The WPA Guide to Pennsylvania

The Keystone State

Federal Writers' Project

• Publisher: Trinity University Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781595342362
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

During the 1930s in the United States, the Works Progress Administration developed the Federal Writers’ Project to support writers and artists while making a national effort to document the country’s shared history and culture. The American Guide series consists of individual guides to each of the states. Little-known authors—many of whom would later become celebrated literary figures—were commissioned to write these important books. John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison are among the more than 6,000 writers, editors, historians, and researchers who documented this celebration of local histories. Photographs, drawings, driving tours, detailed descriptions of towns, and rich cultural details exhibit each state’s unique flavor.The Keystone State is well represented in the WPA Guide to Pennsylvania. The essays explore the rich descriptions of the states historically significant cities—such as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia—as well as the diversity of the state which also includes many farms and small mining communities.

PART I

The General Background

Pennsylvania Today

They are there, there, there with earth immortal,

(Citizens, I give you friendly warning).

The things that truly last, when men and time have passed.

They are all in Pennsylvania this morning.

RUDYARD KIPLING

THE striking characteristic of Pennsylvania today, as in the past, is its remarkable diversity. Landscape and natural resources and people, their dialects, manners, customs, and traditions, their religious beliefs, mental and social attitudes, and occupations, all display a seemingly endless variety.

Today the mention of Pennsylvania probably calls up, first of all, a picture of an industrial commonwealth, with belching blast furnaces, labor problems, and all the spectacular features of an industrialized civilization. This is a one-sided impression. Pennsylvania’s fertile farm lands, with the quiet rural homesteads of Quaker and Pennsylvania Dutch bordering the congested anthracite district, are among the richest and most productive in the Union.

There are regions, it is true, where the plow no longer turns the furrow but has been permanently laid aside for the hydraulic drill. Fields no longer tilled have been gutted by quarry or mine shaft, and mountains have surrendered their wealth of coal and iron. Yet such counties as Lancaster, York, Berks, Bucks, and Chester, out of their rich loam or limestone silt, continue to yield year after year abundant crops of corn, wheat, potatoes, and tobacco, with no dust storms or drought, as ‘out West,’ and no hard stony subsoil, as in New England, to combat.

The person with a predilection for history may think of such treasured shrines as Independence Hall, Valley Forge Park, and the Gettysburg Battlefield; the Keystone State always has played, and still plays, a leading role in the Nation’s drama. Or there may arise a vision of drab-colored garments and broad-brimmed hats and the peaceful ways of Quaker folk. There may even exist in some quarters the impression that it is the Quakers who still set the general tone for life, not alone in the ‘Quaker City,’ but throughout a good part of the State as well. This needs correction. Much of the moral influence and spirit of the Society of Friends remains, and the Society always has been a force for good in Pennsylvania life. But just as the Quaker farmer today not infrequently lives within earshot of mine or factory siren, so do the lingering vestiges of dignity and gentleness that marked the sect of William Penn now stand in sharp contrast with a civilization in many ways more ruggedly competitive than that of Colonial times.

Today, Pennsylvania is dotted with countless communities, small and large, each astir with the unceasing life of industry, commerce, and agriculture. Forest lands of pine and hemlock, of oak and maple, and lakes and mountain streams, such as are to be found on the Pocono Plateau, add to the scenic beauty. There is the lovely Eagles Mere, for example, which lies like a blue jewel near the summit of Prospect Hill on the northern slope of the Alleghenies in Sullivan County. There are the back-country reaches, the ‘hinterland,’ where life is in some respects like that of the southern Appalachian mountains, where dour inhabitants distil their own ‘corn likker’ and look askance upon the ‘furriner.’ Or again, as in Pike County, there are stretches of primitive country where wild game and rattlesnakes abound.

In the Pennsylvania Dutch sections, by contrast, the visitor will meet with strange Old World ways and customs, with a speech—the famous ‘schoenste lengevitch’—that is like no other living idiom, with a wealth of native folklore, and occasionally with a body of dark and gloomy super-stitution such as that which centers about the ‘Hex-woman.’ If he goes on to the mining and steel districts, he will encounter immigrants from virtually every country of Europe, drawn thither by the lure of employment in the mines and mills and the hope of a high wage, inevitably bringing with them much that is distinctive of their homelands to add rich chords to the State’s great social symphony.

Standing silently apart from all this are the monuments of a historic and more other-worldly past, such as the Old Swedes’ (Gloria Dei) Church in Philadelphia. And there are living memorials, too, of that other-worldly past in the surviving representatives of the various quaint religious sects that have flourished at one time or another on Pennsylvania soil—Mennonites, Dunkards, Moravians, Schwenkfelders, and others. Unique in dress and manners, one of these sectarians may now and again be sighted in a crowded metropolitan thoroughfare. Many of their communities still exist, though others have long since disappeared.

Out of this welter of peoples, faiths, customs, and influences, Pennsylvania has somehow wrought the miracle of a homogeneous and, in a large sense, a truly indigenous culture. Colleges, universities, medical schools, and law schools are conspicuous throughout the State. Pennsylvania, from the declining years of the eighteenth century, has held an extremely important place in the fields of medicine and scientific research, and the old phrase ‘Philadelphia lawyer’ meant a good lawyer, a learned one. From early days attention has also been paid to music and the arts. The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra are widely known; museums and art schools are numerous; the State has distinguished itself in the little theater movement; and it has made contributions to literature of which the Nation may well be proud.

Surely Kipling was right when he averred that ‘they are all in Pennsylvania this morning.’ From the wildly beautiful Wissahickon to the placid Perkiomen, from the brick houses and narrow streets of the southern towns to the spacious lawns and white frame houses of the north, from the oil country of the west to the flaming steel foundries of the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania—America’s great and original melting pot, home of Revolutionary patriot and stouthearted pioneer—exhibits a topographic and human variety perhaps unequaled in any other portion of America.

The Physical State

PENNSYLVANIA received its name from Charles II of England, who in 1681 deeded to William Penn virtually all the land area now forming the Commonwealth. The name, signifying ‘Penn’s Woods,’ was adopted by King Charles after the Quaker’s modest protestations had been silenced by the explanation that Penn’s family name was derived from the Welsh word ‘penn,’ meaning mountain top or highland, and Pennsylvania would therefore be an appropriate designation for the colony.

GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY

Except for the erratic course of the Delaware River, which forms its eastern boundary, Pennsylvania is almost rectangular in shape. On the north it is bounded by Lake Erie and New York; on the west by Ohio and West Virginia; on the south by West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, while New Jersey and the southern extremity of New York lie beyond the Delaware River on the east. Along the line of its greatest length, from the western border to the Delaware River opposite Bordentown, the State is 302 miles long; except at its northwest corner, which projects upward to Lake Erie, its width is 158 miles; and it has a total area of 45,126 square miles. In size it ranks thirty-second in the Union; in population it ranks second, with 9,631,350 inhabitants in 1930, and 9,891,709 in 1940, according to the preliminary census figures. One of the Thirteen Original States, it is also one of the Nation’s four commonwealths—the others being Massachusetts, Virginia, and Kentucky.

Pennsylvania’s western and eastern boundaries have been unchanged since the time of Penn’s original grant. The southern boundary was a source of dispute with Maryland until the Mason-Dixon line was run in 1767, and with Virginia until settlement of territorial limits after the Revolution. The northern boundary likewise became modified by action of the British Privy Council in fixing the 42nd degree of latitude as Pennsylvania’s northern limit, by agreement with New York in 1789 over additional details, and by purchase of the Erie Triangle in 1792.

With 67 counties, containing more cities and towns than any other State, Pennsylvania belongs to the Middle Atlantic group and lies in the heart of the great Appalachian chain, occupying a keystone position in the Nation’s most important industrial section. Two mountain ranges, the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny, divide the Commonwealth into three distinct topographical sections. The eastern section stretches from the Delaware River to the Blue Ridge Mountains; known as the Piedmont Plateau, it embraces an area 60 miles wide, ranging from lowland country to an altitude of 800 feet. The central section, between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains, is rugged and heavily forested, with scattered centers of population. West of the Alleghenies is a broad rolling plateau that in the northwest dwindles into plains along the shores of Lake Erie.

CLIMATE

Western Pennsylvania’s rainfall averages 42 inches a year. Temperatures vary from a summer mean of 66° in the north and 71° in the south to a winter mean of 28° in the north and 30° in the south. Temperatures of 100° or higher are sometimes recorded during July and August; on an average 15 days annually have temperatures of 90° or higher. The winters are long and moderately cold, records sometimes showing 100 or more days with freezing temperatures; temperatures of 20° or more below zero occasionally occur in the highlands and mountains. Snowfall in the northwest averages 50 inches, invariably causing spring floods when warm rains add their volume to that of melting snows.

In southeastern Pennsylvania rains of torrential character are not infrequent. Precipitation exceeding seven inches in 24 hours has been recorded during passage of a West Indian storm along the Atlantic slope in late summer or early autumn. Although attended by high winds, these storms rarely extend beyond the first ridge of mountains. Temperatures of 100° or higher are rare, but the prevailing high humidity often renders conditions oppressive. Winters here are mild; the winter mean is about 32° and the snowfall is generally light. The Pocono Mountains in the northeast, however, are subject to low temperatures and have a moderately heavy snowfall. In this northeastern section the winter mean temperature is about 23°, the summer mean about 66°.

Owing chiefly to surface configuration, climatic conditions in the large central part of Pennsylvania differ considerably from those in the eastern part. The north central portion, together with a belt extending part way down the western border, is made up of high rolling terrain rising 1,600 feet above sea level, with rounded mountains rearing their tops in some places as high as 2,500 feet. In this district the average precipitation, when well distributed, is enough for crop-growing seasons.

The valley lands are comparatively free from damaging frosts. Thus the valley of the Susquehanna’s west branch as far north as Lock Haven has an average growing season nearly as long as that of the southern part of the State. Average precipitation for the entire section is 40.74 inches. Snowfall is moderately heavy, averaging about 50 inches in the northern portion and 35 to 40 inches in the southern. Along the western belt the average snowfall is about 60 inches.

In this central section the mean temperature decreases about 6° from south to north. In the northern highlands the summer mean is about 67°, the winter mean about 24°. In the southern counties temperatures of 100° sometimes occur in summer, and winter lows of 20° to 25° sub-zero are recorded not only in the northern portions but in the mountains southward almost to the State line. Maximum temperatures of 90° or higher are recorded for an average of 10 days each summer season, and the average number of days with freezing temperature exceeds 100.

GEOLOGY

The oldest part of Pennsylvania is the Piedmont Plateau, made up chiefly of rocks that became dry land at the beginning of the Paleozoic Era, millions of years ago. This land originally was part of a chain of lofty mountains stretching from a more extensive land mass in the north. During geological ages it was worn down by running water and transformed into a peneplain.

To the west of this mass of old rock there existed throughout most of the Paleozoic Era a vast bay with its western shore in the present State of Ohio, its northern shore the Canadian mass, and the Piedmont Mountains as its eastern boundary.

In this bay were deposited Paleozoic strata, the most important of which became the famous coal beds of western and central Pennsylvania. Subjected to a series of oscillations, the inundated land rose and subsided at varying intervals. These oscillations culminated in a general upheaval; lateral compression along a line running from the northwest to the southeast buckled and folded the bay beds. The old rock formations of the Piedmont Plateau withstood the terrific pressure exerted against them, and there was formed a series of folds, inclines, anticlines, and synclines, running in a northeasterly-southwesterly direction.

The highest folds were created toward the east, immediately adjoining the Piedmont Plateau, while in a westerly direction the folds were less elevated, gradually becoming indistinct. This mountain-creating process terminated toward the end of Paleozoic time and resulted in a system of subparallel chains known as the Alleghenies. Since...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Introduction, By Roy F. Nichols
• Foreword, By S.K.Stevens
• Preface
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Maps
• Practical Information
• Calendar of Annual Events
• Part I. The General Background
• Part II. Cities and Towns
• Part III. Tours
• Part IV. Appendices