Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

Have you ever noticed something about Clinton County? Well, actually, I’m sure you’ve noticed a lot about Clinton County. If you’re reading this column, chances are you live here. So I’m gonna need to be a bit more specific.

So here’s an interesting fact you may not have figured out: Clinton County has a connection with every major form of transportation.

It may surprise you a bit. Most people don’t sit around thinking about their county’s role in the transportation industry. Fortunately for you, I can do that, because I have no life and too much free time.

Way back at the beginning, Clinton County was involved in water transportation. Before we were even founded, lumber rafts and boats were going up and down the Susquehanna River. The Bald Eagle Cross-Cut Canal was built between 1828 and 1834, and received heavy usage for decades.

You want to hear something funny? In those days, many of the raftsmen weren’t from here, but only stayed overnight in a local hotel. The only directional reference they had was their own raft. So it was considered a clever prank among young boys to sneak out to those rafts at night and turn them around, often sending the raftsmen the wrong direction the next morning.

You want to talk about water travel? Florist Eric Carlson, who had a shop on Bellefonte Avenue, was friends with Captain E.J. Smith of the Titanic. You can’t get much more involved in water travel than that.

As time went by, we made improvements. There’s no denying that Clinton County participated in the railroad industry. Renovo was founded around the railroad industry, originally a place for employees to stay with their families. As time went by, big, busy railroad stations were built in Castanea, Mill Hall, and Beech Creek.

The Castanea Railroad Station, in fact, was Ground Zero for the Spanish Flu when it arrived in Clinton County in 1918. The epidemic was spread originally through railroad employees and people who’d been on vacations, bringing it back with them.

The Beech Creek Auto Company participated in the automotive industry, in 1915 making improvements to four-wheel drive vehicles. They designed a truck that had a more powerful four-wheel drive, at one point driving it up the courthouse steps to demonstrate. The gathered farmers watched with appreciation, but commented that they’d still prefer their horses. The company built two and a half of these things before they ran out of money and went out of business.

Obviously, we’ve participated in air travel. In the home of Piper Aviation, that’s not even debatable. William Piper moved his company to Lock Haven in 1937, manufacturing the Piper Cub and branching out into the Vagabond, the Grasshopper, the Aztec, the Comanche, and a whole lot of others. We had America’s first female test pilot, Alma Heflin, who lived in Lock Haven and was hired as a test pilot when the men were all overseas fighting the war.

We even have a connection with space travel. Didn’t think of that one, did you? I probably could have gotten away with not mentioning outer space, but fortunately, I don’t need to. Sue McKnight of Main Street went to high school with John Glenn. When Glenn became the first American to orbit the planet in 1962, McKnight invited her neighbors over to watch the broadcast on TV, and told them about how they’d been to school together.

Clinton County has had something to do with every major form of transportation—It’s one of our interesting facts. I have no doubt that if someone ever invents teleportation, we’ll somehow be in on that, too.