Lou’s View:ANSWERS TO ZINDEL PARK
By Lou Bernard
As you might expect, I get asked about local history a lot. I can’t get through a line in the grocery store without being recognized and questioned about our county. (Though recently, wearing a mask has cut down on the recognition part. Thanks, COVID-19!) Over the years, I’ve noticed something interesting.
The questions tend to be pretty well spaced-out, topic-wise. One person will ask about Allison Township, then I’ll get a question about Renovo. Someone will ask about World War II, and then someone else will balance it out with the Underground Railroad. Until we get to the questions about Wayne Township.
The Wayne Township questions always come clustered together. Ten people in a row will ask me about a Wayne Township monument, and then a dozen more will ask me about a Wayne Township cemetery. It’s weird. What the hell, Wayne Township? Is there some kind of weekly trivia contest nobody ever informed me about?
The latest in this round of strangely grouped questions involves Zindel Park. My e-mail is packed with Zindel Park questions recently. Zindel Park is on the south end of McElhattan. If you drive down McElhattan’s main drag, pass Henry Shoemaker’s house, keep going, and then hike a little, you’re at Zindel Park. Apparently a whole lot of people have done just that recently, so let me address their questions.
Back in the twenties, there were issues with Lock Haven’s water system. I won’t go into details here, because they are all technical and boring. Also boring was the lengthy debate between water supervisor Philip Zindel and city councilman William Brown Elliot. I don’t have the attention span for all of this here, but the city ultimately decided to put in pipes of a different gauge. And as they were doing this, they decided to add a park as a tourist attraction, and name it after Zindel.
Philip Zindel was the son of German immigrants, born in 1867. He ran a grocery store in Lock Haven and was heavily involved in local government, serving as a city councilman. He was a good choice to name the park after.
Construction happened in 1929 under the direction of Mayor William Sperring. Philip Zindel was a big influence in the creation of the park. He directed that a house be built for the maintenance man, and his brother-in-law supplied stone from Italy to build a monument. Zindel contributed a small statue of a woman for a fountain, which has since disappeared and has never turned up.
The park was a hit for a while, and then World War II interrupted that. It was closed to address concerns that the enemy might poison the city’s water supply.
Before you make fun of that, consider this: Lock Haven had Piper, which was busy cranking out the L-4 to contribute to the war effort. We also had Pennwoven, which made a metal mesh that was used in the nuclear bombs. It was entirely plausible that Lock Haven could be a target for sabotage.
When the park reopened in the fifties, it never quite achieved the same popularity it once had. It essentially languished, falling into disrepair, until people began to rediscover it in the early 2000s.
Henry Wharton Shoemaker, the writer and folklorist, lived down the road, and largely because of this, there are plenty of interesting local legends set in the area of Zindel Park, as well. All of which I plan to get around to writing about, sooner or later.
Today, Zindel Park is a pleasant walk away, and people actually visit it again. Though it’s still in need of a little maintenance, it’s a nice place to explore. And apparently people have, because I’m getting a whole ton of e-mails about it. Again, what is up with that?
