Historian Kathleen Waters Sander tells the story of B&O Railroad President John W. Garrett and the B&O’s plan to build a rail line from Baltimore over the Allegheny Mountains to the Ohio River. The B&O’s success ignited “railroad fever” and helped to catapult railroading to America’s most influential industry in the nineteenth century. After the […]

PA Press Club with PA Treasurer Joe Torsella. Watch more PA Politics and Policy on cable and the PCN Select Streaming Service.

When the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, the newly independent United States savored its victory and hoped for a great future. And yet the republic soon found itself losing an escalating military conflict on its borderlands. In 1791, years of skirmishes, raids, and quagmire climaxed in the grisly defeat of American militiamen by a brilliantly […]

“Chief Engineer” tells the story of Washington Roebling, the engineer known for building one of the most iconic American structures, the Brooklyn Bridge. “Chief Engineer” reveals that his father, John-a renowned engineer who made his life in America after humble beginnings in Germany-was a tyrannical presence in Washington’s life, so his own adoption of that […]

The Castle Halloween Museum in Altoona features more than 35,000 Halloween-related items. Museum founder and curator Pamela E. Apkarian-Russell has been collecting Halloween memorabilia for nearly 50 years. The collection includes folk art, sculptures, Halloween-themed product packaging, pottery face jugs, voodoo flags, and more. Come along with It’s History! and explore the Castle Halloween Museum. […]

In “Wounded Lions,” acclaimed sport historian and longtime Penn State professor Ronald A. Smith heavily draws from university archives to answer the How? and Why? at the heart of the scandal. The Sandusky case was far from the first example of illegal behavior related to the football program or the university’s attempts to suppress news […]

Founded in 1921, the Appalachian Trail runs 2,190 miles between Maine and Georgia, including 229 miles in Pennsylvania. The Appalachian Trail Museum is located near the midpoint of the trail in Pine Grove Furnace State Park. The exhibits tell the stories of the trail’s founders Benton MacKaye and Myron Avery and pioneer thru-hikers. Learn about […]

PA Press Club with Chris Martin, C.F. Martin & Company, CEO. Watch more PA Politics and Policy on cable and the PCN Select Streaming Service.

In “Frontier Country,” Patrick Spero addresses one of the most important and controversial subjects in American history: the frontier. Countering the modern conception of the American frontier as an area of expansion, Spero employs the eighteenth-century meaning of the term to show how colonists understood it as a vulnerable, militarized boundary. The Pennsylvania frontier, Spero […]

The Maridon Museum showcases an extensive collection of Chinese and Japanese art including jade and ivory sculptures, tapestries, landscape paintings, and scrolls. The museum also displays more than 300 pieces of German Meissen porcelain. Known for its detail and artistry, Meissen porcelain was the first to be made in Europe. The collection includes pieces depicting […]