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Originally Posted by Thundertubs
Well damned if this doesn't cement Pennsylvania's status as the most fascinating commonwealth in our great nation. What a ridiculously awesome town, especially considering the super-isolated context.
Keep rockin'.
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Agreed... Pennsylvania is a surprisingly vast state due to its rugged topography... hiding many fascinating places within its nooks and crannies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Robert Pence
Thanks so much for posting these! One of my best friends nearly fifty years ago when we were in a USAF detachment at IU at Bloomington, Indiana, was from Renovo. I think three generations of his family worked for the PRR there.
He went home with me to NE Indiana on a few weekends, and couldn't stop talking about how beautiful the endless view over miles of flatland was. I guess it's all in the contrast compared with what one grew up with.
Not long ago I tried to find him, and all I found was his widow's obituary.
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Nice story, Rob. I'm not surprised you of all people have expressed appreciation for this thread. There is considerable rail history, only touched upon by my thread, that you would find interesting.
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Originally Posted by stepper77
The cars photographed would indicate a better economic state than I would imagine.
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looking over my photos... I thought the same thing...
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Originally Posted by giovanni sasso
wow man, fantastic coverage. i've never had any cause to be in renovo, so i've never seen it. i think bucktail high ran in a cross country invitational i was in in high school. and i've been to orviston, not far from there, and that shit was ka-raaazy back country, honest to god deliverance with banjos. and it's an hour from where i grew up!
awesome stuff, man. love those deep valleys up there.
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I've always wanted to visit Orviston (along with Monument)... perhaps the one nook of Centre County I've never seen
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Originally Posted by llamaorama
I think people who live in towns like that will drive long distances to find employment, and don't discount how many people schools and government services employ.
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Renovo does have a small K-12 system... and a tiny medical center... but there's got to be something that generates wealth for a place beyond local public services. I suspect a rather high percentage of Renovo's income comes in the form of government entitlements. To put it harshly, Renovo no longer has a sustaining economic reason for existence, but there is a (shrinking) legacy population which requires public services... hence a few education/medical/government jobs.
As for "extreme rural commuting"... Renovo is a level of remote beyond that of any other Pennsylvania town. Lock Haven (regional population of about 20k) is the only significant employment center within reasonable distance... 28 miles of twisty rural highway... especially tricky in winter.
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Originally Posted by pj3000
Some drive long distances, but mostly, they don't really have to drive all that far. North Central PA (and PA in general) just has tons of old towns between 5000 and 20000 in population scattered throughout the hills that have all types of industries and many colleges.
Many of these very small north central PA towns were settled as company towns... lumber, railroad, bricks, mining, etc... so that's where most of the people once worked. Those companies have long since moved on, but the settlements still remain. There is tourism-focused commerce in some of the towns in the region, but people usually drive to larger towns and cities like Clearfield, Lock Haven, State College, Clarion, Williamsport, etc.
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I would say North-Central PA is the one region of PA that is not littered with colleges... depending on how you define the region (Clarion is quite borderline with NW PA... and State College is definitely not Northcentral... though it's a stone's throw away)... I'd say NC PA has the following colleges/universities:
Clarion U. (6,500 combined undergrad/grad)
Lock Haven U. (5,500)
Lycoming College (1,500)
Penn College of Technology (6,700)
Mansfield U. (3,400)
And of course... two small branch campuses... Pitt: Bradford and Penn State: Dubois.
Bucknell and Bloomsburg are nearby but are Central and East-Central respectively.
So... there's about 25k college students attending institutions throughout this vast region... with 3 medium/small members of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education... a big tech school... one liberal arts college... and two small branch campuses of major research universities.
Excuse my elaborate response... but I was rather interested in researching this myself.