Local Historia: Mining the Riches of Scotia

May 4, 2022Dustin Elder

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 […]

Keep the Fires Burning: Eagle Iron Works and Curtin Village

Community

August 29, 2021Dustin Elder

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 […]

Green Gold: ‘The Prince of Loggers,’ Bellefonte’s John Ardell Jr., Was a Keystone of Pennsylvania’s Timber Market

Columns

June 28, 2021Dustin Elder

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 […]

The Journey of James Potter: A British Officer Ascends Mt. Nittany and Spots a Fertile Valley Below

Columns

April 29, 2021Dustin Elder

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 […]