I found this at the New Orleans website: Fun Facts About Mardi Gras!
New Orleans History & Rituals
Mardi Gras in New Orleans is quite the spectacle – but there are a lot of hidden secrets and behind-the-scenes magic that bring the celebration to life. Ever wondered what the most coveted throws of Carnival are, or why an array of colorful ladders line St. Charles Avenue? Learn all about Mardi Gras in New Orleans with these 12 fun facts.
Mardi Gras is more than just a day, it’s an entire season. Carnival season begins on Twelfth Night (January 6) and ends on Fat Tuesday. It’s during this time period that king cakes make their debut – and fly off the shelves all season long.
Mardi Gras Indians’ elaborate “suits” are hand-sewn with thousands of beads and take all year to make. A new suit is made each year.
Colorful ladders with seats line St. Charles Avenue on parade days so that children can get a clear view. Parade-goers use the ladders to hold their spot prior to the parade starting.
Krewes choose a different theme for their parades each year, with some krewes keeping their themes secret until their parade is rolling.
According to Arthur Hardy, a premier authority on Mardi Gras in New Orleans, items have been tossed off floats since at least 1871. During the Twelfth Night Revelers parade, a masker costumed as Santa Claus aboard float No. 24 threw gifts to the crowd. In 1884, Rex started using medallions instead of trinkets. These medallions are represented by today’s doubloons: aluminum and anodized in many different colors.
“Throw Me Something, Mister” are the magic words used to catch all the throws at Mardi Gras parades.
Zulu coconuts, Muses shoes and Krewe of Iris sunglasses are some of the most desired signature “throws” of the season. Revelers go all-out in attempts to catch these, including dressing in colorful costumes, making posters and holding out butterfly nets and targets for float riders to throw to.
There is a city ordinance in Orleans Parish that prohibits Mardi Gras from being commercialized. No corporate sponsorships are allowed on floats. All expenses are paid by krewes and riders.
Beads “grow” on trees during Carnival season in New Orleans. Tree-lined St. Charles Avenue transforms into a Mardi Gras wonderland by the time Fat Tuesday rolls around.
Float riders are required by law to wear masks or face paint.
Traditionally, the Mayor of New Orleans hands over the key to the city to Rex, the king of Carnival, on Mardi Gras Day.
To officially end Carnival celebrations, New Orleans police officers on foot and mounted on horseback move through the crowds on Bourbon Street at midnight on Mardi Gras Day. The Mayor often joins.
You haven’t been to Hershey until you’ve taken the free Hershey’s Chocolate Tour. The tour − an indoor ride in a Hershey’s Kiss-shaped car − allows visitors to understand how Hershey’s chocolate is made and enjoy a free chocolate bar at the end. Better still is the marketplace at Hershey’s Chocolate World, where you can purchase Hershey’s candy (including treats you don’t typically find at your local food store); candy-themed souvenirs; and signature smoothies, milkshakes and pastries. You can also make a personalized treat at the Create Your Own Candy Bar station, solve a sweet mystery in the 4D Chocolate Movie and enjoy wine and chocolate or beer and chocolate pairings seasonally.
Hersheypark
Hersheypark features 15 roller coasters (and counting) − including Laff Trakk, the first indoor, spinning glow coaster in the U.S. The amusement park also features an outdoor water park and kiddie rides, plus rides and attractions the whole family can enjoy together. When it’s time for a break, order one of the park’s famous King Sized Shakes, available at Simply Chocolate. The one-of-a-kind amusement park is especially magical at Christmas, when the park hosts Hershey Sweet Lights, a 2-mile, illuminated drive-through tour, and Christmas Candylane, where guests can sip hot cocoa and meet Santa and his reindeer.
The Hotel Hershey
The Hotel Hershey is an especially popular destination for romantic escapes and girls getaways. Part of the Historic Hotels of America, the regal resort offers indoor and outdoor swimming pools, golf, tennis, fitness facilities, a kids club, five restaurants and a spa. Guests can choose to stay in beautifully appointed guest rooms, suites or cottages, plus the hotel offers perks like complimentary admission to Hershey Gardens and The Hershey Story’s Museum Experience. Reviewers say the staff is exceptionally friendly and helpful, and that the food is great.
Hersheypark Stadium
When planning your summertime visit to Hershey, be sure to check the schedule at Hersheypark Stadium where big-name concerts are typically hosted from June through September. The outdoor venue offers food and beverage concessions and − the ultimate splurge − VIP Sky Suites. Hersheypark Stadium has hosted everyone from Dead & Company to the Jonas Brothers. Reviewers say the bathrooms are tiny, but clean and widely available.
ZooAmerica
One of the first attractions to open in Hershey, ZooAmerica was established in 1910. More than a century later, the zoo has expanded to house a couple hundred animals across a variety of species and support several wildlife and environmental conservation efforts. For an extra-special experience, book a behind-the-scenes photography or after-hours tour of the zoo. ZooAmerica is located within Hersheypark and admission to the zoo is included in your park pass.
Hershey Gardens
Stop and smell the roses at Hershey Gardens. That’s exactly what Milton Hershey intended for visitors when he requested to “create a nice garden of roses.” Aside from fragrant flowers featured in seasonal and themed displays, Hershey Gardens offers a whimsical children’s garden with interactive play structures and a butterfly atrium where you can get up close with butterflies − so close they might land right on your head or hands. Guided walks and gardening classes are also available. Reviewers say the gardens are not only beautiful, but also relaxing.
The Falconry Experience
Did you know you could interact with falcons in Hershey? Offered at The Hotel Hershey and available to both guests and the general public, The Falconry Experience features free-flight and simulated hunt demonstrations, and the chance to have birds of prey land right on your hand. Group and family sessions are available, and kids ages 12 and younger must be accompanied by an adult. Reviewers say this is one of the most unique experiences they’ve ever had.
Water Works at Hershey Lodge
Hersheypark isn’t the only place with a water park in the area. Hershey Lodge has an indoor water park called Water Works, with a zero-entry pool, a spray zone, a water-dumping bucket and more. Especially fun for young kids, the water park is exclusive and complimentary to guests of the hotel. Before you book your stay, check out the hotel’s packages, which combine overnight accommodations and Hersheypark tickets in one rate.
Grey Towers National Historic Site, also known as Gifford Pinchot House or The Pinchot Institute, is located just off US 6 west of Milford, Pennsylvania, in Dingman Township. It is the ancestral home of Gifford Pinchot, first director of the United States Forest Service (USFS) and twice elected governor of Pennsylvania.
The house, built in the style of a French château to reflect the Pinchot family’s French origins, was designed by Richard Morris Hunt with some later work by H. Edwards Ficken. Situated on the hills above Milford, it overlooks the Delaware River. Pinchot grew up there and returned during the summers when his later life took him to Washington and Harrisburg. His wife, Cornelia Bryce Pinchot, made substantial changes to the interior of the home and gardens, in collaboration with several different architects, during that time.
In 1963 his family donated it and the surrounding 102 acres to the Forest Service; it is the only U.S. National Historic Site managed by that agency. Three years later the Department of the Interior designated it a National Historic Landmark. Today it is open to the public for tours and hiking on its trails; it is also home to the Pinchot Institute, which carries on his work in conservation.
Building and grounds
The mansion itself is a three-story L-shaped fieldstone chateau. Conical roofed towers at three of the corners give the property its name. A service wing juts out from the fourth corner. As originally built, it contained 43 rooms, with the first floor featuring a large entrance hall, billiard room, dining room, library and sitting room. Bedrooms were located on the second floor, with more on the third floor plus storage spaces and children’s playrooms.
The house boasts a number of outbuildings. On the 303 acres of the combined parcels that made up the original estate, there are 48 total buildings, structures and sites, all but eight of which are considered contributing to its historic value. These include nearby cottages known as the Letter and Bait Boxes, a unique outdoor dining facility called the Finger Bowl, a Forester’s Cottage used as a residence by the Pinchot descendants, an open-air theater, the former Yale School of Forestry’s summer school, and a white pine plantation established by Gifford Pinchot.
The Finger Bowl
In the early 1930s, Cornelia Pinchot hired William Lawrence Bottomley to create a unique addition known as the Finger Bowl, an outdoor dining area consisting of a raised pool surrounded by a flat ledge. Chairs were pulled up to the ledge and food was served from bowls floating on the water. It was sheltered by a wisteria-covered arbor supported by 12 stone piers. In the late 1930s, Gifford Pinchot started the White Pine Plantation to reforest some old farmland near the mansion. He was particularly interested in that species since it was the dominant tree in the forests of Pike County and had been heavily harvested during the previous century.
Forest Service
After his mother died in 1960, Gifford Bryce Pinchot donated the building to the Forest Service, as the family had planned. The agency intended to use the house as a conference center, and had to replace some interior walls that had suffered insect and water damage. Various other rooms in the wing and second floor were converted to storage or office use, and the swimming pool was filled in, in 1979, when it became a safety and maintenance problem. A parking lot was built to the northwest.
The Pinchot Institute, which also has a role in administering the site, was dedicated by President John F. Kennedy on September 24, 1963. That same year Grey Towers was one of the first sites declared a National Historic Landmark by the Secretary of the Interior.
In 1980, the USFS realized how much its renovations had damaged an architecturally significant structure and began trying to undo some of the changes it had made. It developed a plan to restore the house and estate to a condition similar to the way it had been in Pinchot’s era, in consultation with the Park Service’s Harper’s Ferry Center, and hired staff with expertise in landscape and architecture. After a brief closing for this renovation, it reopened on August 11, 2001, Gifford Pinchot’s birthday. The state of Pennsylvania’s Department of Natural Resources also made a $2 million grant available for renovations to the entrance, entry road and parking facilities. In 2007 the USFS restored the swimming pool.
This 5-story bookstore in Pennsylvania, Baldwin’s Book Barn is a book lover’s dream! Need an escape from reality? Pull up a chair and open one of the thousands of rare books that sit on the shelves of the best bookstore in Pennsylvania. Book lovers won’t be the only ones enchanted by Baldwin’s Book Barn. This five-story bookstore in Pennsylvania, with its slanted ceilings and curved doors, provides ample opportunity to meet new people and explore a part of PA’s rich past.
Time seems to stand still at Baldwin’s Book Barn. Nestled among the rolling farmlands in West Chester, the barn was built in 1822. The Book Barn, originally opened in Delaware in 1934, moved to the old barn in Pennsylvania in 1946.
Lilla and William Baldwin, who founded the famous bookstore, lived on the property in a converted milk house.
Today, Baldwin’s Book Barn beckons book lovers, historians, and curiosity seekers with its five floors of rare, out-of-print, and antiquarian collection of books.
But, that’s not all. You’ll also find an impressive collection of used books, maps, and prints among the more than 300,000 items that line the bookshelves.
In fact, you never know what treasures you will find on the bookshelves. Looking for a favorite book from childhood? A long out-of-print masterpiece you’ve always wanted to read? You just might find it at Baldwin’s Book Barn, what may be the largest bookstore in Pennsylvania.
Guests are invited to pull up a chair, sit back, and read for as long as they want during business hours. Don’t be surprised if one of the resident kitties rubs up against you as you read and relax.
Baldwin’s Book Barn welcomes shoppers daily between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. It is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day.
Whenever we travel home, we pass through Williamsport, PA. It’s a larger city in PA with a lovely historic district, a vast commercial district and The Little League Museum. The crown jewel of Williamsport was West Fourth Street in the 1800s. The city was home to more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the country. This was due to the lumber business and the lumber barons that contributed to the boom in home and church construction. Many of these homes can still be seen today!
The A.D. Hermance House
The Rowley-Hermance Company manufactured woodworking machinery. This 20-room building is an example of the Richardsonian-Romanesque style of architecture. The interior features beautiful cherry and oak hand-carved wood work by Giovanni Ferrari.
The Peter Herdic House
This home was built in 1854 and changed hands several times, but remained a single-family dwelling until 1957 when it was converted into apartments. A fire destroyed portions of it in 1977, but it was renovated and restored and turned into a restaurant. The home features ornate plaster moldings and arches, acanthus columns and a mahogany stairway that curves three floors to a cupola.
The Hiram Rhoads House
Designed by Eber Culver in the late 1880’s for Hiram Rhoads, the man responsible for bringing the telephone to Williamsport, this building is an example of the Queen Anne style. This house has many notable features such as an upstairs bathtub which is encased in mahogany, a solid pecan floor in the living room, and the most magnificent chandeliers in the city.
There are plenty more houses on Millionaire’s Row that have now been converted to apartment buildings and no detail is available about them.But I have included a bunch of the pictures I could find.
In 2008, I was living with HB and SIL in a house in Manassas, VA on a major roadway with a lot of traffic, although it was only a two-lane road. It was Christmas but it was unseasonably warm that year. HB and SIL were watching TV and, of course, I was sitting at my computer, which was directly in front of a window.
I was sitting at the small window on the right.
All of a sudden, I heard a loud crash and looked up to see that an SUV had crashed into a tree across the street. It hit the tree and bounced back; I saw the driver’s door open and a man got out, with an obvious leg injury – he fell up against the SUV and kind of rolled down the side of it towards the front of the vehicle.
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By the time I got up and went to the door, I could no longer see him. Behind the house across the street was a large wooded area – there was a driveway running down the side of the house towards the back. We called 911 to report it and then we all trooped outside to look; a woman had pulled over into our driveway so we chatted with her while we waited.
Within 5 or 10 minutes, the cops arrived and began searching for the driver, who was nowhere to be found. They told us the SUV had just been stolen from someone down the street. I told them that he was obviously injured but that was all I knew. They searched and searched and searched, and finally determined that he must have gone down the driveway into the woods. So they sent a car around to the other side of the woods to search from that side. They even had a helicopter up looking for him.
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After about 45 minutes, another cop car pulled up with a canine unit. They brought the dog out and had him jump into the SUV to get the man’s scent. He jumped back down and went directly to the tree at the front of the SUV!
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Turns out, the guy had buried himself in the leaves and was there the whole time!!!! They had never even looked there!!! We also found out he was an illegal – sometimes I swore half of Manassas was made up of illegals, there were so many, including MS-13!
HB and SIL had already made their decision by then to move to Nebraska. She was pregnant with Piper and wouldn’t be able to work and SIL had been laid off from his job. I had not yet decided to join them but, in March of 2009, I also lost my job as General Manager at ResoleAmerica. I decided God was telling me it was time to go home!!!!
Today, the house is known as the Winchester Mystery House, but at the time of its construction, it was simply Sarah Winchester’s House. Sarah Winchester was the widow of William Wirt Winchester, heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Born around 1840, Sarah Winchester grew up in a world of privilege. She spoke four languages, attended the best schools around, married well, and eventually gave birth to a daughter, Annie. However, tragedy struck in her late twenties when Annie died, followed by the death of Sarah’s husband William more than a decade later. After William’s death in 1881, Sarah inherited roughly $20 million (over $500 million in 2019 dollars) as well as fifty percent of the Winchester Arms company which left her with a continued income equal to $1,000 a day (or $26,000 a day in 2019 dollars).
Newly in possession of a massive fortune and struggling with the loss of her husband and daughter, she sought the advice of a medium. She hoped, perhaps, to get advice from the beyond as to how to spend her fortune or what to do with her life. Though the exact specifics remain between Sarah Winchester and her medium, the story goes that the medium was able to channel dearly departed William, who advised Sarah to leave her home in New Haven, Connecticut, and head west to California. As far as what to do with her money, William answered that too; she was to use the fortune to build a home for the spirits of those who had fallen victim to Winchester rifles, lest she be haunted by them for the rest of her life.
In 1884, Sarah Winchester purchased what would later become known as the Winchester Mystery House. At the time of the sale, the house was a small unfinished farmhouse, but that quickly changed. Winchester hired carpenters to work around the clock, expanding the small house into a seven-story mansion. Due to the lack of a plan and the presence of an architect, the house was constructed haphazardly; rooms were added onto exterior walls resulting in windows overlooking other rooms. Multiple staircases would be added, all with different sized risers, giving each staircase a distorted look. Stranger so was the fact that many of the alterations seemed pointless. Staircases would ascend several levels then end abruptly, doors would open to solid walls, and hallways would turn a corner and end in a dead-end.
Additionally, Winchester insisted that the home be built exclusively out of redwood – however, she didn’t like the look of the wood, so she insisted it be covered with a stain and a faux grain. By the time the house was completed, over 20,000 gallons of paint had been used to cover the wood. By the turn of the century, Sarah Winchester had her ghost house: an oddly laid out mansion, with seven stories, 161 rooms, 47 fireplaces, 10,000 panes of glass, two basements, three elevators, and a mysterious fun-house-like interior.
Anyone who set foot in the home could tell that no expense had been spared. Gold and silver chandeliers hung from the ceilings above hand-inlaid parquet flooring. Dozens of artful stained-glass windows created by Tiffany & Co. dotted the walls, including some designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany himself. One window, in particular, was intended to create a prismatic rainbow effect on the floor when light flowed through it – of course, the window ended up on an interior wall, and thus the effect was never achieved.
Even more luxurious than the fixtures were the plumbing and electrical work. Rare for the time, the Winchester Mystery House boasted indoor plumbing, including coveted hot running water, and push-button gas lighting available throughout the home. Additionally, forced-air heating flowed throughout the house.
Unfortunately, in 1906, an earthquake struck San Jose, and the Winchester Mystery House sustained a hefty amount of damage. Thanks to the floating foundation (a foundation that equals the weight of the surrounding soil) the entire house was saved from collapse. The top three floors were ultimately removed, leaving the house with only four stories, as seen today.
Throughout the years-long construction of the Winchester Mystery House, Sarah Winchester would never confirm that she was building a haunted house. However, stories and rumors swirled throughout San Jose.
The contractors who worked on the house reported Winchester having daily seances with local mediums, in an effort to reach “good spirits.” These “good spirits” were reportedly consulted to find out how to best appease the spirits whom she was allegedly building the house for. These spirits are reportedly what called Winchester to make so many illogical additions to the home.
Far after the construction was completed, Winchester continued to make efforts to appease the victims of the Winchester rifles. Out of the 13 bathrooms in the home, only one was functional, in an effort to confuse any ghosts wishing to haunt a spigot. Furthermore, she would sleep in a different room every night in the Winchester house, and use secret passageways to get from room to room so that no spirits could follow her.
In the years Sarah Winchester lived in the house, the residents of San Jose whispered about its strange construction and even stranger inhabitant, but it was in the years after her death that the wild stories became even wilder. After her death in September of 1922, Sarah Winchester left all of her belongings to her niece, Marion, who had served as her personal secretary later in life. However, the Winchester Mystery House was never mentioned in her will, adding to the mystery of the home. After appraisers deemed the house worthless due to its strange design, damage from the earthquakes, and long-winded construction, Marion took everything in it and auctioned it off. The current owners of the house claim it took six weeks to empty the house of all furniture, though the report is uncorroborated.
After the house was emptied, a local investor purchased the home for a cool $135,000. Just five months after Sarah Winchester died, the Winchester Mystery House was opened to the public for tours.
Inside the home…some of it looks quite lovely…some is just bizarre.
Sleepy Hollow is a village in the town of Mount Pleasant, in Westchester County, New York. The village is known internationally through “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, an 1820 short story about the local area and its infamous specter, the Headless Horseman, written by Washington Irving, who lived in Tarrytown and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
The “Legend” relates the tale of Ichabod Crane, a lean, lanky and extremely superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut. Throughout his stay at Sleepy Hollow, Crane is able to make himself both “useful and agreeable” to the families that he lodges with. He occasionally assists with light farm work, helping to make hay, mend fences, caring for numerous farm animals, and cutting firewood. Besides his more dominant role as the Schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane also assists the various mothers of the town by helping to take care of their young children, taking on a more “gentle and ingratiating” role. Crane is also quite popular among the women of the town for his education and his talent for “carrying the whole budget of local gossip,” which makes him a welcomed sight within female circles.
As a firm believer in witchcraft and the like, Crane has an unequaled “appetite for the marvelous,” which is only increased by his stay in “the spell-bound region” of Sleepy Hollow. A source of “fearful pleasure” for Crane is to visit the Old Dutch wives and listen to their “marvelous tales of ghosts and goblins,” haunted locations, and the tales of the Headless Horseman, or the “Galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes called him.” Throughout the story, Ichabod Crane competes with Abraham “Brom Bones” Van Brunt, the town rowdy and local hero, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and sole child of wealthy farmer Baltus Van Tassel. Ichabod Crane, a Yankee and an outsider, sees marriage to Katrina as a means of procuring Van Tassel’s extravagant wealth. Brom, unable to force Ichabod into a physical showdown to settle things, plays a series of pranks on the superstitious schoolmaster. The tension among the three continues for some time, and is soon brought to a head. On a placid autumn night, the ambitious Crane attends a harvest party at the Van Tassels’ homestead. He dances, partakes in the feast, and listens to ghostly legends told by Brom and the locals, but his true aim is to propose to Katrina after the guests leave. His intentions, however, are ill-fated, as he fails to secure Katrina’s hand.
Following his rejected suit, Ichabod rides home on his temperamental plough horse named Gunpowder, “heavy-hearted and crestfallen” through the woods between Van Tassel’s farmstead and the farmhouse in Sleepy Hollow where he is quartered at the time. As he passes several purportedly haunted spots, his active imagination is engorged by the ghost stories told at Baltus’ harvest party. After nervously passing a lightning-stricken tulip tree purportedly haunted by the ghost of British spy Major André, Ichabod encounters a cloaked rider at an intersection in a menacing swamp. Unsettled by his fellow traveler’s eerie size and silence, the teacher is horrified to discover that his companion’s head is not on his shoulders, but on his saddle.
In a frenzied race to the bridge adjacent to the Old Dutch Burying Ground, where the Hessian is said to “vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone” before crossing it, Ichabod rides for his life, desperately goading Gunpowder down the Hollow. However, while Crane and Gunpowder are able to cross the bridge ahead of the ghoul, Ichabod turns back in horror to see the monster rear his horse and hurl his severed head directly at him with a fierce motion. The schoolmaster attempts to dodge, but is too late; the missile strikes his head and sends him tumbling headlong into the dust from his horse.
The next morning, Gunpowder is found eating the grass at his master’s gate, but Ichabod has mysteriously disappeared from the area, leaving Katrina to later marry Brom Bones, who was said “to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related”. Indeed, the only relics of the schoolmaster’s flight are his discarded hat, Gunpowder’s trampled saddle, and a mysterious shattered pumpkin. Although the true nature of both the Headless Horseman and Ichabod’s disappearance that night are left open to interpretation, the story implies that the Horseman was really Brom (an extremely agile rider) in disguise, using a Jack-o’-lantern as a false head, and suggests that Crane survived the fall from Gunpowder and immediately fled Sleepy Hollow in horror, never to return but to prosper elsewhere, or was killed by Brom (which may be unlikely, since Brom was said to have “more mischief than ill-will in his composition”). Irving’s narrator concludes the story, however, by stating that the old Dutch wives continue to promote the belief that Ichabod was “spirited away by supernatural means”, and a legend develops around his disappearance and sightings of his melancholy spirit.
In a Postscript (sometimes unused in certain editions), the narrator states the circumstances in which he heard the story from an old gentleman “at a Corporation meeting at the ancient city of Manhattoes“, who didn’t “believe one-half of it [himself].”
The Village
Located 25 miles north of New York City along the eastern shore of the Hudson River, The Village of Sleepy Hollow offers a unique blend of natural beauty and urban amenities along with world-renowned historic landmarks and modern attributes.
While an unusual name, “Sunnyside” is a name for a home in Sleepy Hollow. Washington Irving took over ownership of the structure in the year of 1835. At that time, it was nothing more than a small, ordinary cottage. He and his family worked hard to renovate the structure, and took great pride in the final project. This home is a beautifully designed structure that sits on the bank of a river – the Hudson to be exact. You can get a good look at the river by a small, secret path that leads from the home to the banks of the river. It has been said that apparitions have appeared, doing various tasks. It is believed that the nieces of Irving are often seen tidying up the home. Many have claimed to have seen Irving himself.
If you would like to visit the grave of the famous Washington Irving, you can do so at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. While there, you can also discover the final resting places of the following famous individuals: Andrew Carnegie, William Rockefeller, Walter Chrysler, and even the notable Elizabeth Arden. It has been said, on more than one occasion, that an apparition has been seen among the graves. Many who have walked through the cemetery often express the fact that they hear silent whispering which cannot be explained.
Old Dutch Church and Burial Ground – The burial grounds that are located at the Old Dutch Church are said to be among one of the oldest ones in all of the United States. It is said that the popular “Headless Horseman” can be clearly seen making his route through and around these burial grounds. When visiting here, you can see some very popular names on the grave stones. These include Eleanor Van Tassel Brush, who Washington Irving used a personality called “Katrina” from his story. Abraham Martling, who was reflected as the character “Brom Bones” can also be discovered here.
Patriot’s Park – If you go to the area that is between the cities of Sleepy Hollow, and Tarrytown, you will discover a park. During the American Revolutionary War, the Americans captured a soldier that was of Hessian decent. He was immediately executed by way of beheading. An apparition that lacks a head is often said to linger throughout the park grounds. Irving took this legend of the soldier that is headless for his tale.
In May of 1962, the town council of Centralia, Pennsylvania met to discuss their new landfill.
Earlier in the year, Centralia had built a 50-foot-deep pit that covered an area about half the size of a football field to deal with the town’s problem with illegal dumping. However, the landfill was getting full and needed clearing before the town’s annual Memorial Day celebration. At the meeting, council members proposed a seemingly obvious solution: burning out the landfill.
At first, it seemed to work. The fire department lined the pit with an incombustible material to contain the fire, which they lit on the night of May 27, 1962. After the landfill’s contents were ash, they doused the remaining embers with water. However, two days later, residents again saw flames, and then again, a week later on June 4. Centralia firefighters were baffled as to where the recurring fire was coming from. They used bulldozers and rakes to stir up the remains of the burned garbage to try to locate the concealed flames. Finally, they discovered the cause.
At the bottom of Centralia’s trash pit, next to the north wall, was a hole 15-feet wide and several feet deep. Waste had concealed the gap. As a result, it had not been filled with fire-retardant material. And the hole provided a direct pathway to the labyrinth of old coal mines over which Centralia was built. Soon, residents began complaining of foul odors entering their homes and businesses, and they noted wisps of smoke coming out of the ground around the landfill.
The town council brought in a mine inspector to check the smoke, who determined that the levels of carbon monoxide in them were indeed indicative of a mine fire. They sent a letter to the Lehigh Valley Coal Company (LVCC) stating that a “fire of unknown origin” was burning under their town. The council, the LVCC, and the Susquehanna Coal Company, which owned the coal mine in which the fire was now burning, met to discuss ending the fire as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. But before they reached a decision, sensors detected lethal levels of carbon monoxide seeping from the mine, and all Centralia-area mines were immediately shut down.
The commonwealth of Pennsylvania tried to stop the spreading of the Centralia fire several times, but all attempts were unsuccessful.
The first project involved excavating beneath Centralia. Pennsylvania authorities planned to dig out the trenches to expose the flames so they could extinguish them. However, the plan’s architects underestimated the amount of earth that would have to be excavated by more than half and eventually ran out of funding. The second plan involved flushing out the fire by using a mixture of crushed rock and water. But uncommonly low temperatures at the time caused the water lines to freeze, as well as the stone grinding machine. The company also worried that the amount of mixture they possessed could not completely fill the warren of mines, so they elected to fill them only halfway, leaving ample room for the flames to move. Eventually, their project also ran out of funding after going almost $20,000 over budget. By then, the fire had spread by 700 feet.
But that didn’t stop people from going about their daily lives, living above the hot, smoking ground. The town population was still about 1,000 by the 1980s, and residents enjoyed growing tomatoes in the midwinter and not having to shovel their sidewalks when it snowed.
In 2006, Lamar Mervine, the then-90-year-old mayor of Centralia, said people learned to live with it. “We’d had other fires before, and they’d always burned out. This one didn’t,” he said.
Twenty years after the fire started, however, Centralia, Pennsylvania began to feel the effects of its eternal flame underground. Residents started passing out in their homes from carbon monoxide poisoning. The trees began to die, and the ground turned to ash. Roads and sidewalks began to buckle. The real turning point came on Valentine’s Day in 1981, when a sinkhole opened up underneath 12-year-old Todd Domboski’s feet. The ground was searing and the sinkhole was 150-feet deep. He only survived because he was able to grab ahold of an exposed tree root before his cousin arrived to pull him out. In the 1980s, Pennsylvania ordered everyone out to raze the town’s buildings and the federal government even revoked its ZIP code.
By 1983, Pennsylvania had spent more than $7 million trying to put out the fire with no success. A child had almost died. It was time to abandon the town. That year, the federal government appropriated $42 million to purchase Centralia, demolish the buildings, and relocate the residents. But not everybody wanted to leave. And for the next ten years, legal battles and personal arguments between neighbors became the norm. The local newspaper even published a weekly list of who was leaving. Finally, Pennsylvania invoked eminent domain in 1993, by which point only 63 residents remained. Officially, they became squatters in houses they had owned for decades.
Even so, that didn’t put an end to the town. It still had a council and a mayor, and it paid its bills. And over the next two decades, residents fought hard to stay legally. In 2013, the remaining residents — then fewer than 10 — won a settlement against the state. Each was awarded $349,500 and ownership of their properties until they die, at which point, Pennsylvania will seize the land and finally demolish what structures remain.
Mervine recalled choosing to stay with his wife, even when offered a bailout. “I remember when the state came and said they wanted our house,” he said. “She took one look at that man and said, ‘They’re not getting it.’” “This is the only home I’ve ever owned, and I want to keep it,” he said. He died in 2010 at the age of 93, still illegally squatting in his childhood home. It was the last remaining building on what was once a three-block-long stretch of row houses.
Fewer than five people still live in Centralia, PA. Experts estimate there is enough coal underneath Centralia to fuel the fire for another 250 years. And the abandoned Route 61 that leads into the town center was also given new life for many years. Artists transformed this three-quarter-mile stretch into a local roadside attraction known as the “graffiti highway.”
Even as the pavement cracked and smoked, people came from around the country to leave their mark. By the time a private mining company purchased the land and filled the road with dirt in 2020, nearly the entire surface was covered by spray paint.
Today, Centralia, Pennsylvania is better known as a tourist attraction for people looking to glimpse one of the plumes of noxious smoke rising from beneath the earth. The surrounding forest has crept in where a once-thriving main street was lined with long-demolished stores.
“People have called it a ghost town, but I look at it as a town that’s now full of trees instead of people,” resident John Comarnisky said in 2008.
“And truth is, I’d rather have trees than people.”
Fonthill Castle was the home of the archaeologist and tile maker Henry Chapman Mercer. Built between 1908 and 1912, it is an early example of poured-in-place concrete and features 44 rooms, over 200 windows, 18 fireplaces, 10 bathrooms and one powder room. It is modeled after a 13th-century Rhenish castle, with Gothic doorways, 32 sudden stairways, dead ends and the 44 rooms are each in a different shape. It’s said that Harvard-educated Henry Chapman Mercer built his storybook stone mansion, with its turrets and balconies, from the inside out and without using blueprints.
The interior was originally painted in pastel colors, but age and sunlight have all but eradicated any hint of the former hues. One room in the Terrace Pavilion (built on the site of the former home’s barn), has a restored paint job so visitors can view the home’s former glory. The castle contains built-in furniture and is embellished with decorative tiles, made by Mercer at the height of the Arts and Crafts movement. The castle is filled with an extensive collection of ceramics embedded in the concrete of the house, as well as other artifacts from his world travels, including cuneiform tablets discovered in Mesopotamia dating back to over 2300 BCE. The home also contains around 1,000 prints from Mercer’s extensive collection, as well as over six thousand books, almost all of which were annotated by Mercer himself.
The Castle was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, and was later included in a National Historic Landmark District along with the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works and the Mercer Museum. These three structures are the only poured-in-place concrete structures built by Mercer. The Moravian Pottery and Tile Works is located on the same property as Fonthill Castle, and the Mercer Museum is located about a mile away.
Henry Chapman Mercer, an expert in prehistoric archaeology, a homespun architect and a writer of Gothic tales, built three memorable structures, including Fonthill Castle, the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works and the Mercer Museum. These historic attractions make up what’s now known as the Mercer Mile. Each of the buildings was constructed with reinforced concrete using a technique perfected by Mercer in the early part of the 1900s.
Mercer’s collection of books, prints and Victorian engravings are preserved in this grand home, whose stark concrete exterior belies the ornate and eccentric style of the interior.
Sew Colorful 