History
The land in and surrounding French Creek State Park was once dominated by old-growth forests of American chestnut. These trees were cleared, beginning in 1771, and used to make charcoal to feed the iron furnace at nearby Hopewell Furnace. The forests were allowed to regrow and were cleared again approximately every twenty-five years. The furnace was in operation for 112 years until 1883. The damage caused by the colliers had a long-lasting effect on the ecology of this section of southeastern Pennsylvania. The thickly wooded hillsides that once provided a habitat for a wide variety of woodland creatures were stripped bare. But the forest slowly began to grow back.
The second growth forests that stand today at French Creek State Park are made up of a mixture of oak, maple and other mostly hardwood trees. The land was reclaimed by the efforts of the young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps created during the Great Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to offset unemployment. The CCC worked to clear the forests and streams of brush. They also built many of the facilities still in use today at the park, including several tent camping areas, two small dams and lakes, two group camps, picnic areas, and extensive roads and trails throughout the park. They also began the restoration of the historic Hopewell Furnace.
Read more about this topic: French Creek State Park
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification of the spirit.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)