BLOG 10—BENNINGTON, VT BATTLE MONUMENT & FIRST CHURCH

The Bennington Elks Lodge is in the perfect camping location for visiting RVers, who are Elks members, interested in walking around downtown and in Bennington's long history.  It also is in a historic neighborhood with numerous large mansions, including a beautiful mansard-roofed carriage house on the Elks property. Several of these mansions are B&Bs.  Monument Avenue has many classic 18^th Century homes and there are many others of 18^th and 19^th century vintage around the downtown area of Bennington. Here are some examples:

The old mill, now a shopping mall

Bennington became a city in 1749!  It was home to the Catamount Tavern in 1767 when the Green Mountain Boys were formed as a local militia to take on the British.  The tavern is long gone now and replaced by a beautiful old home but a large granite base monument with a lifesize Catamount (aka mountain lion!) on top and a plaque tells the story.  Lin is interested in the Catamount Tavern story because his first ship in the Navy was the USS CATAMOUNT (LSD-17) named after the Tavern as the meeting place for the Green Mountain Boys!

The famous Revolutionary War Battle of Bennington happened nearby on August 16, 1777 when the Patriots of General John Stark and Colonel Seth Warner triumphed over the forces of British General John Burgoyne! The Battle is memorialized by the very impressive Bennington Battle Monument dedicated in 1891.  It is considered the turning point of the Revolutionary War, changing the course of American history, since General Burgoyne surrendered his severely weakened British Army of mainly Hessians shortly afterwards at Saratoga on October 17, 1777!

General Stark is famous for these words to his Patriots as the battle began: “There they are, boys! We beat them today or Molly Stark sleeps a widow tonight!”  Statues and tablets of both General Stark and Colonel Warner are front and rear of the monument, respectively.  Reenactments of the Battle are held here in summer.

This 306 foot obelisk soars over Bennington and is the tallest structure in Vermont, providing from its 250' high observation area a view of 3 states—Vermont, Massachusetts and New York. The statistics of the monument are amazing!  Inside there is a small museum of images of battle scenes and the planning and building of the monument, as well as financing!  An elevator takes you up to the observation deck about 2/3rds of the way up the building. The elevator operator is also your guide to orient you and answer questions. Windows that open allow photographs in each direction.  Here are our photographs East, South (looking down Monument Avenue and Old First Church), West (with New York in the distance), and North.  The Monument is a state historical site and to go up inside, there is a $5 fee.

A couple of blocks down Monument Avenue is the landmark Old First Church and its Old Burying Ground.  Old First is a classically beautiful church built in 1806, replacing an earlier church structure.   Its cemetery is fascinating with many old graves from the time of the Revolutionary War and even before.  Revolutionary War soldiers and officers are marked with a medallion and small American flags. The most famous burial is poet Robert Frost and his family. 

A photographic sample of old gravestones in the cemetery will give you an idea of the styles of markers of the time and some of the wording.

In a central area of the cemetery there is a large square granite marker for the group burial of  both the Patriot and British/Hessian Revolutionary War soldiers lost in the Battle of Bennington. That includes  13 American Patriots, 16 British and Hessian soldiers and one Loyalist who was hung.  Tablets on the monuments contain the names of all these men.  The inscription reads “Around this stone lie buried many patriots who fell in the Battle of Bennington August 26, 1777.  Here also rest British soldiers and Hessians who died from wounds after the battle as captives.  They were confined in the first meeting house built in Vermont which stood in the creek west of this burying ground.” Dedicated March 1896

After visiting the Monument and the Church, we drove around Bennington to see the sights and stumbled onto an interesting art project of a type used by many towns as both public art and a fundraiser. We saw a Cow art project/fundraiser about 10 years ago in New York City! 

 


In the case of Bennington, we saw both artistically painted Moose and Catamounts (mountain lions.)  Businesses “buy/sponsor” the Moose or Catamount and have an artist paint the fiberglass animal to their chosen theme.  After they have been on public display for some period of time, they are auctioned for charity and they show up later at businesses, public spaces, art galleries and more.  Great idea!   Some of these were in the park by the Chamber of Commerce and others were by an old mill on the roof and another downtown.  Hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

I doubt if we saw them all but here are shots of all the Moose, even including a Mom and Calf, that we saw!

Now here are the members of the “Catamount Prowl” named, of course, after the Catamount Tavern!  

The next morning, as we were about to leave Bennington, our little group of three drove all three Airstream RVs to the circle in front of the Bennington Battle Monument for this photograph.  

 

Fence at the First Church

BLOG 9—STEAMTOWN, SCRANTON, PA

All 3 of our RVs pulled into the Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton without any problem—lots of parking!  All the guys like trains and this really is the place to see trains of all types!   Unlike our visit here last year, all the steam locomotives are in the shop so none were running, which was a little disappointing.  But at least 4 diesel locomotives were running around the yard and doing short excursions.  Not quite the same excitement level but diesel is still interesting!  One nice thing is that with our Golden Age Passports, we all got in free-our favorite price, of course!

If you read our Blog 2 from Omaha and Council Bluffs, you'll remember the gigantic Union Pacific

Big Boy locomotives—the largest ever built!  Big Boy 4012 with its tender is one of the first steam locomotives you see at Steamtown, right adjacent to the parking lot.  It is not running, but apparently is a future project for the locomotive shop---as Ed Sullivan would say “A RULLY BIG project!”

The other locomotives in the parking lot area are all diesels-- Delaware & Lackawanna 3642 is in beautiful shape and was running.  A Jersey Central locomotive was nearby.   Inoperative Reading 2124 steam locomotive was near Reading 903 diesel streamliner locomotive, maybe for size comparison?

We went into the Visitor Center to find out the time for the next locomotive shop tour and learned one was starting in10 minutes so we joined that group.  We got a good look at the turntable before heading into the locomotive shop. 

A small crew was working on aligning the turntable rails. 

The Roundhouse and turntable

The first exhibit in the shop is a cutaway steam locomotive so you can see the boiler, all the piping, the linkages and much more.  Our tour guide gave a very long explanation of the steam converted to motive power that lost at least a few people and some left the tour.  Unusual, but actually TOO MUCH information!  

The most impressive parts of the shop, at least to me, are the huge pieces of machinery for bending metal, gigantic drill presses, the largest lathes I've even seen and many more!  Here's a few photos of the equipment.

There are at least 3 locomotives being rebuilt currently in the shop and most are multi-year projects.

In another area, a large boiler was being completely rebuilt and interestingly, many of these jobs no longer have parts available, so all those big tools I just described are put to use to custom build major parts. Just the scale of components for the steam locomotives is awe-inspiring!

Lehigh Business car 353                                                      Steam derrick and Idler Gondola

Outside the shop tour which was 1-1/2 hours long, there is an impressive steam derrick car and an idler gondola, parts of a work train. 

There is a 15 minute film upstairs in the auditorium that is interesting on the attraction of stream railroading to a child, later a young man getting his first railroading job, then eventually becoming an important railroad manager.  There are many fascinating exhibits in several areas of the Visitor Center.  There are life size figures of people representing many of the typical jobs on the railroad which explanations of what they do. 

A large group of railroad logos, many from the past, before they were gobbled up by another railroad.  Along that same line, a large photograph of a Norfolk Southern roundhouse display of many large diesel locomotives all painted in the colors and logos of all the other railroads NS has bought over the years!

Delaware & Lackawanna, the railroad  that built the shops and Scranton yard where Steamtown is now located, had a very clever marketing campaign for many years using a fictitious woman named Phoebe Snow, dressed in white dress, coat and even gloves, to make the point that steam locomotives pulling their trains used anthracite coal, which is much cleaner burning than the bituminous coal other railroads were using, so you stayed clean while riding the Delaware & Lackawanna RR passenger service!

Another exhibit showed the massive effort made by the nation's railroads during World War II to move vastly increased volumes of freight as well as many more servicemen and women as passengers than in peacetime earlier.

One of my favorite exhibits was about the government-mandated nationwide adoption of Railroad Standard Time back in 1883, which created the 4 time zones in the U.S.and Canada that we still use today.  Previously even small towns on their own could create their own time, leading to chaos in preparing schedules, especially for businesses and travelers.   A series of WWII posters was adjacent to that exhibit. 

Nearby 2 old but nicely restored railroad cars, one a beautiful Pullman sleeper car with all the different compartments and even a dining table area and the other car was a Louisville and Nashville Railway Post Office car, one of the very few I've ever seen exhibited.   Mail was grabbed on the fly from local stations, sorted on the car, then delivered to appropriate stations along the route. How times have changed!!

Steamtown is a wonderful place to learn about the history of railroading and especially the almost gone steam locomotives that were so common on the railroads until the early 1950s.   Kids love it and most adults are equally fascinated, especially if they, like us, are of an age to remember when steam trains were the common form of transportation all over the United States and the rest of the world as well.  The National Park Service has done a great job telling the story here at Steamtown!   

           

BLOG 8 -- YUENGLING BREWERY & POTTSVILLE, PA

On each of our East Coast trips in recent years, we've had a Yuengling Beer at one place or another and always noted the statement on the label “America's Oldest Brewery—Since 1829.”  Hearing that the brewery gives free tours and serves samples meant Yuengling Brewery had to be included on our itinerary this trip!

 

The Yuengling Brewery is located in Pottsville, PA, which is on Pennsylvania Highway 183 and 97 miles northwest of Philadelphia.  Pottsville is the county seat of Schuylkill County.   Anthracite coal was discovered here in 1790 and mined extensively until the end of World War II.   The city was founded in 1806.  Today's  population is about 15,500 people.  Novelist John O'Hara lived here. Van Heusen Shirt Co.started here in 1881. 

Driving into Pottsville, you can't miss the Henry Clay Monument that was dedicated in 1855 and restored in 1985.  Henry Clay is 15 feet tall and standing on a 51' column on a hillside in a very visible location above downtown Pottsville!  Henry Clay (1777-1852) was an American statesman, four time U.S. presidential candidate (he lost each time!), U.S. Senator from Kentucky but very popular in Pennsylvania coal country because he was a strong proponent of tariffs on imported coal and iron to protect “fledgling American industries from English imports.”

There are many architecturally interesting buildings and homes in Pottsville.  Here's a small group:

In the distance, the handsome 1891 five story Ohio sandstone Romanesque style Schuylkill County Courthouse is very visible on a hill overlooking downtown.  Did I mention that  Pottsville is very hilly?

On to Yuengling Brewery, located definitely on a hill at 5^th & Mahantongo Streets in Pottsville.  The current brewery we're visiting was built in 1831 after the original 1829 brewery burned to the ground.  Yuengling expanded production in 1999 by opening another larger modern brewery in Mill Creek 3 miles away.  In 1999 they expanded again, buying an old Stroh's brewery in Tampa, Florida.  In 2009, Yuengling's 3 breweries produced over 2 million barrels of beer total!!  And they're looking to expand again, since their distribution is currently primarily in the Eastern seaboard states. 

From 1919-1933 Prohibition forced Yuengling, like all breweries, to stop making alcoholic beer.  They switched to 3 varieties of “near beer” limited to ½ of 1% alcohol and opened a successful ice cream plant across the street, saving the company.  Yuengling is now 186 years old!

Tours operate twice a day and we went on the 1:30 PM tour with ace tour guide Elaine, a real cheerleader for Yuengling! 

There were 2 sections of the tour with about 40 people in each one and 2 guides.  We started in an old part of the brewery where barrels were filled and then moved to the aging caves about 50' underground from the actual brewing rooms, where the barrels were kept for more than a month to age before bottling.  As their production increased, they dug longer tunnels and side rooms in the caves. The caves are not in use anymore but they are very interesting! The Mill Creek brewery now fills barrels. 

We moved up to the actual brewery and saw all the different processes involved.  There are many large tanks and piping everywhere leading to the finished product.  The photographs show most of the equipment.  My interest is drinking the beer, not making it, so I won't try to explain the process!! 

One unique feature is several well done murals in different areas of the brewery showing the equipment and the workers. 

Then we moved to the bottling line and watched the finished beer go into the bottles, then into cases of 4 six packs each and the cases move on conveyors to eventually be transported to your local store!  Fascinating to watch the sheer quantity of bottles that move along the lines!  I really appreciated that photography was allowed in all areas even though it was challenging especially at the fast=moving bottling line but great to see!

The final stop of the tour was the Rathskeller tasting room with enthusiastic tour guide Elaine pulling the tap handles and giving us all generous samples of our choice of 2 Yuengling beers or a non-alcoholic birch beer!   

On the way out, we stopped by the gift store and bought a couple of Yuengling T-shirts, one being the Yuengling fire dogs.   

Great old company, excellent beer and a great tour and tour guide!  We're sure glad we came to Pottsville!

And if you are wondering---this is how Yuengling beer is brewed!