In June 1972, Tropical Storm Agnes deluged York County on its quick vacation up the Susquehanna Valley, wreaking dying and unprecedented damage.
As the waters receded, the federal govt arrived in, as it does in such disasters.
A family in the Williamsport area took refuge in just one of scores of Federal Emergency Administration Agency trailers transported to the scene. They are regarded as vacation trailers, mobile residences that can be promptly trucked to a catastrophe scene.
As the months passed, points dried out and the trailer turned obtainable, ready for a new lifetime.
These produced housing models have been meant for catastrophe victims in changeover. A person information account presents a glimpse of life in a person of those people FEMA units that seemed to vacation up and down even when stationary: “The entire trailer rocks if anyone moves.”
Four several years soon after Agnes and two hrs to the south, Wrightsville Rotary and a host of other civic companies were pursuing a community library to provide eastern York County inhabitants.
There was not a library in the Hellam Township spot, so the idea received firm traction. By some means, the community’s studying desert intersected with the Williamsport-area cellular household so beneficial in occasions of high h2o.
The doublewide 1,200-square-foot trailer was trucked south, focused for long lasting anchorage on Hellam Township soil.
Then in close proximity to-disaster struck as even the smaller trailer was much too tall for a very low bridge. The effect broken the roof, but it was fixed and readied for library use in 1979.
All that was desired was a commitment celebration, but h2o remained element of the doublewide’s tale.
Major rains transformed the unpaved parking lot into a area of mud. The cars of these attending the commitment became trapped, needing a tow to get out.
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As the story goes, a single few declined the tow. Foreseeable future county Commissioner Jay Bair and his wife, Pat, rode on horseback to attend.
“Ironically, they almost certainly experienced the least complicated time departing …,” a library heritage states.
The library straight away grew to become well known irrespective of its sizing.
The trailer’s results as a library could not be dampened, even though it escaped yet another partial bath in 2003. A broken h2o pipe shut down the making for a 7 days causing volunteers to grab equipment to sponge it out.
But the trailer faced another danger as it neared its 50th anniversary of Agnes. In current many years, use was these types of that county library process officers appeared for a new creating. Then the township developing grew to become offered for library use when supervisors constructed a new municipal place of work just across its campus.
The new 8,800-square-foot Kreutz Creek Library opened in the renovated previous township creating before this 12 months.
Would that spell the conclude of community lifestyle for the diminutive doublewide trailer on or about its 50th birthday?
Switching library scene
When Kreutz Creek Library opened in 1979, it came amid main adjustments in county libraries.
The York-place neighborhood was a late arrival on the library scene. There ended up private libraries in residences and in educational facilities, but no communitywide general public lending library operated right up until 1935.
It did not have to be that way. In 1900, York passed on an chance to land a Carnegie Library, presented by metal magnate Andrew Carnegie in communities throughout The us.
Then an additional philanthropist, York carriage maker Milton D. Martin entered the community library scene. Essentially, he was driving on a train far from dwelling when a person requested Martin and his spouse, Martha, where they were from.
When knowledgeable that they came from York in Pennsylvania, the Martins have been asked: “Is not that the city that isn’t going to have a public library?”
The late historian Georg Sheets, who told that story, stated that exchange prompted the Martins to endow a public library in York.
Some yrs handed, and York County produced worldwide information for the murder of a suspected witch by three assailants. In the program of protection of the Hex Murder trials in 1929, reporters pointed out that York was a city without the need of a general public library. The implication, of study course, was that no library intended a absence of learning and a inclination toward superstition.
So there was irony that Martin’s plan for a public library was fulfilled on Halloween night in 1935. Some patrons arrived in their Halloween costumes to verify out the East Market Street library made by Fred Dempwolf of York’s mentioned architectural firm.
It was no modest make a difference to open a new library — or a new just about anything — smack in the center of the Wonderful Depression. However, Martin Library, York Small Theater, York Symphony Orchestra and other iconic groups found a way to organize in people decades when persons were seeking for no-charge or very low-value diversions.
Martin was among a group of 765 new libraries that opened among 1930 and 1940. Martin’s opening put the York region inside of 60% of the American populace served by community libraries in 1935.
From this robust get started in weak economic periods, Martin Library grew.
It was positioned, 40 yrs later on, to become a vital participant in the startup of the York County Library System. At that time — 1974 — Martin and counterparts in Dillsburg, Glen Rock, Hanover, Red Lion, Stewartstown, New Independence, Spring Grove and York Haven represented the member libraries in the procedure.
The library system then sought to fill in branches where by none operated. Which is in which the Kreutz Creek Library arrived into the photo. It joined Lewisberry, Collinsville, Dover Location and Jacobus in this team of new branches.
This corporation of nearby libraries into a program was exceptional in a siloed county that does not rely on consolidations or centralization, then or now.
Progress of county libraries has not actually stopped given that.
In reality, the new 8,800-sq.-foot library in Kreutz Creek is one particular of 3 library program-vast projects planned for this calendar year: Renovations to Martin Library will be performed this spring, and get the job done on Red Lion’s Kaltreider-Benfer Library is underway.
Mr. Bowers and ‘Doggie’
There is a indicating that you make your possess luck.
The FEMA vacation trailer that turned Kreutz Creek Library remained roundly acknowledged by the local community.
There is the tale about longtime library board member Evamae Crist patron walking into the building with her grandson for a Wednesday early morning story time led by librarian Richard Bowers.
A storyteller was plying his craft: “Mr. Bowers,” the little ones identified as him.
“There wasn’t enough area for all of us as we crowded alongside one another to check out Mr. Bowers and ‘Doggie’ do their plan,” Crist stated. “There ended up additional than fifty small children there … .”
So the doublewide developed for a solitary loved ones hosted a story-time roster of 50 young children.
Hellam Township officials discovered this sort of issues. When the musical chairs involving the new township developing, its former place of work and trailer started, they were being not likely to take away a chair.
So the township is developing the trailer into a community middle. There, the aged trailer can host Nationwide Night time Out activities, birthday get-togethers and other neighborhood activities.
Township Manager Corina Mann has recognized the major romance in between patrons and the tiny Kreutz Creek Library making.
“The inhabitants love their library,” she reported.
That is, the previous doublewide with a storied heritage and the new library with a vibrant potential.
Resources: York County Library Method documents, James McClure’s “Never to be Forgotten” and York City Square web site
Jim McClure is the retired editor of the York Every day Report and has authored or co-authored 9 publications on York County historical past. Get to him at [email protected].