In 1991, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission published Made in Pennsylvania: An Overview of the Major Historical Industries of the Commonwealth. The text traced the course of the state’s industrial history, providing a succinct overview of major industries and significant historical landscapes, including steel, transportation, lumber and coal. In addition, Made In Pennsylvania also provided a useful overview of the status of preservation vis-a-vis the Commonwealth’s industrial sites.
Reading the report (for the first time) over 20 years later, I was struck by the impressive work that Pennsylvania has done to both protect industrial sites and begin the process of interpretation and, if necessary, clean-up/restoration. I was also reminded of the important role that the 12 state and 6 national heritage areas have played in this process. Consider, for a moment, a few of the landscapes and themes the Pennsylvania State Areas encompass: the Oil Region in the Northwest region, the Lumber Region in the Northcentral region, the former Coalfields in Lackawanna Heritage Valley, the transportation networks of the Delaware and Lehigh Valley and the steel communities of the Rivers of Steel area in the Southwest. These same regions and the industrial heritage within their boundaries were highlighted in the Made in Pennsylvania report.
As noted above, many of these regions are also National Heritage Areas – a program now under threat. Legislation that links the National Park Service to 12 National Heritage Areas (including Rivers of Steel and Delaware and Lehigh) and allows for funding to flow to the Congressionally designated management entities has not been re-authorized, leaving preservation, recreation and conservation efforts in these regions, rich in industrial heritage, in a precarious position in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. In the wake of the positive evaluation findings noted in another post on the Observer, its time that NPS and Congress acted to provide long-term support to the program.
For more information on NHAs significance to American labor history, check out a blog post I recently wrote for www.pubichistorycommons.org