled at Princeton University.

According to post-gazette.com, Brackenridge would later become the legislative father of Allegheny County. He founded the Pittsburgh Academy, now the University of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Gazette newspaper, still operating today as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Brackenridge then went on to write novels about the Revolutionary War and even served as a chaplain in Gen. George Washington’s army in New Jersey, before becoming a lawyer.

He eventually was appointed to a lifetime seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

HOW THEY DIED: Brackenridge died on June 25, 1816, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

GRAVESITE: Old Graveyard, South Bedford and East South streets in Carlisle. He had moved to Carlisle shortly after his Supreme Court appointment.

THE HISTORY: Col. Henry Zinn was a Civil War Union Army officer born in Dover Township, York County, Dec. 11, 1834. He was a school teacher prior to the Civil War.

According to findagrave.com, Zinn offered his services to the Union efforts and was quickly promoted. He was promoted to commander of his company on June 28, 1861. By 1862, he was promoted to colonel and commander of a regiment, a regiment he led in the Battle of Antietam, Md., where his unit lost 178 men, and the Battle of Fredericksburg, Va.

HOW THEY DIED: During a futile assault on Confederate positions at Marye’s Heights in the Battle of Fredericksburg, Zinn was attempting to rally his men in the assault when he was shot down and killed.

GRAVESITE: Mt. Zion Cemetery, Boiling Springs Road and York Road, Monroe Township

THE HISTORY: Janet Thomson was the wife of the Rev. Samuel Thomson, who was the first installed pastor of Meeting House Springs Church located two miles west of present Carlisle, and pastor of Silver Spring Church at the same time.

Thomson died Sept. 29, 1744, age 33. It is believed that her gravesite is the oldest marked grave west of the Susquehanna River. She was buried under a red sandstone slab bearing an engraving of the family coat of arms that includes a helmet, gauntlet, a deer’s head and a hunting knife.

Since 1734, the Meeting House Springs Cemetery has been the final resting place of some of the earliest families to settle the county. “It’s the beginning of our history,” Richard Tritt, a member of First Presbyterian Church on the Square in Carlisle, told The Sentinel in a story published in 2015. “They were the first wave of settlers.”

HOW THEY DIED: There is no known cause for Thomson’s death.

GRAVESITE: Meeting House Springs Cemetery, North Middleton Township

THE HISTORY: Daniel Drawbaugh was born on July 14, 1827, in Cumberland County at Eberyley’s Mill.

According to explorepahistory.com, Drawbaugh was a purported inventor of the telephone for which he sought a patent in 1880. He claimed to have invented the telephone by using a teacup as a transmitter as early as 1867, but he had been too poor to patent it then. His claims were contested by Bell Telephone Co., which won a Supreme Court decision in 1888.

Drawbaugh also invented many appliances, such as pneumatic tools, hydraulic rams, folding lunch boxes and coin separators, and it was said he invented a wireless phone that could be used 4 miles away. An historical marker sits at Eberly’s Mill in New Cumberland documenting Drawbaugh’s contributions.

HOW THEY DIED: Drawbaugh died of a heart attack on Nov. 3, 1911, in his laboratory while working on a wireless burglar alarm.

GRAVESITE: Saint Johns Cemetery, 4605 E. Trindle Road, Mechanicsburg.

THE HISTORY: Alexander Parker was born in Cumberland County in 1753 and had a long and active career in the Pennsylvania Line during the Revolutionary War. There he fought under Gen. George Washington in the Battle of Monmouth.

According to findagrave.com, Parker purchased 1,350 acres of land in Virginia (now West Virginia) after the war for $50. He never settled on the land before his death and a large portion of the land was taken from his daughter Mary by John Stokley. In 1810, a successful counter-suit put the land back in possession of the Parkers. On Dec. 11, 1810, a new town was laid out and called Parkersburg in honor of Alexander Parker. Parkersburg is now the third largest city in West Virginia, and a city Parker never set foot in.

HOW THEY DIED: Parker died in Carlisle in March 1, 1791, after a short illness.

GRAVESITE: Meetinghouse Springs Cemetery in North Middleton Township

THE HISTORY: John Bannister Gibson was a Pennsylvania attorney, politician in the state Legislature and judge, including on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Gibson was born on Nov. 8, 1780, at what is now Gibson’s Mill, in the Shearman’s Valley of Perry County. Gibson entered Dickinson Grammar School in Carlisle in 1795, and joined the college proper with the class of 1798.

Before he graduated, however, he left to study law under Judge Thomas Duncan in Carlisle and was admitted to the Bar of Cumberland County on March 8, 1803.

On June 27, 1816, Gibson became associate justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Ten years later, the court was expanded to five justices, and in 1827, Gibson was chosen as chief justice of Pennsylvania.

President Andrew Jackson had signaled his intent to name him to the U.S. Supreme Court, but politics intervened and another was named.

Gibson also served as a member of the board of trustees of Dickinson College between 1816 and 1829.

HOW THEY DIED: Gibson died on May 3, 1853, in Philadelphia.

THE GRAVESITE: Old Carlisle Cemetery, South Bedford and East South streets in Carlisle

THE HISTORY: Mount Holly Springs witnessed more than 40,000 Confederate and Union troops pass through the gap on their way to Gettysburg in 1863. According to the Holly Inn’s website, “A skirmish ensued in front of the Holly Inn and a member of General Richard Ewell’s 2nd Corps was injured in June 1863.

He was left at the Holly Inn to be cared for. His condition deteriorated steadily and he died several days later.”

The soldier was unidentified and there is no information regarding his identity. He was buried in the borough cemetery. To this day families of buried unknown soldiers come to search for clues on whether this brave soldier is a loved one.

HOW THEY DIED: The soldier died at the Holly Inn a few days after a skirmish between Confederate and Union troops ensued in front of the Inn.

GRAVESITE: Mount Holly Springs Cemetery, McLand Drive, Mount Holly Springs

HISTORY: Frederick Watts born in Carlisle in 1801, becoming a prominent lawyer and member of the first class to graduate from Dickinson College.

According to the Dickinson College Archives online, Watts was influential in the redevelopment of the Cumberland County Railroad, becoming its president in 1841. He served as a member of the Dickinson College Board of Trustees from 1828 to 1833 and from 1841 to 1844; he was appointed president judge of Pennsylvania’s Ninth Judicial District Court in 1849; and he organized the Carlisle Gas & Water Co. in 1854.

In 1851, he became a founder and the first president of the Pennsylvania State Agricultural Society. He assisted in legislation to establish and subsequently became the first head of Board of Trustees of a “Farmers’ High School,” to provide a collegiate but realistic education for sons of farmers to learn their family trade.

The agricultural college eventually developed into the Pennsylvania State College. In 1871, President Grant appointed him United States Commissioner of Agriculture.

HOW THEY DIED: According to the Dickinson College Archives online, Watts retired from federal service in June 1877 and returned to Carlisle, where he died at the age of 88.

GRAVESITE: Old Graveyard, South Bedford and East South streets in Carlisle

THE HISTORY: Gen. John Armstrong in 1750 coordinated the first plot or plan for the town of Carlisle and was one of its first settlers. He was later appointed surveyor for the newly established Cumberland County.

Armstrong was instrumental in capturing Kittanning and developed a great friendship with Col. George Washington during the Battle of Fort Duquesne. Armstrong served many years in the military and was instrumental in helping to push the French from Pennsylvania.

In March 1776, according to the journals of Congress, he became a brigadier general. Within a short period of time the Pennsylvania government realized Armstrong was the one officer of the state who was capable of leading, directing and controlling the militia of the state, and he was promoted to major general.

Armstrong was a strong supporter of Washington, leading troops alongside him, and he advocated his run for presidency. Armstrong later held such positions as Carlisle school board member, and he became one of the first members of the Board of Trustees for Dickinson College.

HOW THEY DIED: Armstrong died in Carlisle, on March 9, 1795. In 1800 when Pennsylvania created a new county at Kittanning, it was named Armstrong County in his honor.

GRAVESITE: Old Graveyard, South Bedford and East South streets in Carlisle

THE HISTORY: James Weakley and his wife Jane came to this country from Devonshire, England, between the years of 1725 and 1730. According to USGenWeb Archives, they built a log house about one mile north of Yellow Breeches Creek, near the present site of Barnitz Mill, in West Pennsboro Township.

The Weakleys were pioneers in the early days of western Cumberland County, eventually building three mills in the area. Records in Harrisburg show that the Weakleys patented thousands of acres of land. According Frances Weakley’s “The Weakley Family in America,” this strip of land extended from Mount Holly Springs to the Old Stone Tavern, about seven miles long and three miles wide.

James Weakley built the three mills in a mill complex at Barnitz, where he first built a fulling mill and later added a grist mill and saw mill. The mills stayed in the Weakley family for several generations and the mills were known by the Weakley name.

In 1864, the group of mills took on the name of the next family to own them — the Barnitz family, who operated the mill until 1957 when it closed. The mill is still standing and is known as the Barnitz Mill.

HOW THEY DIED: Weakley died in 1772 at the approximate age of 68, several years after his wife. His estate was divided among his three eldest sons, including Samuel Weakley who owned the land where the Weakley Tavern was built on Walnut Bottom Road. James and Jane Weakley are buried side by side at the Meeting House Springs gravesite.

GRAVESITE: Meeting House Springs Cemetery, Meeting House Road, North Middleton Township

THE HISTORY: This may be the Carlisle area’s most well-known grave site.

Molly Ludwig was born Oct. 13, 1754, near Trenton, New Jersey. According to www.findagrave.com, she was sent to Carlisle at a young age to become a servant in the home of Col. William Irvine. She married William Hays in 1769, and her husband eventually enlisted in the 4th Pennsylvania Artillery in 1775. Molly joined her husband for the winters of 1777 and 1778 at his encampment at Valley Forge.

During the Revolutionary War’s battle of Monmouth, Molly carried pitchers of water to the soldiers and to help cool the artillery guns, thereby earning her nickname “Molly Pitcher.” After her husband collapsed during battle she took over the operation of his canon. When the battle was over, Gen. George Washington gave her a non-commissioned officers rank.

After the war, Molly and her husband returned to the Carlisle area to live. After William died in 1789, she married George McCauley.

HOW THEY DIED: Molly died in Carlisle on Jan. 22, 1832, at the age of 77.

THE GRAVESITE: The Old Graveyard, South Bedford and East South streets in Carlisle

THE HISTORY: According to the National Parks Service (nps.gov), Ashland Cemetery in Carlisle contains a Soldiers’ Lot with the remains of more than 500 Union soldiers from the Civil War. Only 35 of the soldiers are identified. The website said the government placed a granite monument at the gravesite in 1960 with an inscription that reads, “500 U.S. Soldiers of the Civil War Are Here Interred/The Others Are Known But To God.”

The soldiers died while stationed at the Carlisle Barracks, one of the oldest military posts in the nation and today home to the U.S. Army War College. During the Civil War, the barracks served as a supply depot. According to nps.gov, in 1866, the government purchased an area of land in Ashland Cemetery to bury soldiers who died while stationed at the barracks. Ashland was established in 1865, and by 1871 the government transferred remains from the barrack’s post cemetery to this lot.

Most of the remains lay in a mass grave, with a monument standing as a memorial to the soldiers’ sacrifice. Indiantown Gap National Cemetery in Annville oversees the Soldiers’ Lot. Twenty-three individual graves also sit in the lot, 19 of those identified and four unknown.

HOW THE DIED: The soldiers died while stationed at the Carlisle Barracks during the Civil War.

GRAVESITE: Ashland Cemetery, Route 74, Carlisle

Debbie Miller is comfortable telling people they can take information to the grave.

More than once, she had to relay directions over the phone to a visitor who got lost in a local cemetery while searching for the tombstone of a long dead relative.

Finding out where bodies are buried is just part of her job as a staff member of the Cumberland County Historical Society in Carlisle.

Requests come in most every day from descendants across Pennsylvania, the U.S. and overseas looking for the slightest clue or confirmation to add a branch to the family tree.

“If it leads them to Cumberland County, it leads them to us,” said Miller, a collection specialist tasked mostly with cataloging new acquisitions.

CCHS has a number of resources available to track down a burial location. An often-used first step is the Church and Cemetery Records Series that has information on baptisms, weddings and funerals. Reviewing this information can lead the researcher to such other sources as a will or an inventory of an estate.

Every time CCHS receives a church or cemetery record, a volunteer compiles the names from the document onto a master index kept in a digital format on a CD or in a hard copy version in a row of large ring binders on a shelf in the library reading room.

At last count, this index lists about a million entries arranged alphabetically first by family surname and then by the given name of the subject being researched, Miller said. Each entry has a notation listing the type of record available and the volume and page number where it could be found.

Cemetery records may include a map of the burial ground along with a guide a descendant could use to locate a tombstone with an inscription that could verify the birth date and date of death of a distant relative.

There are researchers who walk through cemeteries to take notes on the inscriptions listed on tombstones, Miller said. Often the notes are compiled into a book about that particular cemetery.

The book is then donated to the CCHS to serve as a genealogical resource for staff and visitors. Profiled cemeteries included the Old Graveyard along South Street in Carlisle and the Meeting House Spring Cemetery in North Middleton Township.

Some years CCHS volunteer Bob Davidson compiled a book on Cumberland County cemeteries that list locations by township and include written directions to each burial ground, Miller said.

She added library holdings also include three collections of files organized by family surname. Staff have compiled over the years Genealogy Files that are the result of research requests made by phone, email or in person.

“It’s a good source if someone has already done a search,” Miller said. CCHS charges a fee for staff time spent in conducting research. The Genealogy Files also include any “loose material” pertaining to that family that has been donated over the years such as newspaper clippings.

The two other collections of surname files were donated to the CCHS by local genealogists Merri Lou Schaumann and the late Lenore Flower.

Another local source visitors can use is an ever-expanding collection of family history books, Miller said. She added there is also listing of obituaries organized first by year and then by family surname. Local newspapers are available on microfilm to look up an obituary once research pinpoints a date or time period.

Outside of CCHS, researchers can use such online sources as www.findagrave.com or www.ancestry.com to find information on a gravesite.

This photograph from circa 1950s shows the small paddle-wheel tour boat that used to be a feature on the lake at Williams Grove Park.

Photo courtesy of the Cumberland County Historical Society

For much of its history, the Williams Grove area of Monroe Township has been a host site for a variety of forms of recreation and entertainment.

First settled around 1750 by David Wilson, the area was part of a land grant straddling Cumberland and York counties. In 1779, Wilson sold the Cumberland County portion of the 148 acres to his son-in-law, John Williams, who built a stone mansion on the south bank of Yellow Breeches Creek about 20 years later.

78th Anniversary: Remembering D-Day. On June 6, 1944, Allied troops invaded Normandy, France, to fight Nazi Germany in World War II.

Just north of the mansion is a 28-acre island within the creek. In the center of this island is a natural spring surrounded by a grove of oak trees. That island was developed into a resort for picnics and social gatherings while the mansion became the focal point for a family-run business that once included a lime kiln, a quarry and two mills.

The Williams Grove Amusement Park can trace its origins back to 1850, when the Williams family started hosting picnics on their property, according to “Amusement Parks of Pennsylvania” by Jim Futrell.

The picnics grew in popularity to the point where people constructed cottages for summer stays. A merry-go-round became part of the landscape. Rail lines through this area greatly improved access to the site. In 1873, the Cumberland Valley Railroad leased the area along the creek and developed it into fairgrounds that hosted the Great Grangers’ Picnic Exhibition from 1874 to 1916.

By 1887, the Williams Grove venue had a 2,000-seat auditorium, animal barns, a hotel, exhibit halls, and cottage and tent areas. In its heyday, the weeklong agricultural festival drew upwards of 100,000 guests from more than 30 states mostly by railroad and horse and buggy.

The fair went downhill during World War I and was sold to Charles Markley in 1918. He was unable to revive the operation and sold the fairgrounds to the Richwine family in 1924. The family converted the fairgrounds into an amusement park that did well even through the Great Depression, Futrell wrote in his book.

Over time, the Richwines added new rides including the “Zipper,” a roller coaster, in 1933. In 1939, they expanded the offerings by opening the Williams Grove Speedway on an adjacent farm. The family added more rides in 1942, but had to shut down the park in 1943 and 1944 when World War II rationing went into full effect.

After the war, Hersheypark expanded and became the main competitor. Williams Grove was struggling until a group of local steam engine enthusiasts revived the Great Grangers Picnic, Futrell wrote. The picnic and speedway became the main attractions.

In 1971, Morgan Hughes came on the scene, purchasing the speedway and park for about $1.3 million. Hughes improved the amusement park for a reopening in early June 1972. Three weeks later, Hurricane Agnes came through the area causing the Yellow Breeches Creek to overflow its banks and flood the park with up to 10 feet of water, Futrell wrote.

The floodwaters severely damaged the amusement park, but it reopened for the Fourth of July after Hughes worked with 250 people to clean up. Six years later, in 1978, Hughes added a showboat ride, a new miniature train, water slides and a miniature golf course.

In 1980, a tornado hit the amusement park, but Hughes revived it again, adding more rides in 1985, 1999 and 2000. By 2006, Williams Grove had 22 rides and other attractions that included laser tag.

In January 2007, the Williams Grove Historical Steam Engine Association purchased 90-acres of the Williams Grove tract adjacent to the amusement park. That tract has been the site of the annual steam engine shows since 1959.

As part of the purchase, the association announced the start of a Sunday farmers and flea market in part to fill a void created after the Silver Spring Flea Market closed on the West Shore. A month later, in February 2007, the association held an auction to sell off items left on its property including many pieces of the old rides of the now-closed amusement park. Those items included bumper cars, tea cups and piles of wooden barrels from the fun house.

Meanwhile, the half-mile dirt track continues to draw fans. National champions like Ted Horn, A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti have raced at the Grove. The speedway continues to host weekly programs from March to October, including appearances by the World of Outlaws.

A native of Dublin, Ireland, Hughes died on April 12, 2008, at age 88. He is credited with transforming Williams Grove Speedway into one of the top dirt tracks in the country for sprint car racing.

During the 1950s, Morgan Hughes Inc., which later became Hot Rods Inc., was responsible for importing many of the amusement park rides from European manufacturers to American amusement parks. It is believed that Hughes was the man who brought the first giant Ferris wheel to the United States.

This postcard from 1955 shows a packed beach and swimming area at Fuller Lake.

Generations of local residents have been drawn over the years to the cool water and scenic mountain backdrop of the lakes at Pine Grove Furnace State Park in Cook Township.

While very different in size and scope, both bodies of water share a common history tied to the old iron industry that once flourished in that part of Cumberland County.

Local historian Andre Weltman is chair of the Friends of the Pine Grove Furnace State Park. A frequent tour guide, he wrote a history of Fuller and Laurel lakes that is posted on the tourism promotion website www.visitcumberlandvalley.com. There is also an official history on the park website maintained by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

This photo from circa 1960 shows the beach area of Laurel Lake.

At 25 acres, Laurel Lake is older and much larger than Fuller Lake. It was created in 1830 to provide water power to Laurel Forge built by Ironmaster Peter Ege to increase his profits. The forge heated and hammered pig iron ingots into wrought iron bars, which sold for much higher prices because the bendable metal could be formed into many shapes.

“The forge operation ended in 1895 or early 1896, not long after the furnace stopped making pig iron,” Weltman wrote. “Unfortunately, the remnants of the forge were lost in forest fires in 1900 and 1915. The forge was located at what’s today a gravel parking lot near the bottom of the dam. Workers’ houses once lined Pine Grove Road east from there; they burned in the forest fires, too.”

After 1895, the dam that created the Laurel Forge Pond was maintained for recreation and to support a commercial ice operation that continued into the 1920s. Built of timber, stone and dirt, the dam failed three times, in 1847, 1889 and 1919, but was rebuilt each time using the same “timber crib” design, Weltman wrote. “In 1968 the old dam was finally replaced with a solid concrete structure you see today.”

Fuller Lake is the flooded remnant of the primary iron ore quarry or pit used by the Iron Works during much of the 19th century. “A 60-foot-long, 18-inch-wide plunger pump struggled to keep the deep hole in the ground empty,” Weltman wrote. “Even so, major flooding occurred several times. When ore was no longer being mined in the mid-1890s, the pit — by then 90 feet deep — was allowed to fill with water for the final time.

“The lake was named for Jackson Fuller, a final co-owner of Pine Grove Furnace when iron making stopped in 1895,” Weltman wrote. “In a real sense, he was the last ironmaster at Pine Grove Furnace through that term was not in use at the end of the 19th century.”

Fuller Lake is known today because of its association with the Legend of the Hairy Hand, an event for children that is held during the annual Fall Furnace Festival at the park.

“Don’t tell the children!” Weltman wrote. “Although industrial accidents did occur, including at least two deaths at this quarry, it’s not true that a big hairy man drowned while rescuing a slice of pumpkin pie from rapidly rising floodwaters in the pit.”

Iron making on South Mountain dates to 1764, when partners George Stevenson, Robert Thornbaugh and John Arthur built a furnace along Mountain Creek. Their enterprise, the Pine Grove Iron Works, made stoves, fireplace backs, iron kettles and possibly munitions during the Revolutionary War.

About 131 years later, in 1895, new technologies quickly put smaller producers out of business. The 17,000-acre Pine Grove Ironworks was sold in 1913 to Pennsylvania to be part of the new forest reserve system. While a portion of the land became Michaux State Forest, another part became Pine Grove Furnace State Park, a destination for fishing, boating, hiking and swimming.

In the early 1980s, about 40,000 people visited Fuller Lake each summer while another 60,000 visited Laurel Lake. Each beach was manmade, requiring 100 to 150 tons of sand to be spread out every three years, according to a past article published in The Sentinel.

Few people realize that Pine Grove once sported an amusement park between Fuller and Laurel lakes that included a carousel, bicycle races and a shooting gallery.

This sketch shows how the Square looked prior to 1845. Buildings from left to right are the original county courthouse and Carlisle town hall, the First Presbyterian Church and St. John's Episcopal Church.

There was fear in Carlisle in September 1753. Rumors abounded that Indians on the western frontier of Pennsylvania would ally themselves with the French invading from Canada to the north. Together, they could drive the English colonists into the Atlantic Ocean.

Benjamin Franklin was in the delegation dispatched by Gov. James Hamilton to negotiate a treaty with tribal leaders in Carlisle. As tensions grew between the European powers over control of North America, it became vital to enlist as many tribes as possible in favor of neutrality or an alliance with England.

On Oct. 3, Oneida chief Sarouady spoke out against the sale of rum to Indians and advocated restraint on westward expansion. He called on the English to have only three trading posts selling cheaper goods. The next day, Oct. 4, Franklin and his fellow diplomats agreed in principle to three trading posts but advised the Indians they needed to talk to the colonial government. That night Franklin saw how the Indians got drunk on rum and concluded the native tendency toward a lack of moderation would work against the tribes. History would prove him right.

Freeholders and freemen from across Cumberland County gathered at the First Presbyterian Church in the northwest corner of the Square. The meeting was called after the British Parliament passed the Coercive or Intolerable Acts that closed the post of Boston in retaliation for the Tea Party.

The county men passed resolutions condemning the British for subverting not only the rights and liberties of Boston and Massachusetts residents but those living in all the colonies. The belief among Pennsylvanians was if one port could be closed, other seaboard cities could be shut down, jeopardizing inland commerce and the overall economy.

Nearly two years later, in mid-June 1776, a challenge was issued to a crowd downtown to show where they stood on independence. Those in favor of separation from England were told to walk to the north side of the Square and those against to move to the south side. History records a great majority picked the north, none went south and only three to four indecisive souls lingered in the center of the crossroads.

This sketch shows the Square in Carlisle as it looked after 1845. The building on the far left is the old Cumberland County courthouse which still stands near the southwest corner of the intersection. The First Presbyterian Church is in the middle and St. John's Episcopal Church is on the far right.

The courthouse bell rang at 5 p.m. calling supporters of the federal Constitution to assemble at the Square. The event was organized to celebrate Pennsylvania’s ratification of the founding document. A cannon was hauled over from a nearby tavern and material collected for a bonfire to be lit at dusk.

Not to be outdone, Anti-Federalists gathered to harass the Federalists with shouts and insults. They had opposed the ratification of the Constitution until a Bill of Rights was included to preserve individual rights and state sovereignty. The fuse was lit for violence, which ended with the Federalists being forced to retreat clearing the way for the Anti-Federalists to light the bonfire and throw the cannon into the flames. They also burned an almanac that contained a copy of the Constitution.

Debate over the Constitution sparked no less than five public demonstrations on the streets of Carlisle. In one incident, Anti-Federalists burned effigies of Thomas McKean and James Wilson. McKean was a chief justice while Wilson was a leading supporter of the Constitution.

On March 3, 1791, Congress levied a tax on distilled spirits to pay off Revolutionary War debt, sustain the government and support an army against the Indians. The tax was opposed by farmers in western Pennsylvania who distilled surpluses of grain into alcohol to make it more profitable and easier to transport in bulk to market.

There were ethnic ties connecting these Scotch-Irish farmers to the Cumberland Valley. So when tempers flared on the frontier, ties of kinship, religion and culture brought the conflict to the Carlisle area. On Sept. 8, 1794, protesters put up a liberty pole on the Square with the words “Liberty and No Excise”. The next morning, “friends of good government” took down this symbol of defiance, setting the stage for an even more dramatic demonstration on the Square.

On Sept. 11, 1794, 200 armed men stormed into Carlisle and put up an even larger pole, this time reading “Liberty and Equality.” This mob then reportedly roamed the streets for several days and nights, as they guarded the pole and kept residents awake by shouting and firing guns at night. There were reports the mob stopped local residents at the point of a bayonet and demanded money to buy whiskey.

This sketch shows the first county courthouse and Carlisle town hall. Both were destroyed by fire early in the morning of March 24, 1845.

Carlisle residents awoke to the cry of “Fire!” about 1 a.m. Flames were seen coming from a shed behind the town hall where local volunteer fire companies kept their apparatus. Whoever set the fire knew how to frustrate the first-responders. The fire engines were tied so tightly together, it was impossible for firemen to pull the equipment from storage. Meanwhile, a violent northwest wind fanned the blaze that would reduce Carlisle government to ash.

Flames from the shed quickly spread to the town hall and then to the county courthouse. The buildings were only separated by a few feet. It soon became obvious both main buildings were a lost cause so local residents rallied instead to save adjoining buildings. They climbed ladders to roofs, carried buckets of water and laid down wet blankets to prevent sparks carried on the wind from touching off more fires.

As the courthouse burned, people ran in to remove vital records. The documents were left in nearby homes to be collected later. Soon the courthouse roof was on fire and the flames consumed the belfry. The bell tumbled down and, by 4 a.m., nothing remained but smoldering ruins.

The bravery of local residents saved the day along with the timely arrival of a fire engine from the artillery company at Carlisle Barracks. The arsonist was never identified. A month later, county officials awarded a $40,000 contract to build the present-day Old Courthouse on the southwest corner of the Square.

Mid-19th century Carlisle had more southern leanings than northern. Trade routes through Cumberland County went south and southwest. Southerners spent summers at nearby resorts. Half the Dickinson College student body was from the South along with many of the officers stationed at Carlisle Barracks.

A riot took place in front of the Old Courthouse on June 3, 1847. It started after free blacks made a rush for a woman and a child who had just been released by the court into the custody of two slave owners. The blacks were able to rescue and spirit the fugitives away. In the ensuing brawl, the crowd assaulted one of the slave owners.

College professor John McClintock had a reputation for being an outspoken critic of slavery. He had earlier advised the court of a new state law banning any county official from having a part in the recovery of fugitive slaves. His stance against slavery made McClintock a target of community anger and he was arrested and later acquitted of charges he incited the riot.

The scene of the first block of East High Street during the July 1, 1863, shelling of Carlisle.

The sudden appearance of Confederate cavalry on the edge of downtown Carlisle crashed an impromptu party being held for hungry and tired Union soldiers relaxing in the Square. It was about 7 p.m. on July 1, 1863, and a panic came over the population as the men scrambled to form units and retrieve the weapons they had stacked just west of the Old Courthouse. When the Yankee commander rejected a Rebel demand for unconditional surrender, horse artillery commenced a shelling of Carlisle that struck numerous buildings.

Confusion was the order of the day that summer when the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia invaded Pennsylvania with the goal of capturing Harrisburg. But as the campaign developed, the focus turned to Gettysburg, a crossroads town in Adams County. For several days in late June, Confederate forces occupied Carlisle and demanded local civilians deposit food rations and other supplies at the Market House on the Square.

After the Rebels cleared out on June 29-30, Union soldiers moved in on July 1 and grateful residents welcomed them on the Square. They were only there half an hour before the enemy cavalry was spotted at the junction of Trindle Spring and York roads.

Open hostility once existed between soldiers at Carlisle Barracks and civilians in town. Back then, the post was operated by a small staff. As a result, training was inadequate and discipline poor. Come payday, unsavory soldiers visited the saloons, dancehalls and brothels of Carlisle’s east end where they mixed it up with townsfolk out to cause a ruckus. The lingering frustration exploded on March 16, 1867, which was an election day.

It started early that evening when Augustus Hamill and John Gilmer got into a fight with two soldiers in the Square. The men bested the soldiers who returned to the post. A group of 25 to 50 soldiers assembled at the Barracks around 8 p.m. armed with carbines, sabers and revolvers. They marched to the Square arriving at the railroad tracks facing the north side of the Old Courthouse. There, civilians had gathered to await election returns.

The soldiers were greeted with jeers and insults followed soon after by sticks and stones. The order was given to fire a volley into the crowd who scattered in all directions. But when the civilians reached cover and had access to guns, they returned to the Square from all quarters to fire back at the soldiers who were forced to retreat. The garrison commander responded by dispatching a unit of cavalry to arrest and roundup the wayward soldiers. But this gesture was misinterpreted by the civilians as an attempt to send in reinforcements so the firing continued. In the ensuing violence, Hamill was killed, Gilmer killed a sergeant and more than a dozen people were wounded.

Carlisle was in an uproar after the borough council on Nov. 28, 1951, decided to close the Market House following an undisclosed order by the Department of Labor and Industry deeming it unsafe. The decision was made without prior public notice, sparking such outrage that about 350 local residents gathered at the Old Courthouse on Dec. 27 to adopt a resolution to force the council to postpone a plan to demolish the Market House.

This set in motion weeks of research by local attorneys looking for any document in support of the opposition. They found plans and letters from the Penn family dating back to when Carlisle was laid out. This research formed the basis of a lawsuit filed against the borough on Feb. 29, 1952.

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled in favor of the borough in the action. Demolition of the Market House was completed on or about March 25, 1952. The new courthouse was built on the site

This photo from August 1955 shows the interior of the courtroom of the old Cumberland County courthouse after the shooting that killed a Carlisle attorney.

The heat was oppressive the day local residents heard gunshots through the open windows of the second-floor courtroom of the Old Courthouse on the Square. It was about 12:36 p.m. on Aug. 2, 1955. Within 45 minutes, an attorney would be dead and three other victims hospitalized. Seven weeks later, on Sept. 23, Percy Haines would be tried for murder in the same courtroom where he pulled out a handgun and mortally wounded John D. Faller Jr.

A Newville area farmer, Haines at age 60 was just handed what he called “a raw deal in court.” County Judge Mark Garber had completed a nonsupport hearing during which he ordered Haines to pay his estranged wife Lulu Haines $50 a month. Within minutes, Haines drew a revolver from a pouch he had sewn into his clothing and fired four shots, wounding Faller, Garber, Lulu and her attorney George Black of Chambersburg.

The gunshots from that incident echo to this day in tighter courtroom security and the presence of a metal detector in the courthouse lobby. The irony was Faller had nothing to do with the nonsupport action Lulu had brought against Percy. Court procedure required a local attorney to sit in as an associate counsel when a lawyer from outside the county appears in court.

This photograph from 1865 shows the Square in Carlisle on Market Day.

Motorcyclists race and perform stunts for the crowd during the 1947 Carlisle Fair.

A fair was held on May 13 of that year and went for two days “for the sale of horses, cows, sheep and swine, cheap goods and merchandise.”

The historical record assumes the clerk of the local farmers market managed the Carlisle Fair until 1820 when the Cumberland County Agricultural Society was organized. This society was formalized in 1844 under the leadership of Frederick Watts, a Carlisle area judge, attorney and gentleman farmer who was instrumental in establishing the Farmers High School in Centre County or what would later become Penn State University.

In 1857, the society purchased nine acres from Robert Noble on the road leading to Sterretts Gap. Six more acres were added in 1869 along with a half-mile racetrack.

Two years later, the 16 acres were sold to C.H. Masland & Sons, which built a factory on the site. This displaced the fair, which was then held at Mount Holly Springs from 1927 to 1937 and then at Williams Grove from 1938 to 1941.

There were no fair activities during World War II but, in 1945, Carlisle Fair returned and was held on the present-day fairgrounds now used by Carlisle Events to host its car shows.

By August 1947, the third year of the postwar relaunch, the hype had reached such a level that the multiday event drew up to 50,000 spectators to activities that included a beauty contest and concerts in front of the grandstand.

The Congress of Daredevils and Hell Drivers was set to convene a session on the opening night of festivities on Aug. 18. Headlined by Zero Starr, a Hollywood stuntman, this program of vehicular mayhem promised the crowd plenty of crashes, smashes and spills.

New that year was a program of motorcycle and bicycle races where competitors used a recently reconditioned half-mile dirt track that also hosted harness races.

Beyond that, the fair featured displays of poultry, swine, cattle, horses, pigeons, home economics, fruit, flowers, grains, vegetables, household fixtures, farm machinery, hardware and automobiles.

“Prell’s Broadway Shows, traveling on 38 tractor-trailer trucks, moved in early today [Aug. 18] after a long stand in Philadelphia,” The Sentinel reported. “By mid-afternoon its huge midway was set up and ready to open this evening.” The midway featured “Sonny Boy” Campbell who was scheduled to present a nightly high diving act, in which he hurtled himself through the air from a 110-foot platform into a blazing tank of fire.

Mother Nature was unwilling to cooperate. On Tuesday, Aug. 18, heavy wind from an electrical storm damaged the scenery on the main stage before a show. That show went on, but played to a smaller crowd. Three days later, on Aug. 22, overcast skies and a heavy mist caused lower attendance in the morning into the afternoon.

That night, Carlisle High School students were scheduled to perform a 45-minute concert. Madge Anderson, the vocal music supervisor, was set to conduct the 30-voice chorus, a male quartet and a female sextet. Every afternoon and evening of the Carlisle Fair included a musical revue, “Make Mine America,” that featured three former cast members of the Zeigfeld Follies.

The Carlisle Fair continued to be held at the fairgrounds in town until 1981. Eventually, the New Carlisle Fair Association selected the Newville Fairgrounds as the site for the renamed Cumberland Ag Expo, which was not held in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Joseph Junkin House at 336 N. Locust Point Road in New Kingstown

New Kingstown in Silver Spring Township was the host site of the first worship service of the Scots Covenanters faith in the New World.

The Covenanters predate the Presbyterian Church of Scotland as a Protestant group with Calvinistic principles founded in 1638, according to an article published in the winter 1992 edition of the journal Cumberland County History.

The faith came over to America where, on Aug. 21, 1752, a nine-hour communion service was held in an outdoor chapel on ground owned by the widow of Joseph Junkin, the first settler of what is now New Kingstown.

Junkin once owned a farm that straddled County Down and County Antrim in Northern Ireland. He left the old country around 1736 and settled for a time in Chester County where he married a Scottish woman named Elizabeth Wallace. The couple moved to 500 acres in newly established Cumberland County.

There they developed a farm near Stoney Ridge in present-day Silver Spring Township where Elizabeth became the caretaker of a chapel that eventually became known as “Widow Jenkins Tent.” Rev. John Cuthbertson led the communion service that drew 250 of the faithful to that first gathering of Scots Covenanters.

The Junkins had a son named Joseph Jr. who fought in the Revolutionary War battle of Brandywine and was later ordained a Covenanter minister, the journal article reads. Among the offspring of Joseph Jr. were 16 ministers and 15 ruling elders of the faith, but perhaps the most famous was Rev. Dr. George Junkins, first president of Lafayette College.

George Junkins had a daughter named Eleanor, who married Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, who became a famous Confederate general.

The burial site of William Thompson, the first colonel of the U.S. Army, is in the Old Graveyard in Carlisle.

William Thompson wore many hats, but his most significant role was as the first colonel of the fledgling U.S. Army.

An Irish immigrant with ties to Carlisle, he was a soldier during the French and Indian War, a surveyor of Pennsylvania’s western frontier and an early lawmaker from newly created Bedford County.

The brother-in-law of George Ross, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Thompson supplied meat to garrisons manning the line of outposts from Carlisle to Pittsburgh. His regular shipments of cattle and hogs helped to establish frontier trade. He invested in the iron industry and became a judge in Westmoreland County.

Within 18 months of him taking the bench in January 1774, fortunes changed for Thompson and the original 13 colonies. A divide with England erupted into violence in Massachusetts prompting the start of the Revolutionary War.

In mid-June 1775, the Continental Congress appointed George Washington commander-in-chief of ground forces and agreed to raise 10 companies of riflemen to dispatch to Boston. Thompson organized and commanded a battalion from Pennsylvania that provided six of these original units to the Army of the United Colonies, a predecessor to the Continental Army.

On June 25, 1775, Congress issued a commission naming Thompson the first colonel of what would become the U.S. Army. Forces under his command helped in the defense of Boston following the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Later, Thompson led a group of Pennsylvania sharpshooters who drove back the first group of British soldiers landing in New York City. This earned Thompson the rank of brigadier general.

In March 1776, he led 2,000 men during the ill-fated invasion of Canada. Following the Battle of Three Rivers, Thompson surrendered his command on June 9 and the British imprisoned him until Nov. 7, 1780.

At that point, Thompson was exchanged for a German general captured at the Battle of Saratoga. Thompson returned to the “Soldier’s Retreat,” his country estate in North Middleton Township. He died less than a year later on Sept. 3, 1781, at age 45. Thompson was buried in the Old Graveyard between East South Street and Cemetery Avenue in Carlisle.

For years, members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians have placed a wreath at Thompson’s grave. The organization is based on the principles of friendship, unity and Christian charity. Local members raised the money for a new headstone carved from Irish marble.

The Hessian Powder Magazine at Carlisle Barracks is a remnant of what was once Washingtonburg, a logistics base during the Revolutionary War.

For much of its history, Carlisle has served as a strategic transportation hub with strong military ties.

In its early days as a British outpost, the town was a vital supply depot in the defense against Indian attacks on the frontier. It was from Carlisle that Brig. Gen. John Forbes launched his expedition in July 1758 that forced the French to abandon Fort Duquesne.

While much of the early fighting of the Revolutionary War took place in New York and New England, the manufacture and repair of weapons and the production of gunpowder was concentrated in Philadelphia. But that thinking changed during the fall of 1776 after the Continental Army was defeated in New York and the threat to Philadelphia intensified.

In December 1776, Congress authorized the construction of a major logistics base in Carlisle that came to be known as the Public Works at Washingtonburg. By the following spring, the operation was manufacturing cannon of various calibers, cannonballs and horse-drawn vehicles to mount artillery and haul ammunition.

But Washingtonburg had other functions during the Revolutionary War. A group of coopers had a shop to make barrels and casks for the Department of Military Stores to hold powder and for the Commissary Department to hold whiskey and provisions of pork, beef and other supplies preserved with salt. Washingtonburg was also the site of a military hospital, a repair facility for muskets, a recruiting station of regular army regiments and a military court that held trials for deserters, spies and other military-related cases where the sentence upon conviction was often death.

The Army also opened its first school at Washingtonburg where it trained artillerists on the use, repair and maintenance of cannon. This was the first in a long line of education institutions at Carlisle Barracks that included the Army Cavalry School of Practice, the Medical Field Service School, the Army Information School, the School of Government of Occupied Areas, the Adjutant Generals School, the Chaplain School, the Military Police School, the Army Security Agent School and the present-day Army War College.

Following their defeat at Saratoga in October 1777, the British intensified their campaign to draw American forces away from the main army by inciting the Indians on the frontier to attack settlers. This campaign led to a repeat of the same kind of atrocities that terrorized colonists during the French and Indian War and the Pontiac War. Washingtonburg proved vital in supplying the garrisons of militia units called up to defend frontier outposts. Products made at the logistics base also helped to reequip the Continental Army during the difficult winter at Valley Forge in 1777-78.

For six years, the tradesmen at Washingtonburg kept hope alive despite Indian raids on supply lines. By 1780, the Carlisle area had peaked as a provider of military supplies. Economic conditions combined with counterfeiting by the British caused skyrocketing inflation that made it difficult for the Continental Army to obtain even the most basic necessities. By late 1781, the Public Works ceased to be a major supply center and by May 1784, Congress ordered Washingtonburg to close.

This building at 152-154 West High Street in Carlisle once housed Kline's Carlisle Weekly Gazette.

It was a rather bold name for a weekly newspaper published on the fringe of what passed for civilization in late 18th century Pennsylvania.

The Carlisle Gazette and Western Repository of Knowledge had a brief run until its owner, George Kline, changed the name to Kline’s Carlisle Weekly Gazette.

Much of the history of this newspaper can be found in the book, “Early Publications of Carlisle,” housed in the library of the Cumberland County Historical Society.

Kline emigrated from Germany and settled in Carlisle. He started up the newspaper in August 1785 and continued to publish the Gazette until 1817. Back then, printers eked out a living by publishing the organ of some group or political party.

After 10 to 12 years, Kline attained so much political influence in Cumberland County that he served as register and recorder from 1795 to 1804. By that time, he was secretary of the standing committee of county Republicans. But his political fortunes changed in 1805 when the party was split into two factions by disagreements over the statewide platform.

Kline supported the Democratic-Republicans drawing the ire of Constitutional-Republicans who started their own newspaper, the Cumberland Register, in response to the political leanings of the Gazette. Using editorials loaded with vitriol, the Constitutional-Republicans made Kline out to be a villain. But Kline survived the turmoil within the party and served again as county register and recorder from 1809 to 1816.

Prior to Kline’s Gazette, local residents had to rely on Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, for news. Even then, most early newspapers were four-page weeklies filled with articles clipped from foreign or metropolitan American newspapers, usually placed on the first and second pages. The speeches of state governors and U.S. presidents were reproduced verbatim.

The third page carried ads and what little local news was reported. Most of the time, the coverage consisted of birth and death notices along with local election returns or predictions. Back then, crime reports from across the country generated the most sensation. Events like the opening of a new stage line to Baltimore were done either as a news item or an editorial. For political comment, the editors relied on letters sent in by party enthusiasts using a pen name.

For years, Kline operated a print shop out of the stone building at 152-154 W. High St. In December 2013, that building was found to be eligible for placement on the Cumberland County Register of Historic Places. It has since been listed.

The color illustration by Carlisle printer Gustav Samuel Peters is from the Taufschein, a book of Pennsylvania German birth and baptismal certificates.

Once upon a time, books had no color, only black and white illustrations.

In America, that changed in 1825, when a print shop in Carlisle published a new version of the Hoch-Deutsches Abc (High German ABC), a religious primer used to teach children the alphabet in parish schools before public education was instituted.

The lead tradesman in the production of the primer was a German immigrant and entrepreneur named Gustav Samuel Peters who first experimented with color printing in Carlisle before perfecting his technique in Harrisburg. His story is documented in the book, “Gustav Samuel Peters & His Publishing House,” located in the archives of the Cumberland County Historical Society.

While the new version was similar to ABC books published by other printers, Peters and his business partner, Johann Moser, made a significant innovation by printing the eight-page illustrated alphabet in color.

“The coloration was simple, just red and yellow, but it is the very first book with color-printed illustrations by America’s first successful color printer,” the book reads. “His color process at this time followed a basic pattern: print in black first; let the ink dry; and in two additional impressions, print yellow and then red.”

Hoch-Deutsches Abc opened with the alphabet in upper and lower case letters followed by word lists that were used to teach spelling. The pictorial alphabet matches words and images with poetic text while the last half of the primer contains a series of readings and religious lessons along with a multiplication table.

Peters was born near Dresden, Germany, on Jan. 15, 1793. After receiving a basic education, he served in the army during the Napoleonic Wars and afterward learned the printing trade in Leipzig. Peters moved to America in 1820 and settled in Baltimore to be near his older brother Christian.

While there, he worked for a foundry that cast the metal type used in printing presses. By January 1822, Peters was advertising his own business in Baltimore producing type and ornaments. By the summer of 1823, he had moved to Carlisle where he formed the partnership with Moser, an Austrian immigrant.

The partners opened a print shop on what is now High Street just east of the St. John’s Episcopal Church on the Square. There, they developed contacts with an already established network of commercial printers throughout south-central Pennsylvania along with the German-language press of the region.

From the start, the partners focused their marketing efforts on the large population of ethnic Germans who were dealing with a cultural shift that made English the preferred language. Moser and Peters knew their best chance of success was to serve as a leading bilingual press in the region.

The 1825 premiere of the ABC book ushered in future success. It became a bestseller. But the first major project tackled by the partners was a German version of the New Testament that consisted of over 500 pages with 12 illustrations.

“The man hours needed would have been tremendous,” the book reads. “Each line had to be set letter by letter and each page composed line by line. Then a stereotype plate needed to be produced by making a mold of the page and then casting the plate. The original types could then be freed up to create the next page by repeating the process.”

Moser and Peters operated their print shop and bookstore in Carlisle until 1827 when the enterprise relocated to Harrisburg. Soon after, the two men parted ways with Moser moving to Allentown to work as a druggist.

“At Carlisle, Peters established one of the first stereotype publishing houses in the United States and produced the first German New Testament to be so printed in America,” the book reads. “At Carlisle, Peters demonstrated his talents as an engraver and illustrator and made his first venture as a publisher of juvenile works. Above and beyond all this, Peters launched his color-printing career at Carlisle and so became ‘the founder of colored printing in America’ as Dr. William Egle [a biographer] described him.”

The 2015-2016 school year marked the 180th anniversary of the formation of the Carlisle school district. In celebration, Kevin Wagner, program chair of the social studies department, assembled a collection of vintage yearbooks, notebooks, class photographs and report cards that was displayed in a case in the main entrance of the Fowler building of Carlisle High School.

It seemed a natural fit for the Carlisle area to be on the forefront of a new movement in education.

“New ideas always seem to come from the frontier,” said Kevin Wagner, a social studies teacher at Carlisle High School. “The town was so rich in history to begin with.”

In fall 2015, Wagner was a leader in the effort to organize events for 2016 to celebrate the 180th anniversary of Carlisle being the first chartered public school district in Pennsylvania.

For much of its early history, the town was on the edge of civilization as the seat of Cumberland County, a once vast territory that stretched to present-day Pittsburgh.

While the Free Public School Act of 1834 was opposed by boroughs in southern and south-eastern Pennsylvania, the idea of a level playing field in education found enough support locally to earn Carlisle such a distinction.

Prior to the act, only the wealthy and elite could afford to provide their children with a quality education. As early as the 1770s, progressive thinkers like Thomas Jefferson began to push for public education funded by taxes.

Many of the Founding Fathers thought of the general public as an unthinking mass that would reap the benefit of an organized school system, Wagner said. “They would be well-educated voters who would then put in place the right people to make decisions for our country.”

Jefferson’s election as president in 1800 brought with it a rise of nationalism and the notion that public education seemed the next logical step as a great unifier of the country, Wagner said.

But the act faced opposition from aristocrats who thought that only well-born people should be entitled to a quality education. Meanwhile, German-speaking communities were worried children enrolled in free public schools may lose touch with their native language and culture.

The act’s supporters included progressive thinkers among the Methodist and Presbyterian faiths who had a mindset for social justice, Wagner said. The movement found a local champion in James Hamilton Jr., a Carlisle native who graduated from Dickinson College in 1812 and was a trustee from 1824 to 1833.

Documents show that Hamilton was active in promoting the Free Public School Act and was a leader among the residents working to set up a local school system from spring 1835 to when the charter was granted in August 1836 and beyond into its formative years.

“Hamilton was the author of the practical plans for carrying the law into effect in the borough of Carlisle,” Wagner said. Specifically, Hamilton helped to establish the first curriculum, select the first textbooks, draft the first grading system and develop the first disciplinary code for the Carlisle district.

Aside from being an organizer and long-time school board member, Hamilton played a key role in the founding of the Hamilton Library Association, which later became the Cumberland County Historical Society.

Carlisle school district became Carlisle Area School District in 1954 when it merged with other systems adjoining the borough. Today, the district consists of the boroughs of Carlisle and Mount Holly Springs and the townships of Dickinson and North Middleton.

The diagram above shows the interior features of the Chambersburg, the first sleeper car in use by the Cumberland Valley Railroad.

Philip Berlin was on the eastbound train to Philadelphia when he talked to the weary traveler.

The person had just spent 36 hours on a stagecoach from points west of Pittsburgh to Chambersburg to hitch a ride on the Cumberland Valley Railroad, of which Berlin was the supervising manager.

The traveler suggested the railroad provide a car with sleeping facilities. This brief encounter inspired the development of the Chambersburg as probably the first sleeper car put into service anywhere in America. In his book about the railroad, Paul Westhaeffer described the innovation.

The Chambersburg had a central aisle that ran the length of the car with partitions that divided the chestnut interior into four compartments. The first compartment contained several pairs of reversible transverse seats. The second and third compartments were sleeping quarters for men and were each fitted with six bunks, three along each side of the car.

The lower bunk was stationary and served as a seat cushion during the day. The middle bunk was hinged to the wall and hung down during the day to form the seat back. The upper bunk was hinged to the wall and swung up during the day for storage at a forty-five angle with the wall. The fourth compartment of the Chambersburg was reserved for women and was separated from the rest by a door with a lock. It only had a set of lower bunks along with a water closet in one corner.

Though there was no extra charge for the sleeper car service, the priority on bunks went to eastbound travelers. Heat came from an iron stove in the middle of the car while light was provided by candles. Two conductors took turns keeping watch over the passengers and enforcing company rules against smoking, tobacco chewing and making noise.

Within two years, the number of stagecoach passengers using the sleeper car service doubled. The Chambersburg was so successful that the railroad converted an ordinary passenger coach into a second sleeper car named the Carlisle. Both cars served as day coaches on the return trip from Philadelphia to Chambersburg.

In the decades that followed, the Pullman Co. tried to protect its monopoly of the American sleeper car industry by suing companies for alleged infringements of its patents. Defendants in those lawsuits often sought out the testimony of Cumberland Valley Railroad officials and employees to prove that sleeper cars were in common use long before Pullman invented his version.

Cumberland Valley Railroad went through a period of expansion and acquisition through the mid- to late 19th century, reaching the Potomac River and Shenandoah Valley by 1889. At its peak, the railroad employed about 1,800 people and served as the principal freight and passenger carrier through the valley until 1919 when it was absorbed by the larger Pennsylvania Railroad.

The components of early prototypes of the telephone sit on a table in the workshop of Daniel Drawbaugh, a Lower Allen Township tinkerer and inventor.

Photo courtesy of the Cumberland County Historical Society

The tonal quality was so distinctive, the boy could have been standing in the room, but instead he was two flights down in the cellar of the workshop in Lower Allen Township.

Michael Smyser was on the witness stand, recalling that moment from 1872 when he became a true believer in the technical know-how of Daniel Drawbaugh, the Wizard of Eberly’s Mill.

The inventor had invited Smyser to a demonstration of a forerunner of the modern telephone years before Alexander Graham Bell filed his official patent in 1876.

Drawbaugh started by having the boy sing the hymn, “Don’t you want to be a Christian while you’re young?” into the transmitter of the talking machine. Smyser could hear the lyrics clearly.

The Wizard then had the child count to five in a whisper. Again, the voice came out of the mechanism.

It was 1886 and Smyser was among the witnesses who testified on behalf of the People’s Telephone Co. before the U.S. Circuit Court of the Southern District of New York.

Drawbaugh had sold the firm his rights to the talking machine for $5,000 in cash and an undisclosed amount of company stock. The American Bell Telephone Co. promptly sued, claiming that the People’s Telephone Co. had violated Bell’s patent.

Numerous Cumberland County residents told the court they saw various models of telephones in Drawbaugh’s workshop going back as far as 1864. There was reason to believe the tinkerer had developed an acoustic telephone in 1866 that had a teacup as a transmitter and mustard can as a receiver.

None of this surprised the neighbors. Drawbaugh had a knack for invention going back to childhood. Born on July 14, 1827, he was from a long line of machinists and mechanics.

In his lifetime, Drawbaugh received about 70 patents for such devices as an automatic boiler feeder, a stave jointing machine, a steam injector, an automatic fire alarm, a coin sorter, a folding lunch box, a mowing machine and a paper bag folder. He designed a clock that ran off the Earth’s electrical current and a pneumatic stone drill that workers used in the construction of the Library of Congress.

But Drawbaugh lacked the marketing and business savvy to richly profit from any of his inventions, especially “the talking machine” which he regarded as more of a plaything or novelty. He kept no detailed notes on the development of the telephone. In the end, Drawbaugh lacked convincing proof.

On March 19, 1888, the U.S. Supreme Court decided 4-3 that Bell, not Drawbaugh, was the original inventor of the telephone. That decision removed the last significant challenge to the 1876 patent, clearing the way for Bell to develop a powerful monopoly. But county residents saw it differently. They thought that Drawbaugh was the victim of big business and fast-talking lawyers. There was even speculation that covert agents of Bell had stolen the design schematics from the Wizard’s workshop.

Poverty hounded Drawbaugh to the end of his days. Eventually, he closed his workshop and moved his operation to Camp Hill. On Nov. 13, 1911, Drawbaugh was hosting a group of reporters and local residents at his new workshop. The Wizard was excited to be close to perfecting his latest invention, a wireless burglar alarm. Just then, he suffered a stroke died a short time later.

Merkel Landis is pictured, circa 1901.

Three wise men gave Merkel Landis the gift of innovation one snowy Saturday evening in December 1909.

The trio of shoe factory workers came into his office at the Carlisle Trust Co., where Landis worked as treasurer.

“They asked me if they could open an account in their joint names for the purpose of depositing cash each week,” Landis said in the 1935 edition of the Magazine of Sigma Chi.

“They proposed to collect [the money] from fellow workers,” Landis said. “Their idea was to start with one to five cents a week and increase the deposit by the same amount every week for the next fifty weeks and then distribute the funds just before Christmas. The account was opened and in the following week the Carlisle Trust Co. announced to the public the opening of its Christmas Savings Club.”

In display ads published in The Sentinel, the bank explained that the club would start the first week of January 1910 and would allow members to gradually build a balance by making weekly deposits of any amount until the week before Christmas. The total amount deposited would then earn 3% interest right before the distribution.

Since the Christmas club idea could not be protected by copyright or patent, it quickly spread throughout the financial world and became an accepted practice among banks.

By 1965, 15 million Americans were Christmas club members with total savings estimated at $1.8 billion, according to Frank A. Mosher Jr., president of Security Savings Systems of New Cumberland. Mosher was a guest speaker on the Pennsylvania Story, a history series produced by WHP-580, a talk radio station in Harrisburg.

A contingent of mounted state troopers make their way down a street in Newville circa 1920.

History came to Newville on Feb. 9, 1920, with the announcement that the town had been selected as the host site of a training academy.

The Pennsylvania State Police signed a three-year lease with landlord George Frey, owner of the Big Spring Hotel at Big Spring Avenue and Walnut Street. Soon, the first floor was converted into office space, a gymnasium, dining facilities and a recreation room while the upstairs guest rooms became the sleeping quarters for recruits.

By March, the first class of 30 men arrived in town to begin two months of instruction. Nearly all of them were Army or Navy veterans of World War I eager to put their training in the service to use in civilian jobs. Courses taught at Newville include criminal procedure, criminal law, criminal reporting and investigation, traffic control, mob and crowd control, state geography and self-defense.

Legal courses touched on laws governing motor vehicles, fish and game and forestry. In addition, each recruit was assigned a horse and given instructions on cavalry drill, care of the animal and stable hygiene. The hotel’s 10 acres provided ample space for stables, a horse corral and a drill field.

A badge of civic pride among local residents, the academy lasted only three years. On March 1, 1923, the state police closed the academy in Newville shifting it first to Fort Indiantown Gap and then to Hershey, its current location. The hotel building in Newville was eventually demolished to make room for the Hershey Chocolate Co. creamery, which later closed.

There is reason to believe the state police academy at Newville may have been the first of its kind in the nation. Of the 50 states, only 45 had joined the union by February 1920. Of the 45, only Connecticut, Idaho, Michigan, New York, Virginia and West Virginia had official uniformed state police agencies before Pennsylvania. According to online research, none of those states had established an official state police training academy before the one in Newville.

The first market in what became the Giant Co. supermarket chain was this butcher shop in downtown Carlisle.

The Giant Co. supermarket chain can trace its origins back to the Carlisle Meat Market, a two-man butcher shop that opened in 1923 at 18 N. Hanover St. in downtown Carlisle. The Sentinel included the origin story in an article published on June 4, 2000.

Founder David Javitch got his start in business from his father-in-law, a Russian immigrant turned entrepreneur named Yale Hervitz, who obtained a loan from a Middleton bank which he used to purchase beef cattle from Milton Hershey and to start a meat processing business. As part of his marriage agreement to Jean Hervitz, Javitch agreed to move from his native Cleveland to the Carlisle area.

In 1937, Javitch purchased a store in Lewistown, and named it the Giant Food Shopping Center, according to the company history on the Giant Co. website. That store offered customers dry goods and perishables under one roof, a new concept at the time.

Two years later, in 1939, Javitch converted his downtown Carlisle market into the first self-service grocery store in the area. Javitch had food markets operating in Shamokin and other central Pennsylvania communities when he opened a second Carlisle store in 1964 at the Carlisle Plaza on York Road, according to the news article.

That second store continued to operate until 1996 when the Giant supermarket on Spring Garden Street opened for customers. Most recently an Office Max, the second location was the first food store in Carlisle to offer both an in-store bakery and deli.

Meanwhile, in 1970, Giant acquired from a Mennonite family the Hagerstown-based market chain Martin’s Food Stores, which still operates under that name. Javitch died in 1974.

In 1981, Giant was sold to Royal Ahold, a worldwide food retailer based in the Netherlands.

During the early years of its operation, Giant had corporate offices in the Moose building in downtown Carlisle, but that space became too cramped. The first purpose-built headquarters building was constructed in 1972 in Middlesex Township. That location operated until 1998 when the offices were transferred to a new four-story building along the Carlisle Pike just outside Carlisle.

Today, Royal Ahold is known as Ahold Delhaize, with a website describing its international holdings. The Giant Co. has 30,000 employees supporting 190 stores across Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. Of those stores, 132 have pharmacies and 105 have fuel stations. There are also over 130 online pick-up and delivery hubs, according to the Ahold Delhaize website.

Above is an aerial view of the Carlisle interchange of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, circa 1940. The photo is by Richard L. Arnold.

It was just after midnight and the first 25 cars were lined up outside Carlisle to travel west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

One hundred or so people were on hand to witness the marvel of a four-lane $70 million concrete roadway that stretched from the vicinity of K Street to Pittsburgh.

By midday, vehicles were passing through the toll gate at the rate of one every two minutes. Those first drivers each received a multicolor brochure from the local chamber of commerce proclaiming Carlisle the “gateway to the west.”

It took less than 10 hours for the turnpike to have its first documented case of excessive speed based on the times stamped on the ticket. The Sentinel reported that the motorist drove the 78.5 miles from Bedford to Carlisle in 52 minutes for an average speed of 90 mph, almost double the recommended limit.

There was reason for caution. Up to that point, the turnpike had claimed the lives of 19 workers who constructed the east-west highway over the remains of the old South Penn Railroad. For its 75th anniversary in 2012, the Turnpike Commission posted an online history about the opening of this first section of highway.

The history says the mountain posed a barrier to Andrew Carnegie and William Vanderbilt, who were trying to build a railroad from Harrisburg west to Pittsburgh to compete with a more northerly route provided by the Pennsylvania Railroad. Half the road bed was completed and seven tunnels were partially excavated by the time Vanderbilt went broke in 1885.

Starting in 1910, the idea began to circulate about converting the abandoned railroad line into a road for motor vehicles. This gained traction with the support of trucking firms and the motoring public. In late 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw the proposal as an opportunity to employ workers out of a job due to the Great Depression.

The online history says then Pennsylvania Gov. George Howard Earle III signed a bill in 1937 to create the Turnpike Commission. Plans were developed calling for the construction of a 160-mile four-lane highway from Middlesex Township in Cumberland County to Irwin east of Pittsburgh.

Features of the new highway included two 12-foot travel lanes going in each direction with medians, berms, long entrance and exit ramps, banked curves and separated grade crossings.

With the support of the president, the project received $29 million in grants from the Works Progress Administration and $41 million in loans from the Reconstruction Finance Corp. The goal was to have the tolls pay back the money. On Oct. 27, 1938, officials broke ground near Newburg on the first 10-mile leg of the Carlisle-to-Pittsburgh segment.

Members of the Cumberland Valley Historical Club gather in front of the hotel in Doubling Gap in early October 1914.

Legend has it the outlaw had an arrangement with Nicholas Howard.

If the woods were clear of lawmen, the innkeeper would raise a flag from an upper window of the Doubling Gap Sulphur Springs Hotel.

When Lewis the Robber caught a glimpse of the signal from his hideout in a nearby cave, he knew that it was safe to roam the countryside at will.

But his notoriety was brief and localized compared to other guests of the mountain resort that relied on the therapeutic effects of spring water to fuel its prosperity.

The story of Doubling Gap is rooted in the geology where Blue Mountain curves back on itself to form double gaps in the mountain range, according to a history posted online at the Gardner Digital Library of the Cumberland County Historical Society.

The Doubling Gap hotel building is now part of the Doubling Gap center at 1550 Doubling Gap Road, Newville, home of Camp Yolijwa.

“Early European settlers would come to the springs and carry water away for consumption at home,” the history reads. “On January 1, 1789, Sherman Barnes, a resident of Cumberland County, made application to purchase the Sulphur Spring tract of about 150 acres along what is today state route 233 north of Newville.”

The first known improvement to the property was a boarding house that allowed visitors to stay while they drew water from the spring. “Jonathan Wallace was granted a hotel license in 1803 and the … Hotel came into business,” the history reads. “Guests from Philadelphia and Baltimore frequented the hotel. They came for the curative powers of the water, but also enjoyed the quiet and the seclusion offered by the remote location.”

The hotel had mixed success until September 1848 when Scott Coyle became the owner. A member of the Doubling Gap Springs Association, Coyle built a three-story addition and the hotel flourished as a full-fledged resort under his management. The building offered rooms for up to 250 guests at a time and accommodated as many as 1,000 guests in a season. The second and third floors offered a view of the mountains and its front piazza became famous for its rocking chairs that were popular on cool summer evenings.

Guests arrived by train to visit the hotel. While there, they could spend time walking the tree-lined paths, using lawn ten-pin alleys, swimming, boating, horseback riding and blackberry picking.

At one point, Doubling Gap was selected as the site for a select academy for boys, The Sentinel reported in a Feb. 25, 1989, story. “A Mr. Huston opened the school to not only educate the lads but also give the hotel some year-round usage. But the school lasted only one year. Huston was a man of ‘delicate health and the energies of his pupils may have been too taxing,’ wrote one of his contemporaries.”

George A. Freyer of Philadelphia purchased the hotel in 1894 and had the most success with it. The online history reported that Freyer not only assumed personal management, but enlarged and improved the facility to the point where it attracted such guests as John Wanamaker and the DuPont family.

Freyer kept up with progress when he had a telephone line installed in 1895. But he encountered resistance from Newville borough officials after he petitioned the local post office for Sunday delivery. The town fathers did not want to break the sanctity of the Sabbath.

“Sometime after the turn of the century, an elegant coach named the ‘Tally-ho’ was purchased to transport VIP guests from the Newville Railroad Station,” the 1989 story reads. “Mrs. Freyer would frequently make the trip, attracting the attention of the men, who doffed their hats. A demur but knowing ‘Gentlemen’ would come from her lips, accepting the homage due her. A nod to the ladies on the sidewalks was also part of the unofficial ceremony.”

After her husband died in 1912, she took over ownership of the hotel. But, in 1935, the hotel closed after the property was purchased by Holbert Myers, who was more interested in harvesting timber than in running a tourist destination. In 1946, the hotel was purchased by the East Pennsylvania Conference Churches of God, which made it part of the Doubling Gap Center, site of the Camp Yolijwa Christian summer camp program.

This illustration shows the Carlisle Springs Hotel.

Any deep dive is bound to make a splash followed by a ripple.

Throughout its history, Cumberland County has played host to a variety of getaway destinations often built around such natural features as mineral springs, inland lakes and waterways.

In many cases, transportation had an influence over how far and fast each summertime attraction progressed in a cycle that moved from pent-up demand to a popularity surge to a shift in consumer preferences and a re-purposing of the grounds.

Fairs and festivals have emerged that lend such a sense of identity and tradition that local residents plan reunions and homecomings around Summerfair and Jubilee Day.

In this series, The Sentinel will explore the origins of 12 local attractions using material drawn from past newspaper articles along with information available through the Cumberland County Historical Society and other online sources.

Day 2 will run online Monday and in Monday's print edition.

The handbill advertised beautiful scenery along with the health benefits of drinking and bathing in the sulfur spring water.

Beyond its medicinal qualities, the resort at Carlisle Springs, located where Spring Road and Sulpher Springs Road intersect today in Middlesex Township about 5 miles north of Carlisle, offered its guests the chance to stroll over its extensive lawns, hike through the adjoining woods and dance the night away.

“For the men the hotel provided a bowling alley and there was fishing nearby,” said an article published in the summer 1995 edition of the journal Cumberland County History.

“Horses and carriages were available for jaunts into the countryside, the limestone cave in the bank of the Conodoguinet [Creek] being particularly recommended,” the article reads.

The story of this destination began in 1792 after William Ramsey acquired land in Middlesex Township that included mildly sulfurous springs. Over the decades that followed there was a growing acceptance in medical and social circles of the health benefits of spas.

In 1830, Ramsey capitalized on this trend by constructing a two-story frame building along an old Indian trail that eventually became a road running between New Bloomfield and Carlisle. The inn was used as a boarding house for visitors. Ramsey also installed a stone basin to collect the water flowing from the spring.

As his product became popular, Ramsey bottled the water for shipment elsewhere. He leased the hotel operation to two neighbors. When Ramsey died in 1832, the 21 acres that included the spring were sold off to David Cornman, a local landowner.

Twenty years later, Anson Norton and Morris Owen of New York purchased the 21 acres from Corman and in 1853-1854 built a larger and more luxurious hotel than the original structure. The building could accommodate 200 guests on four floors topped with a cupola surrounded by balconies and porticos.

Handbills circulating its virtues drew in guests from as far away as Baltimore and Philadelphia. A village was developed around the resort to include a schoolhouse, post office, general store and a church shared by Reformed and Lutheran congregations.

“Some of the guests brought their own horses and carriages, but most came by train … via Harrisburg, and were conveyed to the Springs in time for afternoon tea,” the journal article reads. “Board was $1.75 a day or 10 dollars a week, but only nine if one stayed longer than four weeks. Children and servants might be charged half the regular rates. The hotel was staffed with ‘attentive and obliging’ black servants.” No hotel register exists today to identify the guests.

“The Civil War was a blow from which the Carlisle Springs hotel did not recover,” the journal article reads. “Many of the summer guests in the 1850s had come from the southern states; but after the outbreak of war in 1861, they no longer came north, while the number of visitors from Philadelphia and Baltimore fell off as well.

“As the Confederate army approached Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863 some farmers in York, Cumberland and Adam counties moved their horses and herds through Carlisle Springs to the safety of Perry and Juniata counties,” the article reads. “Those who stayed … labeled the fleeing farmers derisively as ‘skeddadlers.’ … On June 28, 1863, a party of some 20 rebel cavalrymen rode into Carlisle Springs on a reconnoitre. They seized no property and did no harm.”

After the war, Carlisle Springs lost its customary summer patronage. Springs and spas began to lose their appeal. In 1867, the hotel burned down allegedly by an arsonist. The building was then replaced by a smaller structure that was not identified on an 1872 map as a hotel.

“In 1879 the property was sold to Willis W. Gutschall, who tore the building down and erected a stone farmhouse on the site,” the article reads. “Nothing now remains above ground to show where the hotels stood. The sulphur spring is still visible and accessible from a land off the main road, but the iron spring has been lost to sight.”

The Joseph Junkin House at 336 N. Locust Point Road in New Kingstown

New Kingstown in Silver Spring Township was the host site of the first worship service of the Scots Covenanters faith in the New World.

The Covenanters predate the Presbyterian Church of Scotland as a Protestant group with Calvinistic principles founded in 1638, according to an article published in the winter 1992 edition of the journal Cumberland County History.

The faith came over to America where, on Aug. 21, 1752, a nine-hour communion service was held in an outdoor chapel on ground owned by the widow of Joseph Junkin, the first settler of what is now New Kingstown.

Junkin once owned a farm that straddled County Down and County Antrim in Northern Ireland. He left the old country around 1736 and settled for a time in Chester County where he married a Scottish woman named Elizabeth Wallace. The couple moved to 500 acres in newly established Cumberland County.

There they developed a farm near Stoney Ridge in present-day Silver Spring Township where Elizabeth became the caretaker of a chapel that eventually became known as “Widow Jenkins Tent.” Rev. John Cuthbertson led the communion service that drew 250 of the faithful to that first gathering of Scots Covenanters.

The Junkins had a son named Joseph Jr. who fought in the Revolutionary War battle of Brandywine and was later ordained a Covenanter minister, the journal article reads. Among the offspring of Joseph Jr. were 16 ministers and 15 ruling elders of the faith, but perhaps the most famous was Rev. Dr. George Junkins, first president of Lafayette College.

George Junkins had a daughter named Eleanor, who married Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, who became a famous Confederate general.

The burial site of William Thompson, the first colonel of the U.S. Army, is in the Old Graveyard in Carlisle.

William Thompson wore many hats, but his most significant role was as the first colonel of the fledgling U.S. Army.

An Irish immigrant with ties to Carlisle, he was a soldier during the French and Indian War, a surveyor of Pennsylvania’s western frontier and an early lawmaker from newly created Bedford County.

The brother-in-law of George Ross, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Thompson supplied meat to garrisons manning the line of outposts from Carlisle to Pittsburgh. His regular shipments of cattle and hogs helped to establish frontier trade. He invested in the iron industry and became a judge in Westmoreland County.

Within 18 months of him taking the bench in January 1774, fortunes changed for Thompson and the original 13 colonies. A divide with England erupted into violence in Massachusetts prompting the start of the Revolutionary War.

In mid-June 1775, the Continental Congress appointed George Washington commander-in-chief of ground forces and agreed to raise 10 companies of riflemen to dispatch to Boston. Thompson organized and commanded a battalion from Pennsylvania that provided six of these original units to the Army of the United Colonies, a predecessor to the Continental Army.

On June 25, 1775, Congress issued a commission naming Thompson the first colonel of what would become the U.S. Army. Forces under his command helped in the defense of Boston following the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Later, Thompson led a group of Pennsylvania sharpshooters who drove back the first group of British soldiers landing in New York City. This earned Thompson the rank of brigadier general.

In March 1776, he led 2,000 men during the ill-fated invasion of Canada. Following the Battle of Three Rivers, Thompson surrendered his command on June 9 and the British imprisoned him until Nov. 7, 1780.

At that point, Thompson was exchanged for a German general captured at the Battle of Saratoga. Thompson returned to the “Soldier’s Retreat,” his country estate in North Middleton Township. He died less than a year later on Sept. 3, 1781, at age 45. Thompson was buried in the Old Graveyard between East South Street and Cemetery Avenue in Carlisle.

For years, members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians have placed a wreath at Thompson’s grave. The organization is based on the principles of friendship, unity and Christian charity. Local members raised the money for a new headstone carved from Irish marble.

The Hessian Powder Magazine at Carlisle Barracks is a remnant of what was once Washingtonburg, a logistics base during the Revolutionary War.

For much of its history, Carlisle has served as a strategic transportation hub with strong military ties.

In its early days as a British outpost, the town was a vital supply depot in the defense against Indian attacks on the frontier. It was from Carlisle that Brig. Gen. John Forbes launched his expedition in July 1758 that forced the French to abandon Fort Duquesne.

While much of the early fighting of the Revolutionary War took place in New York and New England, the manufacture and repair of weapons and the production of gunpowder was concentrated in Philadelphia. But that thinking changed during the fall of 1776 after the Continental Army was defeated in New York and the threat to Philadelphia intensified.

In December 1776, Congress authorized the construction of a major logistics base in Carlisle that came to be known as the Public Works at Washingtonburg. By the following spring, the operation was manufacturing cannon of various calibers, cannonballs and horse-drawn vehicles to mount artillery and haul ammunition.

But Washingtonburg had other functions during the Revolutionary War. A group of coopers had a shop to make barrels and casks for the Department of Military Stores to hold powder and for the Commissary Department to hold whiskey and provisions of pork, beef and other supplies preserved with salt. Washingtonburg was also the site of a military hospital, a repair facility for muskets, a recruiting station of regular army regiments and a military court that held trials for deserters, spies and other military-related cases where the sentence upon conviction was often death.

The Army also opened its first school at Washingtonburg where it trained artillerists on the use, repair and maintenance of cannon. This was the first in a long line of education institutions at Carlisle Barracks that included the Army Cavalry School of Practice, the Medical Field Service School, the Army Information School, the School of Government of Occupied Areas, the Adjutant Generals School, the Chaplain School, the Military Police School, the Army Security Agent School and the present-day Army War College.

Following their defeat at Saratoga in October 1777, the British intensified their campaign to draw American forces away from the main army by inciting the Indians on the frontier to attack settlers. This campaign led to a repeat of the same kind of atrocities that terrorized colonists during the French and Indian War and the Pontiac War. Washingtonburg proved vital in supplying the garrisons of militia units called up to defend frontier outposts. Products made at the logistics base also helped to reequip the Continental Army during the difficult winter at Valley Forge in 1777-78.

For six years, the tradesmen at Washingtonburg kept hope alive despite Indian raids on supply lines. By 1780, the Carlisle area had peaked as a provider of military supplies. Economic conditions combined with counterfeiting by the British caused skyrocketing inflation that made it difficult for the Continental Army to obtain even the most basic necessities. By late 1781, the Public Works ceased to be a major supply center and by May 1784, Congress ordered Washingtonburg to close.

This building at 152-154 West High Street in Carlisle once housed Kline's Carlisle Weekly Gazette.

It was a rather bold name for a weekly newspaper published on the fringe of what passed for civilization in late 18th century Pennsylvania.

The Carlisle Gazette and Western Repository of Knowledge had a brief run until its owner, George Kline, changed the name to Kline’s Carlisle Weekly Gazette.

Much of the history of this newspaper can be found in the book, “Early Publications of Carlisle,” housed in the library of the Cumberland County Historical Society.

Kline emigrated from Germany and settled in Carlisle. He started up the newspaper in August 1785 and continued to publish the Gazette until 1817. Back then, printers eked out a living by publishing the organ of some group or political party.

After 10 to 12 years, Kline attained so much political influence in Cumberland County that he served as register and recorder from 1795 to 1804. By that time, he was secretary of the standing committee of county Republicans. But his political fortunes changed in 1805 when the party was split into two factions by disagreements over the statewide platform.

Kline supported the Democratic-Republicans drawing the ire of Constitutional-Republicans who started their own newspaper, the Cumberland Register, in response to the political leanings of the Gazette. Using editorials loaded with vitriol, the Constitutional-Republicans made Kline out to be a villain. But Kline survived the turmoil within the party and served again as county register and recorder from 1809 to 1816.

Prior to Kline’s Gazette, local residents had to rely on Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, for news. Even then, most early newspapers were four-page weeklies filled with articles clipped from foreign or metropolitan American newspapers, usually placed on the first and second pages. The speeches of state governors and U.S. presidents were reproduced verbatim.

The third page carried ads and what little local news was reported. Most of the time, the coverage consisted of birth and death notices along with local election returns or predictions. Back then, crime reports from across the country generated the most sensation. Events like the opening of a new stage line to Baltimore were done either as a news item or an editorial. For political comment, the editors relied on letters sent in by party enthusiasts using a pen name.

For years, Kline operated a print shop out of the stone building at 152-154 W. High St. In December 2013, that building was found to be eligible for placement on the Cumberland County Register of Historic Places. It has since been listed.

The color illustration by Carlisle printer Gustav Samuel Peters is from the Taufschein, a book of Pennsylvania German birth and baptismal certificates.

Once upon a time, books had no color, only black and white illustrations.

In America, that changed in 1825, when a print shop in Carlisle published a new version of the Hoch-Deutsches Abc (High German ABC), a religious primer used to teach children the alphabet in parish schools before public education was instituted.

The lead tradesman in the production of the primer was a German immigrant and entrepreneur named Gustav Samuel Peters who first experimented with color printing in Carlisle before perfecting his technique in Harrisburg. His story is documented in the book, “Gustav Samuel Peters & His Publishing House,” located in the archives of the Cumberland County Historical Society.

While the new version was similar to ABC books published by other printers, Peters and his business partner, Johann Moser, made a significant innovation by printing the eight-page illustrated alphabet in color.

“The coloration was simple, just red and yellow, but it is the very first book with color-printed illustrations by America’s first successful color printer,” the book reads. “His color process at this time followed a basic pattern: print in black first; let the ink dry; and in two additional impressions, print yellow and then red.”

Hoch-Deutsches Abc opened with the alphabet in upper and lower case letters followed by word lists that were used to teach spelling. The pictorial alphabet matches words and images with poetic text while the last half of the primer contains a series of readings and religious lessons along with a multiplication table.

Peters was born near Dresden, Germany, on Jan. 15, 1793. After receiving a basic education, he served in the army during the Napoleonic Wars and afterward learned the printing trade in Leipzig. Peters moved to America in 1820 and settled in Baltimore to be near his older brother Christian.

While there, he worked for a foundry that cast the metal type used in printing presses. By January 1822, Peters was advertising his own business in Baltimore producing type and ornaments. By the summer of 1823, he had moved to Carlisle where he formed the partnership with Moser, an Austrian immigrant.

The partners opened a print shop on what is now High Street just east of the St. John’s Episcopal Church on the Square. There, they developed contacts with an already established network of commercial printers throughout south-central Pennsylvania along with the German-language press of the region.

From the start, the partners focused their marketing efforts on the large population of ethnic Germans who were dealing with a cultural shift that made English the preferred language. Moser and Peters knew their best chance of success was to serve as a leading bilingual press in the region.

The 1825 premiere of the ABC book ushered in future success. It became a bestseller. But the first major project tackled by the partners was a German version of the New Testament that consisted of over 500 pages with 12 illustrations.

“The man hours needed would have been tremendous,” the book reads. “Each line had to be set letter by letter and each page composed line by line. Then a stereotype plate needed to be produced by making a mold of the page and then casting the plate. The original types could then be freed up to create the next page by repeating the process.”

Moser and Peters operated their print shop and bookstore in Carlisle until 1827 when the enterprise relocated to Harrisburg. Soon after, the two men parted ways with Moser moving to Allentown to work as a druggist.

“At Carlisle, Peters established one of the first stereotype publishing houses in the United States and produced the first German New Testament to be so printed in America,” the book reads. “At Carlisle, Peters demonstrated his talents as an engraver and illustrator and made his first venture as a publisher of juvenile works. Above and beyond all this, Peters launched his color-printing career at Carlisle and so became ‘the founder of colored printing in America’ as Dr. William Egle [a biographer] described him.”

The 2015-2016 school year marked the 180th anniversary of the formation of the Carlisle school district. In celebration, Kevin Wagner, program chair of the social studies department, assembled a collection of vintage yearbooks, notebooks, class photographs and report cards that was displayed in a case in the main entrance of the Fowler building of Carlisle High School.

It seemed a natural fit for the Carlisle area to be on the forefront of a new movement in education.

“New ideas always seem to come from the frontier,” said Kevin Wagner, a social studies teacher at Carlisle High School. “The town was so rich in history to begin with.”

In fall 2015, Wagner was a leader in the effort to organize events for 2016 to celebrate the 180th anniversary of Carlisle being the first chartered public school district in Pennsylvania.

For much of its early history, the town was on the edge of civilization as the seat of Cumberland County, a once vast territory that stretched to present-day Pittsburgh.

While the Free Public School Act of 1834 was opposed by boroughs in southern and south-eastern Pennsylvania, the idea of a level playing field in education found enough support locally to earn Carlisle such a distinction.

Prior to the act, only the wealthy and elite could afford to provide their children with a quality education. As early as the 1770s, progressive thinkers like Thomas Jefferson began to push for public education funded by taxes.

Many of the Founding Fathers thought of the general public as an unthinking mass that would reap the benefit of an organized school system, Wagner said. “They would be well-educated voters who would then put in place the right people to make decisions for our country.”

Jefferson’s election as president in 1800 brought with it a rise of nationalism and the notion that public education seemed the next logical step as a great unifier of the country, Wagner said.

But the act faced opposition from aristocrats who thought that only well-born people should be entitled to a quality education. Meanwhile, German-speaking communities were worried children enrolled in free public schools may lose touch with their native language and culture.

The act’s supporters included progressive thinkers among the Methodist and Presbyterian faiths who had a mindset for social justice, Wagner said. The movement found a local champion in James Hamilton Jr., a Carlisle native who graduated from Dickinson College in 1812 and was a trustee from 1824 to 1833.

Documents show that Hamilton was active in promoting the Free Public School Act and was a leader among the residents working to set up a local school system from spring 1835 to when the charter was granted in August 1836 and beyond into its formative years.

“Hamilton was the author of the practical plans for carrying the law into effect in the borough of Carlisle,” Wagner said. Specifically, Hamilton helped to establish the first curriculum, select the first textbooks, draft the first grading system and develop the first disciplinary code for the Carlisle district.

Aside from being an organizer and long-time school board member, Hamilton played a key role in the founding of the Hamilton Library Association, which later became the Cumberland County Historical Society.

Carlisle school district became Carlisle Area School District in 1954 when it merged with other systems adjoining the borough. Today, the district consists of the boroughs of Carlisle and Mount Holly Springs and the townships of Dickinson and North Middleton.

The diagram above shows the interior features of the Chambersburg, the first sleeper car in use by the Cumberland Valley Railroad.

Philip Berlin was on the eastbound train to Philadelphia when he talked to the weary traveler.

The person had just spent 36 hours on a stagecoach from points west of Pittsburgh to Chambersburg to hitch a ride on the Cumberland Valley Railroad, of which Berlin was the supervising manager.

The traveler suggested the railroad provide a car with sleeping facilities. This brief encounter inspired the development of the Chambersburg as probably the first sleeper car put into service anywhere in America. In his book about the railroad, Paul Westhaeffer described the innovation.

The Chambersburg had a central aisle that ran the length of the car with partitions that divided the chestnut interior into four compartments. The first compartment contained several pairs of reversible transverse seats. The second and third compartments were sleeping quarters for men and were each fitted with six bunks, three along each side of the car.

The lower bunk was stationary and served as a seat cushion during the day. The middle bunk was hinged to the wall and hung down during the day to form the seat back. The upper bunk was hinged to the wall and swung up during the day for storage at a forty-five angle with the wall. The fourth compartment of the Chambersburg was reserved for women and was separated from the rest by a door with a lock. It only had a set of lower bunks along with a water closet in one corner.

Though there was no extra charge for the sleeper car service, the priority on bunks went to eastbound travelers. Heat came from an iron stove in the middle of the car while light was provided by candles. Two conductors took turns keeping watch over the passengers and enforcing company rules against smoking, tobacco chewing and making noise.

Within two years, the number of stagecoach passengers using the sleeper car service doubled. The Chambersburg was so successful that the railroad converted an ordinary passenger coach into a second sleeper car named the Carlisle. Both cars served as day coaches on the return trip from Philadelphia to Chambersburg.

In the decades that followed, the Pullman Co. tried to protect its monopoly of the American sleeper car industry by suing companies for alleged infringements of its patents. Defendants in those lawsuits often sought out the testimony of Cumberland Valley Railroad officials and employees to prove that sleeper cars were in common use long before Pullman invented his version.

Cumberland Valley Railroad went through a period of expansion and acquisition through the mid- to late 19th century, reaching the Potomac River and Shenandoah Valley by 1889. At its peak, the railroad employed about 1,800 people and served as the principal freight and passenger carrier through the valley until 1919 when it was absorbed by the larger Pennsylvania Railroad.

The components of early prototypes of the telephone sit on a table in the workshop of Daniel Drawbaugh, a Lower Allen Township tinkerer and inventor.

Photo courtesy of the Cumberland County Historical Society

The tonal quality was so distinctive, the boy could have been standing in the room, but instead he was two flights down in the cellar of the workshop in Lower Allen Township.

Michael Smyser was on the witness stand, recalling that moment from 1872 when he became a true believer in the technical know-how of Daniel Drawbaugh, the Wizard of Eberly’s Mill.

The inventor had invited Smyser to a demonstration of a forerunner of the modern telephone years before Alexander Graham Bell filed his official patent in 1876.

Drawbaugh started by having the boy sing the hymn, “Don’t you want to be a Christian while you’re young?” into the transmitter of the talking machine. Smyser could hear the lyrics clearly.

The Wizard then had the child count to five in a whisper. Again, the voice came out of the mechanism.

It was 1886 and Smyser was among the witnesses who testified on behalf of the People’s Telephone Co. before the U.S. Circuit Court of the Southern District of New York.

Drawbaugh had sold the firm his rights to the talking machine for $5,000 in cash and an undisclosed amount of company stock. The American Bell Telephone Co. promptly sued, claiming that the People’s Telephone Co. had violated Bell’s patent.

Numerous Cumberland County residents told the court they saw various models of telephones in Drawbaugh’s workshop going back as far as 1864. There was reason to believe the tinkerer had developed an acoustic telephone in 1866 that had a teacup as a transmitter and mustard can as a receiver.

None of this surprised the neighbors. Drawbaugh had a knack for invention going back to childhood. Born on July 14, 1827, he was from a long line of machinists and mechanics.

In his lifetime, Drawbaugh received about 70 patents for such devices as an automatic boiler feeder, a stave jointing machine, a steam injector, an automatic fire alarm, a coin sorter, a folding lunch box, a mowing machine and a paper bag folder. He designed a clock that ran off the Earth’s electrical current and a pneumatic stone drill that workers used in the construction of the Library of Congress.

But Drawbaugh lacked the marketing and business savvy to richly profit from any of his inventions, especially “the talking machine” which he regarded as more of a plaything or novelty. He kept no detailed notes on the development of the telephone. In the end, Drawbaugh lacked convincing proof.

On March 19, 1888, the U.S. Supreme Court decided 4-3 that Bell, not Drawbaugh, was the original inventor of the telephone. That decision removed the last significant challenge to the 1876 patent, clearing the way for Bell to develop a powerful monopoly. But county residents saw it differently. They thought that Drawbaugh was the victim of big business and fast-talking lawyers. There was even speculation that covert agents of Bell had stolen the design schematics from the Wizard’s workshop.

Poverty hounded Drawbaugh to the end of his days. Eventually, he closed his workshop and moved his operation to Camp Hill. On Nov. 13, 1911, Drawbaugh was hosting a group of reporters and local residents at his new workshop. The Wizard was excited to be close to perfecting his latest invention, a wireless burglar alarm. Just then, he suffered a stroke died a short time later.

Merkel Landis is pictured, circa 1901.

Three wise men gave Merkel Landis the gift of innovation one snowy Saturday evening in December 1909.

The trio of shoe factory workers came into his office at the Carlisle Trust Co., where Landis worked as treasurer.

“They asked me if they could open an account in their joint names for the purpose of depositing cash each week,” Landis said in the 1935 edition of the Magazine of Sigma Chi.

“They proposed to collect [the money] from fellow workers,” Landis said. “Their idea was to start with one to five cents a week and increase the deposit by the same amount every week for the next fifty weeks and then distribute the funds just before Christmas. The account was opened and in the following week the Carlisle Trust Co. announced to the public the opening of its Christmas Savings Club.”

In display ads published in The Sentinel, the bank explained that the club would start the first week of January 1910 and would allow members to gradually build a balance by making weekly deposits of any amount until the week before Christmas. The total amount deposited would then earn 3% interest right before the distribution.

Since the Christmas club idea could not be protected by copyright or patent, it quickly spread throughout the financial world and became an accepted practice among banks.

By 1965, 15 million Americans were Christmas club members with total savings estimated at $1.8 billion, according to Frank A. Mosher Jr., president of Security Savings Systems of New Cumberland. Mosher was a guest speaker on the Pennsylvania Story, a history series produced by WHP-580, a talk radio station in Harrisburg.

A contingent of mounted state troopers make their way down a street in Newville circa 1920.

History came to Newville on Feb. 9, 1920, with the announcement that the town had been selected as the host site of a training academy.

The Pennsylvania State Police signed a three-year lease with landlord George Frey, owner of the Big Spring Hotel at Big Spring Avenue and Walnut Street. Soon, the first floor was converted into office space, a gymnasium, dining facilities and a recreation room while the upstairs guest rooms became the sleeping quarters for recruits.

By March, the first class of 30 men arrived in town to begin two months of instruction. Nearly all of them were Army or Navy veterans of World War I eager to put their training in the service to use in civilian jobs. Courses taught at Newville include criminal procedure, criminal law, criminal reporting and investigation, traffic control, mob and crowd control, state geography and self-defense.

Legal courses touched on laws governing motor vehicles, fish and game and forestry. In addition, each recruit was assigned a horse and given instructions on cavalry drill, care of the animal and stable hygiene. The hotel’s 10 acres provided ample space for stables, a horse corral and a drill field.

A badge of civic pride among local residents, the academy lasted only three years. On March 1, 1923, the state police closed the academy in Newville shifting it first to Fort Indiantown Gap and then to Hershey, its current location. The hotel building in Newville was eventually demolished to make room for the Hershey Chocolate Co. creamery, which later closed.

There is reason to believe the state police academy at Newville may have been the first of its kind in the nation. Of the 50 states, only 45 had joined the union by February 1920. Of the 45, only Connecticut, Idaho, Michigan, New York, Virginia and West Virginia had official uniformed state police agencies before Pennsylvania. According to online research, none of those states had established an official state police training academy before the one in Newville.

The first market in what became the Giant Co. supermarket chain was this butcher shop in downtown Carlisle.

The Giant Co. supermarket chain can trace its origins back to the Carlisle Meat Market, a two-man butcher shop that opened in 1923 at 18 N. Hanover St. in downtown Carlisle. The Sentinel included the origin story in an article published on June 4, 2000.

Founder David Javitch got his start in business from his father-in-law, a Russian immigrant turned entrepreneur named Yale Hervitz, who obtained a loan from a Middleton bank which he used to purchase beef cattle from Milton Hershey and to start a meat processing business. As part of his marriage agreement to Jean Hervitz, Javitch agreed to move from his native Cleveland to the Carlisle area.

In 1937, Javitch purchased a store in Lewistown, and named it the Giant Food Shopping Center, according to the company history on the Giant Co. website. That store offered customers dry goods and perishables under one roof, a new concept at the time.

Two years later, in 1939, Javitch converted his downtown Carlisle market into the first self-service grocery store in the area. Javitch had food markets operating in Shamokin and other central Pennsylvania communities when he opened a second Carlisle store in 1964 at the Carlisle Plaza on York Road, according to the news article.

That second store continued to operate until 1996 when the Giant supermarket on Spring Garden Street opened for customers. Most recently an Office Max, the second location was the first food store in Carlisle to offer both an in-store bakery and deli.

Meanwhile, in 1970, Giant acquired from a Mennonite family the Hagerstown-based market chain Martin’s Food Stores, which still operates under that name. Javitch died in 1974.

In 1981, Giant was sold to Royal Ahold, a worldwide food retailer based in the Netherlands.

During the early years of its operation, Giant had corporate offices in the Moose building in downtown Carlisle, but that space became too cramped. The first purpose-built headquarters building was constructed in 1972 in Middlesex Township. That location operated until 1998 when the offices were transferred to a new four-story building along the Carlisle Pike just outside Carlisle.

Today, Royal Ahold is known as Ahold Delhaize, with a website describing its international holdings. The Giant Co. has 30,000 employees supporting 190 stores across Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. Of those stores, 132 have pharmacies and 105 have fuel stations. There are also over 130 online pick-up and delivery hubs, according to the Ahold Delhaize website.

Above is an aerial view of the Carlisle interchange of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, circa 1940. The photo is by Richard L. Arnold.

It was just after midnight and the first 25 cars were lined up outside Carlisle to travel west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

One hundred or so people were on hand to witness the marvel of a four-lane $70 million concrete roadway that stretched from the vicinity of K Street to Pittsburgh.

By midday, vehicles were passing through the toll gate at the rate of one every two minutes. Those first drivers each received a multicolor brochure from the local chamber of commerce proclaiming Carlisle the “gateway to the west.”

It took less than 10 hours for the turnpike to have its first documented case of excessive speed based on the times stamped on the ticket. The Sentinel reported that the motorist drove the 78.5 miles from Bedford to Carlisle in 52 minutes for an average speed of 90 mph, almost double the recommended limit.

There was reason for caution. Up to that point, the turnpike had claimed the lives of 19 workers who constructed the east-west highway over the remains of the old South Penn Railroad. For its 75th anniversary in 2012, the Turnpike Commission posted an online history about the opening of this first section of highway.

The history says the mountain posed a barrier to Andrew Carnegie and William Vanderbilt, who were trying to build a railroad from Harrisburg west to Pittsburgh to compete with a more northerly route provided by the Pennsylvania Railroad. Half the road bed was completed and seven tunnels were partially excavated by the time Vanderbilt went broke in 1885.

Starting in 1910, the idea began to circulate about converting the abandoned railroad line into a road for motor vehicles. This gained traction with the support of trucking firms and the motoring public. In late 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw the proposal as an opportunity to employ workers out of a job due to the Great Depression.

The online history says then Pennsylvania Gov. George Howard Earle III signed a bill in 1937 to create the Turnpike Commission. Plans were developed calling for the construction of a 160-mile four-lane highway from Middlesex Township in Cumberland County to Irwin east of Pittsburgh.

Features of the new highway included two 12-foot travel lanes going in each direction with medians, berms, long entrance and exit ramps, banked curves and separated grade crossings.

With the support of the president, the project received $29 million in grants from the Works Progress Administration and $41 million in loans from the Reconstruction Finance Corp. The goal was to have the tolls pay back the money. On Oct. 27, 1938, officials broke ground near Newburg on the first 10-mile leg of the Carlisle-to-Pittsburgh segment.

VIEW: For the full series of stories, point your smartphone camera at the QR code, then tap the link.

Joseph Cress is a reporter for The Sentinel covering education and history. You can reach him at [email protected] or by calling 717-218-0022.

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