The Southern Lancaster County Historical Society will host a celebration of Robert Fulton on Saturday, Sept. 26, at the Robert Fulton Birthplace on Route 222, six miles south of Quarryville.
The event, celebrating Fulton’s 1807 trip up the Hudson River on the steamboat “Clermont,” will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It will  include music, food, reenactments, […]

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Thanks to The Associated Press and General Motors, we present to you today some nostalgic photos from GM history. The captions are above the photos.
The 1977 Pontiac Ventura SJ:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The 1969 Chevrolet Impala Custom Coupe:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The 1965 Buick Riviera (note the car phones):

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The 1965 Pontiac GTO:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A Chevrolet Corvair is displayed at the 46th Paris Auto Show at the Grand […]

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The article and left and the ad at right ran in the New Era in early 1959. I stumbled across them at about the same time, and found the juxtaposition interesting. 
The Big 3 U.S. automakers sound reluctant to admit their plans to build some small cars for 1960. Meanwhile, Chrysler is importing French-made Simcas and Brubaker […]

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Last week, I wrote about electric cars that were sold at a downtown Lancaster dealership in 1909.
Today, I learned that old electric cars will be a major feature of this year’s Kutztown Folk Festival in Berks County, from June 27 to July 5.
A number of early electric vehicles will be on display at the festival. Many […]

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Last year, the Lititz Car Co. began selling Zap brand electric cars and trucks that can travel up to 40 mph and go 25 miles between battery charges. It was a big new thing for Lancaster County…..sort of.
Turns out that 100 years ago, you could buy an electric car on East King Street that went about 15 mph […]

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Here’s some evidence that, even in the so-called era of “cheap gas,” there were consumers thinking about fuel economy.
The Chevrolet ad below, which was published in the New Era on Feb. 5, 1959, touted the fuel efficiency of the “Hi-Thrift 6″ engine, which “Goes and goes and goes on a gallon!”
I thought it was interesting, however, […]

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John and Ruth Moseman, along with Elam and Elizabeth Stauffer, were the first missionaries sent to Africa by the Eastern Mennonite Mission. The articles below, published in the New Era on Feb. 21 and 22, 1934, report on the sendoff from New York of the Mosemans and Mrs. Stauffer.
As the first article explains, Elam Stauffer was already in Tanganyika […]

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Last week, I wrote about the retirement of the Ferdinand Magellan, the rail car used by Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.
I thought the item was timely, due to President-elect Barack Obama’s rail trip Saturday from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., for his inauguration.
But I couldn’t find much information last week on the rail car that Obama […]

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The Magellan was government surplus in 1959 
President-elect Barack Obama campaigned by train in Lancaster last year, and he’ll travel from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., by train next week for his inauguration. But chances are he won’t be doing a lot of train travel as president, at least not like chief executives did in the old days.
The short story below, published […]

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When people talk about “old-fashioned winter weather,” what era, exactly, are they referring to?
The 1930s?
The 1950s?
Or simply whichever era was previous to the present one?
Maybe some clips from the New Era archives can shed some light on the matter:
“An old-fashioned, snow-to-the-knees winter storm swept into Lancaster County his morning,” read the lead of a February […]

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