Dustin Elder
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Local Historia: Edison, Electricity and Progress in Centre County
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In October 1879, the world changed forever. From his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory, Thomas Edison finished the first iteration of his newest invention: the incandescent lightbulb. Several inventors at […]
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Local Historia: Mining the Riches of Scotia
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The age of iron was ending. For over a century, the Juniata Iron region of central Pennsylvania had dominated the iron market. The geographic region combined all the essential ingredients […]
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Keep the Fires Burning: Eagle Iron Works and Curtin Village
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Combine iron ore, limestone, charcoal, and water power, and you have the ingredients necessary to produce one of the most significant materials of the industrial age: iron. Centre County was […]
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Green Gold: ‘The Prince of Loggers,’ Bellefonte’s John Ardell Jr., Was a Keystone of Pennsylvania’s Timber Market
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Covering 90 percent of Pennsylvania’s nearly 30 million acres, forests served as “green gold” to her early colonists. Timber provided stability to Pennsylvania’s economy, just as it did for the […]
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The Journey of James Potter: A British Officer Ascends Mt. Nittany and Spots a Fertile Valley Below
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This Local Historia column appears in the April 2021 issue of Town&Gown. “My God, Thompson, I have discovered an empire!” From his perch at the peak of McBride’s Gap on […]