A guide book of art, architecture, and historic interests in Pennsylvania
History
A guide book of art, architecture, and historic interests in Pennsylvania
Architecture -- Pennsylvania; Art -- Pennsylvania; Historic buildings -- Pennsylvania; Pennsylvania -- Guidebooks; Pennsylvania -- History
Earliest important road is the Jersey Shore Turnpike, running from
Jersey Shore at the mouth of Pine Creek, Lycoming County, through most
wonderful scenery to Coudersport and on to Buffalo; an effort is being
made to have this historic highway improved, as it is the most direct
way from the West Branch Valley to Buffalo. On this road is the site of
Oleona. Ole Bull, the famous violinist, attempted the settlement of a
colony of Norwegians; in 1852, he purchased 11,144 acres on Kettle
Creek, in the then almost unbroken forests; and laid out four villages,
New Norway, New Bergen, Oleona, and Walhalla; this proved a sad failure,
and the land is now included in the State Forest Reserve. Ole Bull’s
Castle, with a great stone wall, still partly standing, was built about
a mile below Oleona, on the crest of a bluff. Travel is generally good
in summer, during the winter the heavy snowdrifts are often too deep for
passage, temperature often falling to 40° below zero.
COUDERSPORT, county seat, settled in 1807; population 2836; courthouse,
substantial, colonial building in the square, on the main street; in the
grounds is the Soldiers’ Monument, a granite shaft, pedestal has names
of Potter County men who fell in war for the Union. The famous Bucktail
Regiment was recruited largely from Potter County, noted marksmen, many
had been famous hunters, and because of their wonderful skill with the
rifle were made sharpshooters in the Civil War. Christ Protestant
Episcopal Church, incorporated, 1833, present stone building, Gothic,
built in 1885, on ground given by Miss Katharine Dent. The beautiful
little church, “All Saints,” at Brookland, near the old Dent Homestead,
memorial to Henry Hatch Dent, by his children, maintained by endowment,
is native stone, with stained glass windows, marble memorial altar, and
other artistic furnishings, open by appointments of the Bishop, it
stands, as old “St. Martins-in-the-Field,” a solitary witness for
Christianity and the Church.
First Presbyterian, oldest church organization in
[Illustration: ON THE SINNEMAHONING CREEK]
Coudersport, established 1832, first building made in 1849, on ground
given by John Keating, Esq., present building, Fourth and Main Streets,
dedicated in 1903, Italian Renaissance; other denominations have good
church buildings. The Pennsylvania Historical Commission has made an
appropriation for the placing of a monument to David Ziesberger at
Coudersport; they will also place tablets at site of Ole Bull’s Castle
and near the Austin disaster; the Austin flood, in 1911, when the town
was almost blotted out, and many lives were lost and property destroyed,
was perhaps the worst calamity which has ever visited the county. Three
miles east of Coudersport is “The Sweden Valley Ice Mine,” in a shaft
about six feet square and twelve feet deep; during the hot summer
weather ice is formed here in large quantities; the Smithsonian
Institution has published a number of articles concerning these ice
caves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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