St. Clair, Pennsylvania, USA

Defining Main Street: The Church. There are usually no shortage of churches on Main Street, and the state's downtowns usually exhibit some of the richest combinations of denominations anywhere in the world. Why? Read a biography of William Penn. [2017]

Lykens, Pennsylvania, USA

Defining Main Street: The Train Station. Rail lines were lifelines for most small towns, where train depots served passenger and freight interests. Proof of their iconic status: All those 20th-century Christmas tree yards that featured Lionel or Bachman choo-choos always had a snap-together rail depot to authenticate the townscape. [2022]

Stevens, Pennsylvania, USA

Bucher's Mill covered bridge is still open to traffic, both human and canine. It spans a waterway with one of the most colorful names in American toponymy: the Cocalico Creek. Across the region, though, there are more watercourses with equally entertaining names: Chiques, Conestoga, Conowingo, Conewago, Codorus, Conodoguinet, Conococheague. [2023]

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA

If you happen to catch the unveiling of a historical marker, consider yourself lucky. Usually there is only a small gaggle of people lurking around. Some have been asked to take an active role in the ceremony. Others have planned their day around being a spectator. Still others (me!) just happen to be in the right place at the right time. [1982]

 

Myerstown, Pennsylvania, USA

Two locational elements are worth noting about this proud brick-end barn. First, it is located in the Lebanon Valley, where it is just a little out of place. Most brick-end barns are located west of the Susquehanna and in Maryland. Second, it is located on the edge of Myerstown, where it could easily be converted to a nursery, rather than in the country. [2023]

Tioga, Pennsylvania, USA

In the years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, everything (including cement mixer trucks) became an American flag. We projected flags on buildings. We added them to our front yards. We incorporated them into public art. We designed clothing using them. We laid them on our mail boxes. And, we combined them with iconic maps. [2007]

Dallastown, Pennsylvania, USA

Every small town needs at least one coffee shop. It's a matter of livability, a place to be seen, and a key to community building. If the corporate sector is not responding along your Main Street, maybe one of the churches will. That's the story of Common Grounds. See the fish swimming around in the cup of coffee? [2019]

Ortanna, Pennsylvania, USA

Here's a mailbox that must cheer up the letter carrier. Not! Still, fashioning a coffin into a mail receptacle is a unique idea and especially appreciated around Halloween. Do you think the property owner may add some ghouls and goblins to celebrate the beginning of the low-sun season? [2021]

Campbelltown, Pennsylvania, USA

There goes the natural history of a forest somewhere in the Lebanon Valley of Pennsylvania. Don't you wish you could read those tree rings? That's another way of saying: Don't you wish you were a dendrochronologist? Geographers honor their work since they make it possible to understand the history of climate change. [2019]

Yocumtown, Pennsylvania, USA

Look closely. There is a mailbox attached to this out-sized donut. Is it a ploy to make the mailman stop in for a donut a day? Or, maybe it works on every passer-by. Maple Donuts has been a York County staple since the 1940s. [2010]

Millerton, Pennsylvania, USA

It is a bridge and it is covered, but it is not an authentic covered bridge because it rests of two steel I-beams that really do the work of carrying the traffic across the stream. This "stringer" serves simply as a portal to the estate on the other side. If you visit, the owner may even be there to meet you. [2007]

Lewisberry, Pennsylvania, USA

A newly-built outhouse that is for sale! They are made right here on Mt. Airy Road in northern York County. The structure's orifice is for light and ventilation. Today, we think of them as crescent moons, but the crescent shape did not show up as a part of outhouse lore until the mid-20th century. [2021]

Ten Mile, Pennsylvania, USA

What used to be common is now very rare. Still, some visual evidence from the past reminds us of what life used to be like. The outhouse was a staple of the American frontier right up until the 20th century: Houses, schools, and churches, and businesses all had them. Imagine what it was like in the winter! Or even how hot it could get in the summer! [1991]

West York, Pennsylvania, USA

Make art a part of the world you live in. If you are successful, it might even entice your neighbor into a roadside competition for attention (or to see who is the better patriot). Happy Fourth of July! [2006]

Columbia, Pennsylvania, USA

The Susquehanna River in Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary, 3rd ed., 1997, p. 1141: "River; cen. New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, rises in Otsego Lake, Otsego co., cen. New York, flows S across Pennsylvania border and across E Pennsylvania and NE corner of Maryland, to empty into N Chesapeake Bay; 444 mi." [2013]

THE BACKSTORY ~ Posted on the 12^th Anniversary of Geographically Yours, 4 August 2022: Posts in late June 2022 were spent honoring some of America’s great rivers, including two of my besties: the Susquehanna (on whose banks I was born) and the Potomac (close to whose banks I lived for a while). For the photo captions, I decided to use entries from Merriam-Webster’s Geographical Dictionary, which, for decades, was a standard reference work for geographers and librarians.

It is now in its third edition, and it may be the last. Esoteric knowledge that used to be bound in books is now universally accessible digitally. The dust jacket of the revised 3rd edition is shown here. If you look at it closely, you will see a yellow starburst with a quote: “This is a masterful revision.” That quote was lifted from a review I wrote for “The Geographical” (its nickname) back when it was first published. In the 1990s, I loved walking into almost any bookstore and finding my name on the cover of a book I didn’t even write. At the same time, it made me feel a little bad. That’s because not even the editor, the one who did all the work, had his name on the book cover (though it is inside, along with a nice preface). He and I were friends in graduate school at the University of Rhode Island and we continue to be friends to this day. He got his M.A. and became an editor with one of the most revered publishing houses in lexicography. His expertise is geography, but he tended to other duties, too. As he attended professional meetings, he listened to paper presentations took notes on new words that were being used or on old words used in new contexts: for the files at headquarters in Springfield, Mass. Low-key but exciting. Together, we even gave a paper at one of those meetings. It was on generic place names (geographers call them toponyms). I posted our maps on Geographically Yours. We spent a lot of time plotting all those towns with endings like -burg and -boro. We did it by hand. Now, with Geographic Information Systems, a computer can do it instantly. DJ.Z.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Covid Behaviors: Wait outside. This scene was repeated on city streets everywhere. Cramped restaurant space was used to order take-away sustenance, but people waited for their order outside, where they shared sidewalk space with cycles and routine pedestrian flows. [2021]

York, Pennsylvania, USA

Baseball season began over the week-end. Let's hope the York Revolution is ready. Revolution? Quite apropos when you consider that York was briefly the capital of the united States of America during the Revolutionary War. And, kudos to city artists for noticing that the siamese parking meters are shaped like the Y in York. [2014]

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

 

Anchor Cities of Megalopolis: Philadelphia. Game Board Park has to play second fiddle to Love Park across the street: a reminder that Philadelphia has had to play second fiddle to New York City since 1800. But that is what gives Megalopolis such stature: competition among so many large, influential cities. What board game does this piece represent? [2021]

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA

February is all about the number two, and 2/22 is a palindrome too! "The one victory we can ever call complete will be that one which proclaims that there is not a slave on the face of God's green earth." So wrote Mr. Lincoln in 1842, long before he was President. Here he is signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Be sure to see yesterday's post. [2016]

Zurich, Switzerland, and East Berlin, Pennsylvania, USA

Even though he was one of the fathers of the Reformation, Ulrich Zwingli makes only a rare appearance on the religious landscape of the Christian world. But, here in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, a United Church of Christ keeps Zwingli's name alive, and apparently his message, too: "We are called to reform." [1984 and 2014]