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Independence Hall is a U.S. national landmark located inside Philadelphia, on Chestnut Street between 5th and 6th Streets. Known primarily as the location where the Declaration of Independence was debated and adopted, the building was completed in 1753 as the Pennsylvania State House for the Province of Pennsylvania. It became the meeting place of the Second Continental Congress. The Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were both signed at Independence Hall.
Independence Hall is a red brick building, built between 732 and 1753, and designed in the Georgian style by Edmund Woolley and Andrew Hamilton, and built by Woolley. Its building was commissioned by the Pennsylvania colonial legislature and it was initially inhabited by the colonial government of Pennsylvania as their State House. (Read more...)Portal:Pennsylvania/Selected article/2
The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania is a railroad museum in Strasburg, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
The museum is located on the east side of Strasburg along Pennsylvania Route 741. It is administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission with the active support of the "Friends of the Railroad Museum".
The museum has more than 100 historic locomotives and railroad cars that chronicle American railroad history. An interactive display allows visitors to "take the throttle" on a simulated run in a real freight locomotive, climb aboard a caboose, inspect a 62-ton locomotive from underneath, view restoration activities via closed-circuit television, enjoy interactive educational programs, and more. The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania was created to provide a historical account of railroading in Pennsylvania by preserving rolling stock, artifacts, and archives of railroads and trolley companies of the Commonwealth. (Read more...)Portal:Pennsylvania/Selected article/3
The Pennsylvania State University (commonly known as Penn State) is a state-related, land-grant university located in State College, Pennsylvania, United States. The University has 24 campuses throughout the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, including a virtual World Campus. The enrollment at the Penn State University Park campus is 42,914 with a total enrollment of over 84,000 across its 24 campuses, placing it among the ten largest public universities in the United States. Penn State offers more than 160 majors and administers a $1.4 billion ( USD) endowment.
Penn State was founded as a degree-granting institution on February 22, 1855 by act P.L. 46, No. 50 of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania. Centre County became the home of the new school when James Irvin of Bellefonte donated 200 acres (0.8 km2) of land—the first of 10,101 acres (41 km2) the University would eventually acquire. In 1862, the school's name was changed to the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, and with the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Act, Pennsylvania selected the school in 1863 to be the state's sole land grant college. (Read more...)Portal:Pennsylvania/Selected article/4
Hawk Mountain is a mountain ridge, part of the Appalachian Mountains, located in central-eastern Pennsylvania near Reading and Allentown. It is a part of the Blue Mountain Ridge. It is primarily known as home to the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. Located along the Appalachian flyway, the Sanctuary is a prime location for the viewing of kettling and migrating raptors with an average of 20,000 hawks, eagles and falcons passing the lookouts every year. The birds are identified and counted by staff and volunteers to produce annual counts of migrating raptors that represent the world's longest record of raptor populations. These counts have provided conservationists with valuable information on changes in raptor numbers in North America.
The River of Rocks is visible and accessible from the Sanctuary. The boulders were formed by periglacial processes in the Pleistocene epoch, or "ice age." (Read more...)Portal:Pennsylvania/Selected article/5
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The Mason–Dixon line (or "Mason and Dixon's Line") is a demarcation line between four U.S. states, forming part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia (then part of Virginia). It was surveyed between 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in the resolution of a border dispute between British colonies in Colonial America. The Mason–Dixon line is often symbolically viewed as a cultural boundary between the Northern United States and the Southern United States ( Dixie).
Maryland and Pennsylvania both claimed the land between the 39th and 40th parallels according to the charters granted to each colony. The 'Three Lower Counties' (Delaware) along Delaware Bay moved into the Penn sphere of settlement, and later became the Delaware Colony, a satellite of Pennsylvania.
In 1732 the proprietary governor of Maryland, Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, signed an agreement with William Penn's sons which drew a line somewhere in between, and also renounced the Calvert claim to Delaware. But later Lord Baltimore claimed that the document he signed did not contain the terms he had agreed to, and refused to put the agreement into effect. Beginning in the mid-1730s, violence erupted between settlers claiming various loyalties to Maryland and Pennsylvania. The border conflict between Pennsylvania and Maryland would be known as Cresap's War. (Read more...)Portal:Pennsylvania/Selected article/7
The First Bank of the United States was a bank chartered by the United States Congress on February 25, 1791. The charter was for 20 years. The Bank was created to handle the financial needs and requirements of the central government of the newly formed United States, which had previously been thirteen individual colonies with their own banks, currencies, and financial institutions and policies.
Officially proposed by Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, to the first session of the First Congress in 1790, the concept for the Bank had both its support and origin in and among Northern merchants and more than a few New England state governments. It was, however, eyed with great suspicion by the representatives of the Southern States, whose chief industry, agriculture, did not require centrally concentrated banks, and whose feelings of states' rights and suspicion of Northern motives ran strong.
In the last decade of the eighteenth century the United States had just three banks but more than fifty different currencies in circulation: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese coinage, scrip issued by states, cities, backwood stores, and big city enterprises. The values of these currencies were wildly unstable, thereby making it a paradise for politically indifferent currency speculators who thrive on uncertainty. In addition, the value and exchange rate was almost always outdated or unknown by the party agreeing to receive it, especially the farther it moved away from the coast; and, thanks to distances, primitive roads, and absence of communications technology, values were not only unknown but unknowable as well. (Read more...)Portal:Pennsylvania/Selected article/8
The Hershey Company, known until April 2005 as the Hershey Foods Corporation and commonly called Hershey's, is the largest chocolate manufacturer in North America. Its headquarters is in Hershey, Pennsylvania, a town permeated by the aroma of cocoa on some days, and home to Hershey's Chocolate World. It was founded by Milton S. Hershey in 1894 as the Hershey Chocolate Company, a subsidiary of his Lancaster Caramel Company. Hershey's candies and other products are sold worldwide.
Hershey's is one of the oldest chocolate companies in the United States, and an American icon for its chocolate bar. The Hershey Company owns many other candy companies and is also affiliated with Hershey Entertainment and Resorts Company, which runs Hersheypark, a chocolate-themed amusement park; the Hershey Bears hockey team; Hersheypark Stadium; and the GIANT Center. In 1903, Hershey began construction of a chocolate plant in his hometown, Derry Church, Pennsylvania, which later came to be known as Hershey, Pennsylvania. The milk chocolate bars manufactured at this plant proved successful, and the company grew rapidly thereafter. (Read more...)Portal:Pennsylvania/Selected article/9
The Amish are an Anabaptist Christian denomination, formed in 1693 by Swiss Mennonites led by Jacob Amman. They live in the United States and Canada and are divided into several major groups. The Old Order Amish use horses for farming and transportation, dress in a traditional manner, and forbid electricity or telephones in the home. Church members do not join the military, apply for Social Security benefits, take out insurance or accept any form of financial assistance from the government. Beachy Amish and New Order Amish groups have fewer limitations; some permit cars and electricity, and members may be difficult to distinguish from the general North American population, whom they refer to as "English".
At home, most Amish speak a dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch, Pennsylvania German, or Deitsch. Children learn English in school. The Amish are divided into separate fellowships consisting of geographical districts or congregations. Each district is fully independent and has its own Ordnung, or set of unwritten rules. Old Order churches may shun or expel members who violate these rules. (Read more...)Portal:Pennsylvania/Selected article/10
The Forksville Covered Bridge is a Burr arch truss covered bridge over Loyalsock Creek in the borough of Forksville, Sullivan County, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It was built in 1850 and is 152 feet 11 inches (46.61 m) in length. The bridge was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. The Forksville bridge is named for the borough it is in, which is named for its location at the confluence or "forks" of the Little Loyalsock and Loyalsock Creeks.
Pennsylvania had the first covered bridge in the United States, and the most such bridges in both the 19th and 21st centuries. They were a transition between stone and metal bridges, with the roof and sides protecting the wooden structure from weather. The Forksville bridge is a Burr arch truss type, with a load-bearing arch sandwiching multiple vertical king posts, for strength and rigidity. The building of the Forksville bridge was supervised by the 18-year-old Sadler Rogers, who used his hand-carved model of the structure. It served as the site of a stream gauge from 1908 to 1913 and is still an official Pennsylvania state highway bridge. The United States Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration uses it as the model of a covered bridge "classic gable roof" and it serves as the logo of a Pennsylvania insurance company.
The bridge was restored in 1970 and 2004 and is still in use, with average daily traffic of 217 vehicles in 2006. Despite the restorations, as of 2006 the bridge structure's sufficiency rating on the National Bridge Inventory was only 17.4 percent and its condition was deemed "basically intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action". It is one of three remaining covered bridges in Sullivan County, and according to Susan M. Zacher's The Covered Bridges of Pennsylvania: A Guide, its location "over the rocky Loyalsock Creek" is "one of the most attractive settings in the state." (Read more...)