I recently had a local geographic epiphany.
Nine years ago we moved from the east side of State College Borough to Ferguson Township west of the borough. Granted, I’m unhappy this placed us into the municipality with the highest resident earned income tax in the State College Area School District at 2.35% (remind me not to move into the Bald Eagle Area School District!), but sometimes you have to suffer a little financially to keep everyone in the family happy.
During those years we lived in the borough, I had a regular pattern of going downtown for various errands – the post office, athletic gear, the bank, takeout food and various other items. Going to “town” just became a habit. Ever since moving to the Foxpointe/Autumnwood neighborhoods off West College Avenue, I’ve maintained that habit. As a work-from-home consultant, it’s a good mental diversion to get out into the world every so often, and my tunnel-vision mind had a routine of places-to-go that I’ve just continued. Not to mention there was little to satisfy my working needs out here in the residential subdivision neighborhoods.
When I was leaving home to go on one of these regular excursions, I recalled that Kish Bank had just opened a new branch in Pine Grove Mills, only two miles and two red-lights from our house. As my primary purpose for this particular excursion was to make a few bank deposits, I decided to try out this new option and get some of Kish Bank’s famous customer service closer to home.
While sitting at the drive-through window I remembered that one of the other reasons I was out-and-about was I needed a new roll of stamps. And my single-minded focus was that I needed to get these stamps at the post office downtown, where I have been getting them for years. I thought to myself, “Well, it’s nice this Kish branch is here now, but that was two miles of driving in the wrong direction.” I silently chastised myself for this time-and-gas-wasting error.
And that’s when I had my geographic epiphany.
My brain suddenly wiped away more than a decade of Pavlovian driving – “go to town, you must go to town” – and thought, “Wait, Pine Grove Mills has a post office!”
I must apologize to the good people of Pine Grove Mills for what I’m about to say, but for me, Pine Grove Mills has always been someplace you went through to get somewhere else. Primarily for me it’s been to Stone Valley or Whipple Dam, but since moving to the west side of Happy Valley it’s also been the gateway to points south from our house – our map apps always choose the back roads of Route 26, U.S. 22 and U.S. 522 over I-99 or U.S. 322 when we’re going anywhere south.
Granted, my wife and I have eaten at The Naked Egg and Pine Grove Hall (plus I had a beverage or two there when it was the Old Oak Tavern – thank you James Hargreaves!), attended a party at the Lions Club and played family soccer on the fields behind Ferguson Township Elementary School, where my wife went to school as a child. But again, in the grand scheme of my life, it was just a pass-through.
Which was why the sudden realization that Pine Grove Mills had a post office was such a mind-altering experience. Probably half my trips “out” are primarily for the bank, post office, or both. I had been going to town like the proverbial salivating dog, but now I had a new, exciting and much closer option.
After what turned out to be a very pleasant customer experience in the Pine Grove Mills post office, I went home and thought for a bit about my epiphany. Out here on the west side we have recently experienced a small growth spurt – which as my wife will remind me, not all of us are happy about. There’s a new Sheetz to go with the Uni-Mart and everyone’s favorite Mexican food. And a Dollar General is planned for the lot next to the Sheetz. Meaning, although we’ve been the car lot capital of Happy Valley for a while (but really, how often do you buy a car?), we’re now getting places of commerce we would normally have to drive someplace else to get.
All of which piqued my interest in this little village to the west I’ve just been passing through for years. So I did some research and found out a few surprising things. According to the public-data aggregation website Data Commons (https://datacommons.org/), Pine Grove Mills is a good place to live.
Data Commons culls data from public websites such as the Census Bureau (www.census.gov), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (www.fbi.gov), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov), then synthesizes these different data sources and creates rankings from them. Of the 15 “places” in Centre County that Data Commons collects data on and ranks – Bellefonte, Boalsburg, Centre Hall, Houserville, Lemont, Milesburg, Park Forest Village, Penn Township, Philipsburg, Pine Grove Mills, Pleasant Gap, State College, Stormstown, Toftrees and Zion – Pine Grove Mills leads in a number of interesting characteristics.
At $60,375 a year, it has the highest median individual income of any of those places. It’s more than $10,000 a year higher than second-place Houserville at $50,301 a year, and significantly above last place State College’s $9,013 a year. Although we know that State College’s median income is skewed because a good portion of its population pays to be there rather than getting paid to be there. But Pine Grove Mills’ median income is also noteworthy as it’s the 15th highest out of the 994 places in the entire state of Pennsylvania.
Conversely, Pine Grove Mills ranks next-to-last in the percentage of its population below the poverty level with only 1.15%. Only Stormstown was better with 0.73%. Not coincidentally State College leads this statistic with 32.4% of its population below the poverty level.
In terms of general health, there is a ranking for the percentage of adults in not good physical condition, and Pine Grove Mills ties Park Forest Village for the second-lowest ranking with only 8.7% of adults in bad health. Lemont is the lowest at 8.6% (must be all that walking along a mountain), and Philipsburg comes in the worst at 15.1%.
As far as higher education goes, there is a ranking for the percentage of the population that has attained a master’s degree. Pine Grove Mills leads that list with 31.5% of its population having achieved that status. Milesburg finishes last on that list with 2.8%.
And what would a good place to live be without places to live? A ranking for the number of housing units per capita places Pine Grove Mills in a tie for second with Zion at 0.53 housing units per person. Philipsburg leads this list with 0.59 units, and State College and Stormstown finish lowest with 0.34 units.
Lastly, Pine Grove Mills also has the highest median age of any of those locations at 51.6 years of age. This is more than two years older than second-place Zion with a median age of 49.3, and more than double State College’s youngest-of-all median age of 21.5 years. Now, it could be questioned whether that ranking is a good thing or a bad thing, but in an area with over 40,000 college students, perhaps a little maturity is a good thing in a place you choose to call home.
All of which paints a completely different picture of Pine Grove Mills than I had ever considered. Here I was simply passing through on my way to somewhere else, when the best somewhere else happens to be right there. Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that my wife did not want me to write this column and spoil this best-kept secret, so please keep this on the down low. In any case, as for myself, I think I’ll be looking for reasons to spend a little more time in Pine Grove Mills from now on.
