We Love PA History!

Send us Fan Mail When most people think of Hersheypark, images of chocolate and roller coasters often come to mind. But in Thrill Ride: The Transformation of Hersheypark , Dr. John R. Haddad dives deeper into the park’s rich history and cultural evolution. Thrill Ride offers both a nostalgic journey for longtime visitors and a detailed look at how Hersheypark evolved from a community amusement par...

Send us Fan Mail Historian, Educator, Writer, former Park Ranger, Thomas Paine interpreter, and a continuing volunteer at the site, Bill Kashatus gives us an in-depth examination of the major historical events that occurred at Independence Hall, Carpenters' Hall, Congress Hall, and Franklin Court, among other park sites, as well as the founding fathers who shaped those events. Kashatus shares...

Send us Fan Mail This year marks Fallingwater's 90th anniversary, and its 63rd year giving tours to the public. Fallingwater is one of Frank Lloyd Wright's most acclaimed works and the one that best exemplifies his philosophy of organic architecture: the harmonious union of art and nature. Fallingwater Director Justin Gunther says "Because of that tie to nature, people that come and...

Send us Fan Mail "You can't go down a Pennsylvania highway without seeing them. What are they?" Bill Lewis has a lifelong love of history.  "Since I was a little kid, I've been kind of obsessed with history. And the more I learned, again, as a child about local as well as statewide history, the more fascinating I found it." What are they? "What they really are ar...

Send us Fan Mail Gettysburg Surgeons: Facing a Common Enemy Barbara Franco will share her findings from a 10-year project to identify the surgeons who cared for the wounded at the battle of Gettysburg. A data base of more than 1200 surgeons, both Union and Confederate, is the basis for her new book, Gettysburg Surgeons: Facing a Common Enemy in the Civil War’s Deadliest Battle. The study includes...

Send us Fan Mail For over 245 years, historians have ignored the incidents that pitted the Patriots against the leaders of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Some publicly accused the Quaker leaders of being traitors to their country; they maintained they were merely following the principal tenets of their religious faith. The Patriots had no legal groun...

Send us Fan Mail "...as probably many Scots-Irish people know, there's a lot of misunderstanding about who they are as a people. And I think a lot of modern Americans think one thing, and perhaps us historians would say that maybe they should be thinking about something else. So today I think a lot of people take pride in being Scots-Irish because they sort of think they know a lot of th...

Send us Fan Mail November 12, 1758. The story of Washington "putting his life in the most jeopardy it had ever been before or since:"  "...Colonel Mercer is engaged with the enemy...He needs help. So Washington... takes a group of volunteers, mainly from his Virginia regiment... to go out to reinforce Colonel Mercer. Forbes will write that he sent out a group to surround the enemy....

Send us Fan Mail "People are interested in the stories of people..." "David McCullough, America's favorite historian, Pulitzer Prize winner, Adams, Truman, the Johnstown Flood, he used to say, he was actually quoting the librarian of Congress when he said trying to build a future without understanding the past is like trying to plant cut flowers. You know, it's just not go...

"The road to Pennsylvania, for Penn, began in the Cork prison 15 years before he set foot in America."    You can't understand Pennsylvania history - "The Holy Experiment" - without knowing about William Penn. There's no better source than the man who wrote the biography of William Penn. Reflecting his interest in the intersections between political theory and politic...

MICHAEL L. NORRIS                                             Executive Director As the Executive Director of the Carpenters’ Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, which owns and manages Carpenters’ Hall, a National Historic Landmark in Philadelphia’s historic district whose members constitute the nation’s oldest continuously operating craft guild, Michael oversees all of the Company’s p...

Andrea Lowery is the Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission (PHMC) and PHMC is the official history agency of the Commonwealth. Andrea shares how PHMC stewards the history and heritage of Pennsylvania through its bureaus  (State Museum, State Archives, State Historic Preservation Office, and Bureau of Historic Sites and Museums) and programs such as the blue and...

Welcome to We Love PA History! - the podcast that explores Pennsylvania's past, one story at a time.