Local Historia

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 the time were working on this project, each competing to see who could get the most efficient bulb to market first. The genius of Edison’s…

The Village of Lemont has distinguished itself in historic and cultural character over the years. It has been shaped not only by its geographical location, but by creative and caring Lemonters. The village would certainly not be what it is today without, well, the village.  Lemont (le mont, French for “the mountain”) is located in…

The storied history of America’s greatest pastime is littered with names that spark the imagination of all sports fans. Baseball legends like Ruth, Cobb, Robinson, and Mays elicit the romanticized view of baseball’s glory days, where kids would impersonate the Bronx Bomber calling his shot or try for an over-the-shoulder deep-fly grab on the street…

Hidden within a hillside in Benner Township are 19th-century beer vaults that once held and lagered barrels of Centre County’s finest. By the time the township was formed in 1853, the village of Roopsburg was thriving, in large part because of its brewery on Spring Creek. The brewery had a historic run from 1826 until…

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 for high-quality iron making in one location. Throughout the 1800s, towns would blossom into cities around furnaces and forges, connected by a spider web of…

If you enjoy learning about local history in Centre County, if you’re one to like historical photographs on social media, you’ve probably come across Vonnie Henninger. Almost every day, she posts on Facebook in Penns Valley Past and Present, Centre County Blogs, and her own personal page. Vonnie’s reach and impact over the years has been immeasurable.…

At 7 a.m. on a brisk February morning in 2006, the Bellefonte Fire Department was called to a structure fire at the historic Bush House in downtown Bellefonte. The 138-year-old building was ablaze with cause unknown, as firefighters attempted to quell the flames from the interior. Once the roof partially collapsed, however, safety became a…

At an auction in Milesburg, Benjamin Fehl bought a house dating back to the 1850s with the intention of restoring the home. When he realized the sagging and tilting house was irreparable, he stopped construction but did not give up.  Something about this ordinary home kept pulling Fehl back to Milesburg. His background in architecture…