Lou’s View – Nov. 7, 2013
By Lou Bernard
An Unnecessarily Short History of Lock Haven
It’s our anniversary!
Well, actually, not yours if you’re reading this someplace else, like Centre County or Ohio or something. Don’t break out the champagne just yet. But if you’re in Lock Haven, we have an anniversary this month. Lock Haven was founded on November 4th, 1833, which means this week we’ve turned a hundred and eighty years old.
Best way to celebrate? I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s by writing up a timeline of the city, from the earliest days up to the present, or at least as close as I can manage. It’s hard to compress a hundred and eighty years into a fairly short column, but that’s not going to stop me from trying.
Let’s begin.
1830s: Jerry Church arrived in the fall, just barely missing the canal riot, which was excellent timing for him. Realizing he had nowhere to stay, he decided to found a town, which is tough to do without money. Borrowing from an investor in Williamsport, he sold off lots at random, which miraculously worked. Later, wanting Lock Haven to be the county seat, he used the same logic and created his own county. He was assisted in this by his friend John Moorhead, which may have been the most useful thing Moorhead ever did.
1840s: Moorhead built a whole building and offered it as a free courthouse. The county commissioners turned him down, announcing plans to build a new courthouse on land Church donated. Then they hired Moorhead to build it, because they wanted to get an early start on government inefficiency. Church left town to go out west, taking his daughter Margaret but leaving behind the mystery of who her mother was.
1850s: Almost twenty years after the town was founded, the jail on Church Street was built, apparently in a reaction to the recent invention of crime. Three years later, the first public school was built, demonstrating priorities that still exist to this day.
1860s: In December of 1862, a huge portion of the city burned down, which created a problem for Christmas shopping because Ebay hadn’t been invented yet. Scant attention was paid to the fire, because everyone was busy watching the Civil War. (Spoiler alert: We won.) The current courthouse was built on Water Street, presumably because everyone thought it was funny to watch lawyers run to the wrong place.
1870s: Lock Haven was officially incorporated as a city, which would baffle generations of students who had slept through Civics class. The Central State Normal School, which would later become Lock Haven University, was founded in 1873, but classes didn’t begin until 1877 because all the students overslept.
1880s: The school burned down for unknown reasons, the newspapers blaming it on “demons.” (Not kidding about this.) The college began to rebuild just in time to be wiped out again during the flood of 1889, showing the sort of financial planning for which colleges have become known.
1890s: East Main Street became the first Lock Haven street to be paved in 1897. Five minutes after, potholes began to form. City crews are scheduled to repair them sometime around next October, unless they forget.
1900s: The Civil War monument was placed in present-day Triangle Park. Annie Halenbake Ross died in 1907, leaving her home to become a library. The hospital burned down in 1908, but at least people could look up the treatment of their injuries in the new library.
1910s: An ice flood in 1918 proved a welcome distraction from the Spanish Flu, this being a cheerful decade. The Jay Street covered bridge was burned down by a woman whose husband was on the other side drinking and cheating on her, sparking Lock Haven’s first recorded overreaction to a marital problem.
1920s: Prohibition of alcohol made Prince Farrington, local bootlegger, the most popular guy in the state. Later when the law was repealed, Farrington was heard to say that he wished they’d outlaw whiskey again so he could make an honest living. (Not kidding about this, either.)
1930s: The Great Depression put everyone out of work. Records are scarce because people couldn’t afford words back then.
1940s: Lock Haven citizens responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor by funding the city’s first police cruiser, which sounds like a more than even match for anything Japan and Germany could throw at us.
1950s: In September 1950, the sky mysteriously went totally dark at about three in the afternoon, leaving Lock Haven citizens universally quoted as saying,”Huh?”
1960s: The Civil War monument was moved to its present location. It was discovered that it was reassembled both permanently and incorrectly, with the soldiers placed on the wrong corners. City Council immediately convened to decide if this constituted reason to not pay the contractors.
1970s-Present Day: I was born, grew up, moved to Lock Haven, and eventually began writing for the Record. Nothing else matters.
