In 1759, Gen. James Potter reached the top of Mount Nittany, looked out at the view of Penns Valley and remarked that he had “discovered an empire.”
Potter’s empire soon sprouted several villages, from Centre Hall eastward to Spring Mills, Millheim, Aaronsburg and Woodward. Brush Valley, running parallel to Penns Valley, included Madisonburg, Rebersburg and Livonia. These towns still exist today, with many of the original buildings that were erected 200 years ago also intact.
I was born in 1949, and grew up in Centre Hall. I have fond memories of growing up there.
In the 1950s and ’60s, American small towns were different than today, as was society itself. Back then, fathers drove the family car to their jobs, and mothers and children often remained at home. This necessitated businesses to be located within walking distance of the town’s homes.
During my childhood, Centre Hall was alive with commerce. There were three grocery stores, a drug store, a hardware store, five garages with gas pumps, a restaurant, a bank and a furniture store, all along Pennsylvania Avenue. Two of the garages had auto dealerships — Miller Motors sold Chevrolets and Hagan’s Garage sold Dodges.
Bill Fye’s Frosty Kup ice cream stand at Old Fort was a cool oasis for travelers and Penns Valley residents alike on hot summer days when very few cars had air-conditioning. This was where local teens hung out with friends, and many of them got their first jobs serving up ice cream and hot dogs at Fye’s.
I remember going to Millheim with my parents to shop at Nieman’s department store and Hosterman & Stover’s hardware store. They had everything you could possibly want in those times. The Millheim Theater was very popular with valley residents, and I saw my first movies there, circa 1956.
Kids in Centre Hall always had plenty of fun things to do, especially in summer. We all had bicycles and we rode them all over town. My friends and I often rode to the grocery stores for cold sodas in bottles, popsicles and candy bars. Rudy’s Restaurant had ice cream. Mabel Arney’s Drug Store had a large penny candy case, and we used to try her patience deciding what to buy with our nickels and dimes.
We didn’t get fat from all the sugar, because we were active all the time. There were no computers or video games, and television reception was by antenna, with most homes able to receive only two or three channels. So, none of us really became couch potatoes.
We had vacation Bible school to attend in the mornings during the first two weeks of summer vacation. The Firemen’s Parade and Carnival arrived in late July, and Grange Fair in late August.
Grange Park was the center of many town activities, hosting the carnival, Grange Fair and a town-wide Easter egg hunt, as well as Playground, a summer activities program for children.
There was an abandoned stone quarry at the east end of Wilson Street, near the train station, where some of us played in spite of parental warnings to stay away. My sons did the same thing 30 years later. The quarry was filled in and is now a housing development.
I started school in the fall of 1955, in a one-room schoolhouse in Centre Hill. Centre Hall Elementary School on Church Street had been damaged by high winds and was deemed unsafe, so the town kids were sent to the Millheim school on Penn Street. We lived just outside the borough, in Potter Township, so I went to the Centre Hill school.
There were three grades in one room, taught by Mrs. Royer. The building had no indoor plumbing — toilets were outhouses, and Mrs. Royer brought a large cooler of drinking water every day. Heat was from a coal stove, and I remember Mrs. Royer paddling a misbehaving classmate with a piece of kindling one day. That same year, my older sister was in the final class of the Centre Hall-Potter High School, which became the elementary school the following year when the new Penns Valley High School opened.
Our family got its first television when I was about 8 years old. It was a used black-and-white set that got two channels on an antenna. I watched cartoons, the Three Stooges, Captain Kangaroo and the Mickey Mouse Club. I saw the first televised debates in American history between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy in 1960. That same TV showed me more history in next decade, including assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, coverage of the Vietnam War and the moon landing in 1969.
Decades of passing time have changed Penns Valley, but it still retains its pleasant, rural agricultural personality, with scenic farmlands dotted with charming, tranquil villages. Most of the businesses of the past are gone, but some survive, and many new ones have appeared in recent years. Millheim, in particular has experienced a renaissance of sorts, sporting many new shops and stores, and community activities. Penns Valley is still a great place to live, and probably will be forever.
