George Chadwick could not think of a better introduction to the Cumberland Valley.
The future leader of the local chamber of commerce first arrived in Carlisle in 1906. One of his goals right away was to take the Trolley to Holly and visit the popular summer resort.
“That ride, through fertile fields, past old stone farm houses and huge barns to a neat village,” he wrote in a letter published decades later. “The line ended at a little park where I walked beside the stream through the woods to a pretty mountain lake.”
The park drew visitors from as far away as Philadelphia to bask in a natural form of air-conditioning. “The combination of the narrow gap and the mountain stream made the temperature many degrees cooler than the sweltering valley,” George Diffenderfer told The Sentinel in February 1989.
That year, the newspaper published a special edition detailing life in Cumberland County during the early 20th century. Diffenderfer was 82 at the time and the author of what he called a personal “compilation of nostalgia” titled “I Believe in Yesterday.”
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“During the stinking hot summers, Holly Park provided not only a change of scenery but also allowed the sweating natives to drop their respective body heats considerably,” he said. “This phenomena coupled with Pat’s amusements caused the trolley company’s business to boom for some 15 years.”
The “Pat” he was referring to was Harrisburg entrepreneur Patricio Russ who opened the trolley park in 1901 shortly after he completed the Holly Trolley line. Russ leased land between what is now the Holly Inn and what was once a paper mill just beyond the gap in the mountain. There, he built a dance pavilion, a bandstand, a restaurant and a network of picnic spots, flower gardens and footpaths.
Three years later, in 1904, Russ leased more land that included an artificial lake created by the paper mill’s dam. This attraction offered park visitors the opportunity to rent a canoe.
“Pat’s amusements” included picnic tables, a boathouse and bathing facilities. There was also a roller coaster called a “Kelly Slide” on the present site of the Deer Lodge.
The coaster was shut down in 1913 after a man was thrown to his death while the car was moving through a tight turn, Diffenderfer said. As the story goes, the man leaned out of the car to tell two women riding in the car ahead that if they stayed on the coaster he would pay for another ride.
The charter to build the trolley line between downtown Carlisle and Mount Holly Springs was filed with the State Department on June 27, 1900, by a group of local businessmen. The route took passengers from South Hanover Street, along the present-day Holly Pike to the southern limits of Mount Holly Springs.
Passengers disembarked the trolley near the present-day Deer Lodge. From there, park visitors could travel up the mountain road that connects to the lodge parking lot.
For years, borough native Robert Murray collected photographs from the bygone days of Mount Holly Springs. His collection includes snapshots of ladies sitting at picnic tables, baseball games, food spread out on tables and musicians playing to the crowds.
“It was a big deal,” Murray said about the trolley park. “It was the place where the rich and affluent came to relax and recuperate.”
The park became so popular for family reunions, Sunday school picnics and Granger events, people were encouraged to sign up early to book a date. Harvest Home picnics held in August drew thousands of people to Mount Holly Springs and the park became the host site of the first Ferris wheel in Cumberland County.
At one point, free public concerts were held every Sunday in a dance pavilion that measured roughly 80 feet long by 40 feet wide and sported one of the finest maple floors in south-central Pennsylvania. Different kinds of dances were held depending on the day of the week.
Some details on the history of the Holly Trolley Park are included in the booklet “A Picturesque View of Mount Holly Springs,” which was published in 1973 in celebration of the borough’s centennial.
That booklet said Tuesday was the night for reels and waltzes while Saturday was for polkas and jigs.
As a promotional tool, the Carlisle and Mount Holly Railway published a “Trolley to Holly” travel pamphlet advertising the features of the park.
The quality of the drinking water was a selling point that was reportedly recommended by prominent doctors. “Natural springs are scattered all over the park and are noted for their medicinal qualities,” the pamphlet reads. “Some contain iron, and all are clear, cold and sparkling at all seasons in the year.”
Famous Firsts of Cumberland County: 12 pivot points in history
Famous Firsts of Cumberland County Day One: 1752 – First Communion in the New World in Silver Spring Township
New Kingstown in Silver Spring Township was the host site of the first worship service of the Scots Covenanters faith in the New World.
The Covenanters predate the Presbyterian Church of Scotland as a Protestant group with Calvinistic principles founded in 1638, according to an article published in the winter 1992 edition of the journal Cumberland County History.
The faith came over to America where, on Aug. 21, 1752, a nine-hour communion service was held in an outdoor chapel on ground owned by the widow of Joseph Junkin, the first settler of what is now New Kingstown.
Junkin once owned a farm that straddled County Down and County Antrim in Northern Ireland. He left the old country around 1736 and settled for a time in Chester County where he married a Scottish woman named Elizabeth Wallace. The couple moved to 500 acres in newly established Cumberland County.
There they developed a farm near Stoney Ridge in present-day Silver Spring Township where Elizabeth became the caretaker of a chapel that eventually became known as “Widow Jenkins Tent.” Rev. John Cuthbertson led the communion service that drew 250 of the faithful to that first gathering of Scots Covenanters.
The Junkins had a son named Joseph Jr. who fought in the Revolutionary War battle of Brandywine and was later ordained a Covenanter minister, the journal article reads. Among the offspring of Joseph Jr. were 16 ministers and 15 ruling elders of the faith, but perhaps the most famous was Rev. Dr. George Junkins, first president of Lafayette College.
George Junkins had a daughter named Eleanor, who married Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, who became a famous Confederate general.
Famous Firsts of Cumberland County Day Two: 1775 - First Colonel of U.S. Army
William Thompson wore many hats, but his most significant role was as the first colonel of the fledgling U.S. Army.
An Irish immigrant with ties to Carlisle, he was a soldier during the French and Indian War, a surveyor of Pennsylvania’s western frontier and an early lawmaker from newly created Bedford County.
The brother-in-law of George Ross, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Thompson supplied meat to garrisons manning the line of outposts from Carlisle to Pittsburgh. His regular shipments of cattle and hogs helped to establish frontier trade. He invested in the iron industry and became a judge in Westmoreland County.
Within 18 months of him taking the bench in January 1774, fortunes changed for Thompson and the original 13 colonies. A divide with England erupted into violence in Massachusetts prompting the start of the Revolutionary War.
In mid-June 1775, the Continental Congress appointed George Washington commander-in-chief of ground forces and agreed to raise 10 companies of riflemen to dispatch to Boston. Thompson organized and commanded a battalion from Pennsylvania that provided six of these original units to the Army of the United Colonies, a predecessor to the Continental Army.
On June 25, 1775, Congress issued a commission naming Thompson the first colonel of what would become the U.S. Army. Forces under his command helped in the defense of Boston following the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Later, Thompson led a group of Pennsylvania sharpshooters who drove back the first group of British soldiers landing in New York City. This earned Thompson the rank of brigadier general.
In March 1776, he led 2,000 men during the ill-fated invasion of Canada. Following the Battle of Three Rivers, Thompson surrendered his command on June 9 and the British imprisoned him until Nov. 7, 1780.
At that point, Thompson was exchanged for a German general captured at the Battle of Saratoga. Thompson returned to the “Soldier’s Retreat,” his country estate in North Middleton Township. He died less than a year later on Sept. 3, 1781, at age 45. Thompson was buried in the Old Graveyard between East South Street and Cemetery Avenue in Carlisle.
For years, members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians have placed a wreath at Thompson’s grave. The organization is based on the principles of friendship, unity and Christian charity. Local members raised the money for a new headstone carved from Irish marble.
Famous Firsts of Cumberland County Day Three: 1777 - First among namesakes of Cumberland County history
For much of its history, Carlisle has served as a strategic transportation hub with strong military ties.
In its early days as a British outpost, the town was a vital supply depot in the defense against Indian attacks on the frontier. It was from Carlisle that Brig. Gen. John Forbes launched his expedition in July 1758 that forced the French to abandon Fort Duquesne.
While much of the early fighting of the Revolutionary War took place in New York and New England, the manufacture and repair of weapons and the production of gunpowder was concentrated in Philadelphia. But that thinking changed during the fall of 1776 after the Continental Army was defeated in New York and the threat to Philadelphia intensified.
In December 1776, Congress authorized the construction of a major logistics base in Carlisle that came to be known as the Public Works at Washingtonburg. By the following spring, the operation was manufacturing cannon of various calibers, cannonballs and horse-drawn vehicles to mount artillery and haul ammunition.
But Washingtonburg had other functions during the Revolutionary War. A group of coopers had a shop to make barrels and casks for the Department of Military Stores to hold powder and for the Commissary Department to hold whiskey and provisions of pork, beef and other supplies preserved with salt. Washingtonburg was also the site of a military hospital, a repair facility for muskets, a recruiting station of regular army regiments and a military court that held trials for deserters, spies and other military-related cases where the sentence upon conviction was often death.
The Army also opened its first school at Washingtonburg where it trained artillerists on the use, repair and maintenance of cannon. This was the first in a long line of education institutions at Carlisle Barracks that included the Army Cavalry School of Practice, the Medical Field Service School, the Army Information School, the School of Government of Occupied Areas, the Adjutant Generals School, the Chaplain School, the Military Police School, the Army Security Agent School and the present-day Army War College.
Following their defeat at Saratoga in October 1777, the British intensified their campaign to draw American forces away from the main army by inciting the Indians on the frontier to attack settlers. This campaign led to a repeat of the same kind of atrocities that terrorized colonists during the French and Indian War and the Pontiac War. Washingtonburg proved vital in supplying the garrisons of militia units called up to defend frontier outposts. Products made at the logistics base also helped to reequip the Continental Army during the difficult winter at Valley Forge in 1777-78.
For six years, the tradesmen at Washingtonburg kept hope alive despite Indian raids on supply lines. By 1780, the Carlisle area had peaked as a provider of military supplies. Economic conditions combined with counterfeiting by the British caused skyrocketing inflation that made it difficult for the Continental Army to obtain even the most basic necessities. By late 1781, the Public Works ceased to be a major supply center and by May 1784, Congress ordered Washingtonburg to close.
Famous Firsts of Cumberland County Day Four: 1785 — First newspaper west of Susquehanna River
It was a rather bold name for a weekly newspaper published on the fringe of what passed for civilization in late 18th century Pennsylvania.
The Carlisle Gazette and Western Repository of Knowledge had a brief run until its owner, George Kline, changed the name to Kline’s Carlisle Weekly Gazette.
Much of the history of this newspaper can be found in the book, “Early Publications of Carlisle,” housed in the library of the Cumberland County Historical Society.
Kline emigrated from Germany and settled in Carlisle. He started up the newspaper in August 1785 and continued to publish the Gazette until 1817. Back then, printers eked out a living by publishing the organ of some group or political party.
After 10 to 12 years, Kline attained so much political influence in Cumberland County that he served as register and recorder from 1795 to 1804. By that time, he was secretary of the standing committee of county Republicans. But his political fortunes changed in 1805 when the party was split into two factions by disagreements over the statewide platform.
Kline supported the Democratic-Republicans drawing the ire of Constitutional-Republicans who started their own newspaper, the Cumberland Register, in response to the political leanings of the Gazette. Using editorials loaded with vitriol, the Constitutional-Republicans made Kline out to be a villain. But Kline survived the turmoil within the party and served again as county register and recorder from 1809 to 1816.
Prior to Kline’s Gazette, local residents had to rely on Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, for news. Even then, most early newspapers were four-page weeklies filled with articles clipped from foreign or metropolitan American newspapers, usually placed on the first and second pages. The speeches of state governors and U.S. presidents were reproduced verbatim.
The third page carried ads and what little local news was reported. Most of the time, the coverage consisted of birth and death notices along with local election returns or predictions. Back then, crime reports from across the country generated the most sensation. Events like the opening of a new stage line to Baltimore were done either as a news item or an editorial. For political comment, the editors relied on letters sent in by party enthusiasts using a pen name.
For years, Kline operated a print shop out of the stone building at 152-154 W. High St. In December 2013, that building was found to be eligible for placement on the Cumberland County Register of Historic Places. It has since been listed.
Famous Firsts of Cumberland County Day Five: 1825 - Founder of color printing in America
Once upon a time, books had no color, only black and white illustrations.
In America, that changed in 1825, when a print shop in Carlisle published a new version of the Hoch-Deutsches Abc (High German ABC), a religious primer used to teach children the alphabet in parish schools before public education was instituted.
The lead tradesman in the production of the primer was a German immigrant and entrepreneur named Gustav Samuel Peters who first experimented with color printing in Carlisle before perfecting his technique in Harrisburg. His story is documented in the book, “Gustav Samuel Peters & His Publishing House,” located in the archives of the Cumberland County Historical Society.
While the new version was similar to ABC books published by other printers, Peters and his business partner, Johann Moser, made a significant innovation by printing the eight-page illustrated alphabet in color.
“The coloration was simple, just red and yellow, but it is the very first book with color-printed illustrations by America’s first successful color printer,” the book reads. “His color process at this time followed a basic pattern: print in black first; let the ink dry; and in two additional impressions, print yellow and then red.”
Hoch-Deutsches Abc opened with the alphabet in upper and lower case letters followed by word lists that were used to teach spelling. The pictorial alphabet matches words and images with poetic text while the last half of the primer contains a series of readings and religious lessons along with a multiplication table.
Peters was born near Dresden, Germany, on Jan. 15, 1793. After receiving a basic education, he served in the army during the Napoleonic Wars and afterward learned the printing trade in Leipzig. Peters moved to America in 1820 and settled in Baltimore to be near his older brother Christian.
While there, he worked for a foundry that cast the metal type used in printing presses. By January 1822, Peters was advertising his own business in Baltimore producing type and ornaments. By the summer of 1823, he had moved to Carlisle where he formed the partnership with Moser, an Austrian immigrant.
The partners opened a print shop on what is now High Street just east of the St. John’s Episcopal Church on the Square. There, they developed contacts with an already established network of commercial printers throughout south-central Pennsylvania along with the German-language press of the region.
From the start, the partners focused their marketing efforts on the large population of ethnic Germans who were dealing with a cultural shift that made English the preferred language. Moser and Peters knew their best chance of success was to serve as a leading bilingual press in the region.
The 1825 premiere of the ABC book ushered in future success. It became a bestseller. But the first major project tackled by the partners was a German version of the New Testament that consisted of over 500 pages with 12 illustrations.
“The man hours needed would have been tremendous,” the book reads. “Each line had to be set letter by letter and each page composed line by line. Then a stereotype plate needed to be produced by making a mold of the page and then casting the plate. The original types could then be freed up to create the next page by repeating the process.”
Moser and Peters operated their print shop and bookstore in Carlisle until 1827 when the enterprise relocated to Harrisburg. Soon after, the two men parted ways with Moser moving to Allentown to work as a druggist.
“At Carlisle, Peters established one of the first stereotype publishing houses in the United States and produced the first German New Testament to be so printed in America,” the book reads. “At Carlisle, Peters demonstrated his talents as an engraver and illustrator and made his first venture as a publisher of juvenile works. Above and beyond all this, Peters launched his color-printing career at Carlisle and so became ‘the founder of colored printing in America’ as Dr. William Egle [a biographer] described him.”
Famous Firsts of Cumberland County Day Six: 1836 — First chartered public school in Pennsylvania
It seemed a natural fit for the Carlisle area to be on the forefront of a new movement in education.
“New ideas always seem to come from the frontier,” said Kevin Wagner, a social studies teacher at Carlisle High School. “The town was so rich in history to begin with.”
In fall 2015, Wagner was a leader in the effort to organize events for 2016 to celebrate the 180th anniversary of Carlisle being the first chartered public school district in Pennsylvania.
For much of its early history, the town was on the edge of civilization as the seat of Cumberland County, a once vast territory that stretched to present-day Pittsburgh.
While the Free Public School Act of 1834 was opposed by boroughs in southern and south-eastern Pennsylvania, the idea of a level playing field in education found enough support locally to earn Carlisle such a distinction.
Prior to the act, only the wealthy and elite could afford to provide their children with a quality education. As early as the 1770s, progressive thinkers like Thomas Jefferson began to push for public education funded by taxes.
Many of the Founding Fathers thought of the general public as an unthinking mass that would reap the benefit of an organized school system, Wagner said. “They would be well-educated voters who would then put in place the right people to make decisions for our country.”
Jefferson’s election as president in 1800 brought with it a rise of nationalism and the notion that public education seemed the next logical step as a great unifier of the country, Wagner said.
But the act faced opposition from aristocrats who thought that only well-born people should be entitled to a quality education. Meanwhile, German-speaking communities were worried children enrolled in free public schools may lose touch with their native language and culture.
The act’s supporters included progressive thinkers among the Methodist and Presbyterian faiths who had a mindset for social justice, Wagner said. The movement found a local champion in James Hamilton Jr., a Carlisle native who graduated from Dickinson College in 1812 and was a trustee from 1824 to 1833.
Documents show that Hamilton was active in promoting the Free Public School Act and was a leader among the residents working to set up a local school system from spring 1835 to when the charter was granted in August 1836 and beyond into its formative years.
“Hamilton was the author of the practical plans for carrying the law into effect in the borough of Carlisle,” Wagner said. Specifically, Hamilton helped to establish the first curriculum, select the first textbooks, draft the first grading system and develop the first disciplinary code for the Carlisle district.
Aside from being an organizer and long-time school board member, Hamilton played a key role in the founding of the Hamilton Library Association, which later became the Cumberland County Historical Society.
Carlisle school district became Carlisle Area School District in 1954 when it merged with other systems adjoining the borough. Today, the district consists of the boroughs of Carlisle and Mount Holly Springs and the townships of Dickinson and North Middleton.
Famous Firsts of Cumberland County Day Seven: 1838 - First sleeper train car in America
Philip Berlin was on the eastbound train to Philadelphia when he talked to the weary traveler.
The person had just spent 36 hours on a stagecoach from points west of Pittsburgh to Chambersburg to hitch a ride on the Cumberland Valley Railroad, of which Berlin was the supervising manager.
The traveler suggested the railroad provide a car with sleeping facilities. This brief encounter inspired the development of the Chambersburg as probably the first sleeper car put into service anywhere in America. In his book about the railroad, Paul Westhaeffer described the innovation.
The Chambersburg had a central aisle that ran the length of the car with partitions that divided the chestnut interior into four compartments. The first compartment contained several pairs of reversible transverse seats. The second and third compartments were sleeping quarters for men and were each fitted with six bunks, three along each side of the car.
The lower bunk was stationary and served as a seat cushion during the day. The middle bunk was hinged to the wall and hung down during the day to form the seat back. The upper bunk was hinged to the wall and swung up during the day for storage at a forty-five angle with the wall. The fourth compartment of the Chambersburg was reserved for women and was separated from the rest by a door with a lock. It only had a set of lower bunks along with a water closet in one corner.
Though there was no extra charge for the sleeper car service, the priority on bunks went to eastbound travelers. Heat came from an iron stove in the middle of the car while light was provided by candles. Two conductors took turns keeping watch over the passengers and enforcing company rules against smoking, tobacco chewing and making noise.
Within two years, the number of stagecoach passengers using the sleeper car service doubled. The Chambersburg was so successful that the railroad converted an ordinary passenger coach into a second sleeper car named the Carlisle. Both cars served as day coaches on the return trip from Philadelphia to Chambersburg.
In the decades that followed, the Pullman Co. tried to protect its monopoly of the American sleeper car industry by suing companies for alleged infringements of its patents. Defendants in those lawsuits often sought out the testimony of Cumberland Valley Railroad officials and employees to prove that sleeper cars were in common use long before Pullman invented his version.
Cumberland Valley Railroad went through a period of expansion and acquisition through the mid- to late 19th century, reaching the Potomac River and Shenandoah Valley by 1889. At its peak, the railroad employed about 1,800 people and served as the principal freight and passenger carrier through the valley until 1919 when it was absorbed by the larger Pennsylvania Railroad.
Famous Firsts of Cumberland County Day Eight: 1872 - First version of the telephone
The tonal quality was so distinctive, the boy could have been standing in the room, but instead he was two flights down in the cellar of the workshop in Lower Allen Township.
Michael Smyser was on the witness stand, recalling that moment from 1872 when he became a true believer in the technical know-how of Daniel Drawbaugh, the Wizard of Eberly’s Mill.
The inventor had invited Smyser to a demonstration of a forerunner of the modern telephone years before Alexander Graham Bell filed his official patent in 1876.
Drawbaugh started by having the boy sing the hymn, “Don’t you want to be a Christian while you’re young?” into the transmitter of the talking machine. Smyser could hear the lyrics clearly.
The Wizard then had the child count to five in a whisper. Again, the voice came out of the mechanism.
It was 1886 and Smyser was among the witnesses who testified on behalf of the People’s Telephone Co. before the U.S. Circuit Court of the Southern District of New York.
Drawbaugh had sold the firm his rights to the talking machine for $5,000 in cash and an undisclosed amount of company stock. The American Bell Telephone Co. promptly sued, claiming that the People’s Telephone Co. had violated Bell’s patent.
Numerous Cumberland County residents told the court they saw various models of telephones in Drawbaugh’s workshop going back as far as 1864. There was reason to believe the tinkerer had developed an acoustic telephone in 1866 that had a teacup as a transmitter and mustard can as a receiver.
None of this surprised the neighbors. Drawbaugh had a knack for invention going back to childhood. Born on July 14, 1827, he was from a long line of machinists and mechanics.
In his lifetime, Drawbaugh received about 70 patents for such devices as an automatic boiler feeder, a stave jointing machine, a steam injector, an automatic fire alarm, a coin sorter, a folding lunch box, a mowing machine and a paper bag folder. He designed a clock that ran off the Earth’s electrical current and a pneumatic stone drill that workers used in the construction of the Library of Congress.
But Drawbaugh lacked the marketing and business savvy to richly profit from any of his inventions, especially “the talking machine” which he regarded as more of a plaything or novelty. He kept no detailed notes on the development of the telephone. In the end, Drawbaugh lacked convincing proof.
On March 19, 1888, the U.S. Supreme Court decided 4-3 that Bell, not Drawbaugh, was the original inventor of the telephone. That decision removed the last significant challenge to the 1876 patent, clearing the way for Bell to develop a powerful monopoly. But county residents saw it differently. They thought that Drawbaugh was the victim of big business and fast-talking lawyers. There was even speculation that covert agents of Bell had stolen the design schematics from the Wizard’s workshop.
Poverty hounded Drawbaugh to the end of his days. Eventually, he closed his workshop and moved his operation to Camp Hill. On Nov. 13, 1911, Drawbaugh was hosting a group of reporters and local residents at his new workshop. The Wizard was excited to be close to perfecting his latest invention, a wireless burglar alarm. Just then, he suffered a stroke died a short time later.
Famous Firsts of Cumberland County Day Nine: 1909 - First Christmas savings club in the financial world
Three wise men gave Merkel Landis the gift of innovation one snowy Saturday evening in December 1909.
The trio of shoe factory workers came into his office at the Carlisle Trust Co., where Landis worked as treasurer.
“They asked me if they could open an account in their joint names for the purpose of depositing cash each week,” Landis said in the 1935 edition of the Magazine of Sigma Chi.
“They proposed to collect [the money] from fellow workers,” Landis said. “Their idea was to start with one to five cents a week and increase the deposit by the same amount every week for the next fifty weeks and then distribute the funds just before Christmas. The account was opened and in the following week the Carlisle Trust Co. announced to the public the opening of its Christmas Savings Club.”
In display ads published in The Sentinel, the bank explained that the club would start the first week of January 1910 and would allow members to gradually build a balance by making weekly deposits of any amount until the week before Christmas. The total amount deposited would then earn 3% interest right before the distribution.
Since the Christmas club idea could not be protected by copyright or patent, it quickly spread throughout the financial world and became an accepted practice among banks.
By 1965, 15 million Americans were Christmas club members with total savings estimated at $1.8 billion, according to Frank A. Mosher Jr., president of Security Savings Systems of New Cumberland. Mosher was a guest speaker on the Pennsylvania Story, a history series produced by WHP-580, a talk radio station in Harrisburg.
Famous Firsts of Cumberland County Day 10: 1920 - Newville hosts first state police training academy in the U.S.
History came to Newville on Feb. 9, 1920, with the announcement that the town had been selected as the host site of a training academy.
The Pennsylvania State Police signed a three-year lease with landlord George Frey, owner of the Big Spring Hotel at Big Spring Avenue and Walnut Street. Soon, the first floor was converted into office space, a gymnasium, dining facilities and a recreation room while the upstairs guest rooms became the sleeping quarters for recruits.
By March, the first class of 30 men arrived in town to begin two months of instruction. Nearly all of them were Army or Navy veterans of World War I eager to put their training in the service to use in civilian jobs. Courses taught at Newville include criminal procedure, criminal law, criminal reporting and investigation, traffic control, mob and crowd control, state geography and self-defense.
Legal courses touched on laws governing motor vehicles, fish and game and forestry. In addition, each recruit was assigned a horse and given instructions on cavalry drill, care of the animal and stable hygiene. The hotel’s 10 acres provided ample space for stables, a horse corral and a drill field.
A badge of civic pride among local residents, the academy lasted only three years. On March 1, 1923, the state police closed the academy in Newville shifting it first to Fort Indiantown Gap and then to Hershey, its current location. The hotel building in Newville was eventually demolished to make room for the Hershey Chocolate Co. creamery, which later closed.
There is reason to believe the state police academy at Newville may have been the first of its kind in the nation. Of the 50 states, only 45 had joined the union by February 1920. Of the 45, only Connecticut, Idaho, Michigan, New York, Virginia and West Virginia had official uniformed state police agencies before Pennsylvania. According to online research, none of those states had established an official state police training academy before the one in Newville.
Famous Firsts of Cumberland County Day 11: 1923 - First market in the Giant Co. supermarket chain
The Giant Co. supermarket chain can trace its origins back to the Carlisle Meat Market, a two-man butcher shop that opened in 1923 at 18 N. Hanover St. in downtown Carlisle. The Sentinel included the origin story in an article published on June 4, 2000.
Founder David Javitch got his start in business from his father-in-law, a Russian immigrant turned entrepreneur named Yale Hervitz, who obtained a loan from a Middleton bank which he used to purchase beef cattle from Milton Hershey and to start a meat processing business. As part of his marriage agreement to Jean Hervitz, Javitch agreed to move from his native Cleveland to the Carlisle area.
In 1937, Javitch purchased a store in Lewistown, and named it the Giant Food Shopping Center, according to the company history on the Giant Co. website. That store offered customers dry goods and perishables under one roof, a new concept at the time.
Two years later, in 1939, Javitch converted his downtown Carlisle market into the first self-service grocery store in the area. Javitch had food markets operating in Shamokin and other central Pennsylvania communities when he opened a second Carlisle store in 1964 at the Carlisle Plaza on York Road, according to the news article.
That second store continued to operate until 1996 when the Giant supermarket on Spring Garden Street opened for customers. Most recently an Office Max, the second location was the first food store in Carlisle to offer both an in-store bakery and deli.
Meanwhile, in 1970, Giant acquired from a Mennonite family the Hagerstown-based market chain Martin’s Food Stores, which still operates under that name. Javitch died in 1974.
In 1981, Giant was sold to Royal Ahold, a worldwide food retailer based in the Netherlands.
During the early years of its operation, Giant had corporate offices in the Moose building in downtown Carlisle, but that space became too cramped. The first purpose-built headquarters building was constructed in 1972 in Middlesex Township. That location operated until 1998 when the offices were transferred to a new four-story building along the Carlisle Pike just outside Carlisle.
Today, Royal Ahold is known as Ahold Delhaize, with a website describing its international holdings. The Giant Co. has 30,000 employees supporting 190 stores across Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. Of those stores, 132 have pharmacies and 105 have fuel stations. There are also over 130 online pick-up and delivery hubs, according to the Ahold Delhaize website.
Famous Firsts of Cumberland County Day 12: 1940 - First segment of the America's first superhighway
It was just after midnight and the first 25 cars were lined up outside Carlisle to travel west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
One hundred or so people were on hand to witness the marvel of a four-lane $70 million concrete roadway that stretched from the vicinity of K Street to Pittsburgh.
By midday, vehicles were passing through the toll gate at the rate of one every two minutes. Those first drivers each received a multicolor brochure from the local chamber of commerce proclaiming Carlisle the “gateway to the west.”
It took less than 10 hours for the turnpike to have its first documented case of excessive speed based on the times stamped on the ticket. The Sentinel reported that the motorist drove the 78.5 miles from Bedford to Carlisle in 52 minutes for an average speed of 90 mph, almost double the recommended limit.
There was reason for caution. Up to that point, the turnpike had claimed the lives of 19 workers who constructed the east-west highway over the remains of the old South Penn Railroad. For its 75th anniversary in 2012, the Turnpike Commission posted an online history about the opening of this first section of highway.
The history says the mountain posed a barrier to Andrew Carnegie and William Vanderbilt, who were trying to build a railroad from Harrisburg west to Pittsburgh to compete with a more northerly route provided by the Pennsylvania Railroad. Half the road bed was completed and seven tunnels were partially excavated by the time Vanderbilt went broke in 1885.
Starting in 1910, the idea began to circulate about converting the abandoned railroad line into a road for motor vehicles. This gained traction with the support of trucking firms and the motoring public. In late 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw the proposal as an opportunity to employ workers out of a job due to the Great Depression.
The online history says then Pennsylvania Gov. George Howard Earle III signed a bill in 1937 to create the Turnpike Commission. Plans were developed calling for the construction of a 160-mile four-lane highway from Middlesex Township in Cumberland County to Irwin east of Pittsburgh.
Features of the new highway included two 12-foot travel lanes going in each direction with medians, berms, long entrance and exit ramps, banked curves and separated grade crossings.
With the support of the president, the project received $29 million in grants from the Works Progress Administration and $41 million in loans from the Reconstruction Finance Corp. The goal was to have the tolls pay back the money. On Oct. 27, 1938, officials broke ground near Newburg on the first 10-mile leg of the Carlisle-to-Pittsburgh segment.
At its peak, the trolley line had a car departing the Square in Carlisle every 30 minutes. The popularity of Mount Holly Park decreased as the use of automobiles increased and people started to leave the area for vacations and weekend trips. Trolley service in Carlisle and Mount Holly Springs ended the night of Dec. 1, 1930.
Joseph Cress is a reporter for The Sentinel covering education and history. You can reach him at jcress@cumberlink.com or by calling 717-218-0022.