Local Authors Past and Present
Work in progress here -- the field is richer than first envisioned. We hope to incorporate past authors (Marianne Moore, Jean Craighead George, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, and so on), present authors/illustrators (Amy Bates, Megan Lloyd-Thompson, Adrienne Su, Kim van Alkemade, Sherry Knowlton, and so on), and books from authors who knew the Valley well and wrote about events here (Lois Lenski, Lois Lowry, Conrad Richter, and so on). We will organize them with category headers for better searching and annotate them with the particulars as we work on this. Keep checking!
The Glory Years of the Pennsylvania Turnpike
The Glory Years of the Pennsylvania Turnpike
The Pennsylvania Turnpike was opened to traffic on October 1, 1940. Built using the right-of-way and unfinished tunnels of the never completed South Pennsylvania Railroad, it was a supreme achievement of civil engineering. The new highway immediately captured the public's imagination and proved to be an unqualified success. Motorists flocked from around the country to drive on the new "superhighway," and it became a tourist destination in and of itself. But along with that success were planted the seeds of its eventual fall from grace. Under-engineered, poorly maintained, and the victim of premature obsolescence, the highway became the object of public scorn in little more than a generation. Only since the turn of the 21st century were real efforts made to change that perception.