“ The whole county is a continuous prospect of intensely picturesque scenery; surface mountainous, with ranges broken into innumerable, irregular spurs, indented by streams; from many hilltops views of the greater part of the county may be seen; the “Knobs,” its loftiest summit, is constantly in view, and the intermediate country, a panorama of natural beauty, ever changing in atmospheric effects; all the creeks, tributaries of the West Branch of the Susquehanna, have scenery which beggars description, a veritable feast for the painter, poet, and romancer ”

“ The obvious picturesqueness of Philadelphia is in the Pennsylvania Hospital, Independence Hall, Christ Church, Old Swedes’, St. Peter’s. Down in lower Spruce Street and neighboring streets are beautiful colonial houses, stately doorways, decorative ironwork, dormer windows, great gables, facing each other at street corners in harmonious proportions. In not another town were the old streets so well worth keeping unchanged. The early Friends, when they left England, packed up, with their “Liberty of Conscience,” the love of beauty in architecture and the money to pay for it. ”

“ In the days following Braddock’s defeat in 1755, this region became the arena in which the red warrior of the forests and the white frontiersman fought to the death. Not a valley, creek, nor mountain range, site of modern city or town, but what was the scene of thrilling events, some of which influence the world for all time. Early settlers were Scotch-Irish, on the Aughwick, and in the great cove. Chief industries, iron ore, bituminous coal, and agriculture. Dickey’s Mountain, in the southeast, is rich in hematite and fossil ores. ”

“ Samuel Semple of Titusville, during their presidency of the “State Federation of Pennsylvania Women,” for the use of tourists, is arranged chronologically, beginning with the counties first formed; towns in each county follow each other in location as closely as possible. Works of good art in the state have been catalogued, together with a story of most interesting pioneer history, that each one of the sixty-seven counties should have a chapter in the book; those that have no art have the Indian trails and thrilling experiences of our first brave pathfinders. ”

“ John Chrysostom, corner Twenty-eighth Street and Susquehanna Avenue, almost an exact copy of St. Stephen’s Church, London, designed by Sir Christopher Wren; Renaissance, granite; architects, Bailey & Bassett; adapted to a square lot, the interior shows form of Greek cross, with inner octagon; rosettes and decorations of the dome are graceful and beautiful; columns, placed on rather high pedestals, are Vermont marble, with very beautiful veining, surmounted by Corinthian capitals: the church is almost entirely white, with no stained glass, and gives an impression of complete harmony. ”

“ Chief industries are agriculture and mining. A mountain country of remarkable beauty, largely forests, although glades, or natural meadows, about the headwaters of streams are numerous and extensive enough to have the name, “The Glades,” applied to the whole county; standing on the summit of either mountain range that bounds it, east and west, one gets a view of unsurpassed beauty; at distance of twenty miles the other stands out in bold outline, with intervening country of hill, valley, forest, glade, and numerous watercourses, which find their way to the Ohio, Susquehanna, and Potomac rivers ”

“ Scenery throughout is very beautiful; the twelve mile stretch of State highway through the famous long Lewistown Narrows, gives glimpses of the Juniata, the peerless little river of more song and romance than any other in America, made famous by Mrs. Sullivan’s song, “The Beautiful Blue Juniata,” telling the love story of Alfarata, the roving Indian girl; the space between the mountains is barely wide enough to contain the highway, canal, river, and railroad. Mountains slope one thousand feet and are popular hunting grounds for bear and wild turkeys ”

“ William Maclay, first United States Senator from Pennsylvania, built his stone residence, still standing, on the river bank in northwest part of town; the city plan is like that of Philadelphia, and many of the streets have the Philadelphia names; Market Street faces a public square between Second and Third Streets, known as Cameron Park, in which is the Civil War Soldiers’ Monument, granite shaft surmounted by a life-size, granite statue of Colonel James Cameron, who organized a regiment from this county. ”

“ This is an Art Club in effect, as well as name; rooms are artistically furnished in beautiful color harmonies, and embellished with choice bronzes bought at our Academy exhibitions, and fine porcelains. Students are educated in art, for the practical good it will do them, and cultural growth; all are day workers. The faculty is composed of well known artists; classes include portrait and still life painting; illustration and sculpture. From this school have gone some of the most original workers in the schools of the Academy of the Fine Arts. Landscape classes are in session during the summer. ”

“ The Indian villages were the homes of some of the most noted warriors of the aboriginal tribes, and sites of important treaty conferences between them and the colonial governments of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Chief industries are coal and steel. Yards of the Pennsylvania Railroad at Conway, said to be the largest in the world; the famous glass factories of Rochester and Monaca, are at junction of the Ohio and Beaver rivers. Four bridges are here, including that of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, a massive structure of fine engineering skill, 90 feet above the river. ”

“ Along the Guitonville road toward Marienville, on a high plateau with two miles of straight, natural, firm roadbed, is Job’s Pinnacle, from which is a fine distant view of Tionesta Valley; a mile farther, Pisgah, also a pinnacle, is on Salmon Creek Hill; the whole hill is composed of magnetic iron ore, on a sandstone foundation, above shale and slate stratification; in surveying, the magnetic attraction is so great the needle is paralyzed; it is a mass of rocks; another magnetic iron ore hill is Bald Bluff, where lightning strikes freely. ”

“ While all the world is deploring the loss of the magnificent old glass in the cathedrals of Europe, here the art of fused glass has been raised to such perfection that their great windows have all that the old work has, of depth, glow, and shadow, under modern conditions of stability; among their notable windows are, the Sanctuary Window, West Point Military Chapel, New York; Proctor Hall, the Graduate School, Princeton, New Jersey, great west window; many in the churches and public buildings of Pittsburgh, Chicago and elsewhere ”

“ Streams that flow into the Potomac River are largely fed by splendid limestone springs. From the Susquehanna to the Ohio River the scenery cannot be surpassed for picturesque beauty; far sweeping valleys, rugged mountains, grand forests, form a constantly changing panorama. It is both beautiful and historic. The Chambersburg and Pittsburgh Turnpike, built in 1814-15, now the Lincoln Highway, was first an old Indian trail from Harrisburg, through Fort Louden, Clinton County, and westward to Bedford, crossing the center of the county. ”

“ A fine Mennonite meeting house, lately built, is here; on the grounds is huge boulder, marked by the Lancaster County Historical Society. This is the richest agricultural county in the United States, of unexampled fertility; the tourist is impressed with the mammoth barns of this region; luxuriant crops of tobacco are of special note. The Conestoga River, with its affluents, drains an area of 315 square miles, it is crossed by many bridges. On the border of the city limits is a nine arch stone bridge, built by Abraham Witmer in 1800, which leads the Lincoln Highway over the Conestoga. ”

“ The oldest church in the county is in Forty Fort, not far from the site of the old fort, interior of the building remains as it was when erected in 1808; in the burial ground are many old graves, with headstones bearing quaint inscriptions. Other historic places marked by tablet or monument are, site of a bridge built by the engineers of General John Sullivan’s army in the spring of 1779, on the banks of Ten Mile Run, northwest of Bear Creek Village, marked by boulder with tablet. ”

“ Milford, county seat, population 768, was laid out by John Biddis, 1793, in squares, after pattern of Philadelphia; it rests high above the Delaware River, overlooking a valley of myriad hues that have made the town notable for its quaint, umbrageous beauty and repose. Pioneer settlers were substantial people whose descendants still reside here. It is a popular resort for trout fishing in the spring, vacationists in the summer, and for deer and bird hunting in the fall. Courthouse, brick, French design, built in 1873, in center of town, facing the public square ”

“ In the limited space of the narrow valley, land is too precious to be used except for buildings, but the hills are so magnificent that they look to them for the necessary beauty; Flagstaff Park has natural effect. The first railroad in Carbon County and one of the oldest in the United States, is the famous Switchback, a gravity road, extending from Mauch Chunk to Summit Hill, opened in 1832, for bringing coal from the mines to the canal ”

“ Is the center of one of the richest bituminous coal and natural gas districts in the world. Oil fields lie mainly in basins of Allegheny and Ohio Rivers. Staple manufactures are iron, steel and glass. The history of Allegheny County presents a greater variety of startling incidents than almost any other portion of the state. Mound builders were primeval inhabitants, site of ancient fortifications are on Chartier’s Creek, eight miles from Pittsburgh, county seat, second city in size in the state, on site of Shannopin’s Town, chief of about twenty families of Delawares ”

“ On the bank of the river, near the Pittston Ferry bridge, in the borough of West Pittston, is a small monument marking site of Jenkins’ Fort, destroyed by the British and Indians July, 1778. The Battle of Wyoming, with the subsequent massacre, was one of the important events of the Revolutionary War, as it led to the sending of the Sullivan Expedition in 1779 into the country of the Six Nations, whereby the power of their confederacy was forever broken. White Haven Township was the place of Sullivan’s army encampment, in 1779. ”

“ For more than one hundred years there has been no change in the general style of architecture; before that time, the earliest meeting-house in Philadelphia, at Second and Market Streets, was built with a central lantern or cupola; probably copied from a meeting-house of similar form in Burlington, New Jersey, built, 1682; where the yearly meeting for New Jersey and Pennsylvania was first held: later it met alternately at Philadelphia and Burlington, but since 1750 in Philadelphia, Fourth and Arch Streets. ”

“ Leading industries, agriculture, iron, tobacco. Three solid hills of rich, magnetic iron ore have been worked for over 170 years, and still seem inexhaustible; they require no mining, simply to be quarried; down to the present these mines have produced more iron ore than any other single iron ore property in the United States. In 1737, Peter Grubb became sole owner of these ore hills; he built Hopewell forge on Hammer Creek, and the large blast furnace was named for Cornwall, his ancestral home in England. The property was inherited by his two sons, who were colonels in the Revolutionary War ”

“ A large boulder, with memorial tablet, marks Shikellimy’s grave; it was placed, in 1915, by the Fort Augusta Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Pennsylvania Historical Commission; the boulder is of very close grained rock, of the kind used by the Indians for their hardest and strongest implements; it was quarried near Wapwallopen, about forty miles above Sunbury; this rock boulder, from our local mountains, will resist the forces of nature for centuries to come, as it has done for ages past. ”

“ Lehigh coal is the hardest known anthracite in the world. Other mineral productions are iron, slate, and mineral paint. Wire rope was first invented in Mauch Chunk.
The first settlers were Moravian missionaries who, in 1746, purchased 200 acres on the north side of Mahoning Creek above its mouth, for converted Mohican Indians; each Indian family possessed their own lot of ground and Gnadenhütten became a town; the church stood in the valley, with the Indian houses forming a crescent on one side, on the other side was the missionary’s house and burial ground. ”