by Nancy Bishop Looking for something to do on a Sunday afternoon? Tired of our modern era? Take a step back in time and visit the Montgomery and Boyd Houses at the corner of Bloom and North Mill streets in Danville. Built in the late 1700s by Gen. William Montgomery, whose son Daniel is the “Dan” in Danville, the Montgomery House was home to descendants of Montgomery until his great-granddaughter, the last resident, passed away in 1939. At that time it was put up for sale and local residents were concerned that it would be demolished, so the Elks Lodge…

by: Dave RuckleAdditional thanks to BJ Teichman, current airport coordinator The birth of the Bloomsburg airport, like so many innovations in the 1920s, was born out of necessity. Even though no airport existed in Bloomsburg at the time, the first commercial flight for business purposes here was made on March 17, 1929 when two Philadelphia carpet designers landed in a farm field to meet with executives from the Magee Carpet Company. After concluding business, the pair were back in the air for a one-hour flight home to Philly. Clearly, a transaction that could have taken days was accomplished within a…

by Nancy Bishop Forsythia is blooming. Daffodils are everywhere. Trees are starting to bud. Dandelions are appearing. It’s finally Spring! Is it time to eat outdoors again? Yes! And there are some great restaurants in Columbia and Montour counties where you can enjoy the outdoors and get a great meal. Here are a few. Over in Bloomsburg, there’s outdoor dining on the patio at Quaker Steak & Lube on Columbia Mall Drive at the Buckhorn exit off Interstate 80. Opened in June 2006, Quaker Steak & Lube boasts about having the best wings in Columbia County with more than 25…

by Nancy Bishop After what seems like a very long winter this year, the recent warm weather has brought signs of Spring to our area. And it’s time to start planning – if not planting – that garden. But April can be a changeable month in Northeastern Pennsylvania with some of the worst snowstorms. Remember April 20, 1983, when more than a foot of snow fell in the area? Pennsylvania even has a name for those April snowstorms. “Onion snow” is a term first used by the Pennsylvania Dutch for a snow that falls after the onions have been planted…

from the Northeast Pennsylvania Business Journal’s 2021 Top 25 Women in Business Kelly O’Brien, the Executive Director of the Berwick Industrial Development Association (B.I.D.A.), was recently named to the Northeast Pennsylvania Business Journal’s Top 25 Women in Business. Name: Kelly O’BrienTitle: Executive DirectorCompany: Berwick Industrial Development AssociationAddress: 107 S. Market Street, Berwick “No matter what you are doing – do your best, and have fun”, is the advice that Kelly O’Brien, executive director of the Berwick Industrial Development Association (B.I.D.A.), offers when it comes to achieving success in one’s life. “If you are not having fun then something is not right,” she…

Bloomsburg –  Starting April 1st, Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble will present Fair Food Foul Play: A BTE Murder Mystery on Zoom. “When control of the Deep Fried Duncans TM empire comes up for grabs, a cast of oddball characters angle for glory, each harboring a potential motive for murder. In this uniquely participatory format, audience members become investigators, forming a team of fellow sleuths to interrogate the eccentric suspects in real time, and bring the culprit to justice.” Fair Food Foul Play marks a return to the (virtual) stage for BTE, after live performances came to a halt last Spring. Will…

by Nancy Bishop Approaching Berwick on Route 11, you can’t help but notice the huge towers that dominate the landscape. The 540-foot-tall towers belong to Susquehanna Steam Electric Station, also known as the Susquehanna Nuclear Plant. It’s hard to believe, but it’s been more than 50 years since the former Pennsylvania Power & Light Co., now PPL, announced that it planned to build a nuclear power plant near Berwick along Route 11. PP&L’s president at the time, Jack Busby, announced the plans to a gathering of community, business and government leaders along with educators and the media on Sept. 24,…

by Nancy Bishop “All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare wrote. And since 1978, Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble (BTE) has been treating this area to that stage. Back in the summer of 1976, a group of actors who had been students at Northwestern University’s theater program in Chicago followed their renowned professor, Alvina Krause, to Bloomsburg when she retired from Northwestern and moved here. The group founded the first Ensemble, a professional theater company, in 1978. That first season’s productions, directed and acted by the Ensemble members, included “The Good Doctor” by Neil Simon from Anton Chekhov, directed by Mark Milikin; Mimescape,…

by: Alana Jajko – Susquehanna Greenway Partnership COVID-19 was the juggernaut of 2020. Not only did it fundamentally transformed our daily lives, but it also shifted where we work, how we educate, and what we do with our spare time. True, the majority of impacts have been negative, but amidst all this upheaval, there is one shift that offers a unique opportunity to our region, especially within our small towns. Following the travel restrictions and hot spots of COVID-19, more and more people have begun looking to smaller communities outside of populated city centers as oases from pandemic life. These…

Published January, 2021 Enjoy a sweet journey through the wineries of Columbia & Montour Counties this Valentine’s season with that special someone, or with your go-to group of friends! From February 5-14, visit six participating wineries and enjoy special wine & chocolate features for a chance to win wine-filled prize baskets. From Friday, February 5th through Sunday, February 14th, trail-goers can travel from winery to winery, tasting delicious seasonal wine features. Along the way, participants will be able to get their tickets stamped at each location. Visit each participating location and you’ll be entered to win winery gift baskets and…

by Nancy Bishop It’s cold. It’s January. There’s still a pandemic. Tired of staying in the house watching TV?  What is there to do? Well, put on a mask, grab your hand sanitizer and your car keys. There’s still plenty to do while staying safe. Back last March when this all started, we stayed in the house the first week, but then needed to get out and do something – anything really! So, what started as going to pick up a newspaper because we prefer an actual paper rather than reading it online, became a daily drive exploring the area.…

by Nancy Bishop Does everything seem different this 2020 holiday season? Don’t let the COVID Cooties ruin your joy in shopping for the holiday. Small local businesses are the way to do it! And this area is the best place. Most of the businesses have online shopping if you really don’t want to leave your house, and all need your business to STAY in business. My friend AnnMarie was up for a bit of an adventure one recent Friday and we both have lists of children and grandkids to shop for so we headed out to see what we could…

by Bob StoudtDirector of the Montour Area Recreation Commission (MARC) Even though 2020 will go down in the books as a year that most of us would rate as “do not recommend”, the year has had the unexpected benefit of reintroducing many to the great variety of parks, trails, and other outdoor recreational opportunities that exist in our own backyards.  Residents of Montour and Columbia Counties and visitors to our region have an amazing selection of options from which to choose, ranging from family-friendly rails-to-trails to hair-raising mountain biking trails better suited to advanced riders.  The Montour Area Recreation Commission…

by Nancy Bishop Iconic Tower Dominates Danville Skyline If you’ve ever driven into Danville, you’ve probably noticed the iconic stone tower on a hillside beside Route 11 that dominates the skyline. Perhaps, like me, you’ve wondered about it and how it came to be built. The story really begins in the region’s iron-making and coal-mining past when many Slovak immigrants came here to work in those industries. A priest named Fr. Matthew Jankola in the Scranton area, himself a Slovak immigrant, saw a need to educate the immigrants’ children and preserve their Slovak faith and culture. So, he looked to…

by Nancy Bishop Halloween will soon be here. What better time to learn about some of the real-life ghost stories in Columbia and Montour Counties! Among the most well-known is Katy’s Church in Washingtonville, Montour County. According to legend, Katy Vandine is sometimes seen on the grounds of the church or walking beside the road wearing a white dress and crying for the married man who betrayed her by telling people she had bewitched him. Pregnant with the man’s child, she decided to spare herself from her broken heart and the community’s ostracism, as well as a potential conviction for…

by Van Wagner & CMVB StaffPhotos courtesy of Montour Co. Historical Society – Collection of Sis Hause & Lynn Reichen History is all around us, and Danville has an incredibly rich one when it comes to iron furnaces and iron production. You may know Danville from its history as an iron-producing giant. The town played a large part in creating and manufacturing the railroad industry’s iron T-rail. In the mid-1800’s, Pennsylvania was an iron-producing powerhouse and Danville was, for a time, the center of this activity.  Blast furnaces were where iron ore was melted, either with charcoal or coal, and…

by Van Wagner COAL IN JERSEYTOWN, PA? About 20 years ago, while I was listening to bluegrass music at the Jerseytown Tavern, I listened to stories about the coal mine of Jerseytown. Several local patrons told me about their memories of the bicentennial celebrations in the summer of 1976, when they rode in a horse-pulled wagon to the site of the mine. Some people even remembered going into the mine. I left the tavern that Wednesday night wondering if this was a tall tale that locals tell as a gag, or maybe I had gotten into a bad batch of…

by Nancy Bishop Back in the pre-pandemic days, a favorite social activity for my friends and family was eating out at one of the area’s many great restaurants. But then along came COVID-19 and they, like many people, became afraid of eating at a restaurant, whether indoors or outside. Some of my friends won’t even get takeout from a restaurant because of safety concerns. What used to be a group of 20 of us that ate out every Friday night is now down to only five or six people. So, is it safe to eat out? Yes! After all, no…

by Nancy Bishop Even though the Covered Bridge & Arts Festival won’t be happening this year, you can still support the vendors who would have been there if not for COVID-19 cancelling the October event normally held at Knoebels Amusement Resort. Many of the Festival vendors make their living from the stands they set up at fairs and festivals around the state. This year most of those events aren’t happening. But you can really help them out by shopping online. Many of them have websites or Facebook pages where you can view their products and order. – Check out the…

From susquehannavalley.blogspot.com Local businesses throughout Bloomsburg will be hosting a variety of fair vendors between September 25th & October 3rd. There are plans for more than fifteen locations to host food vendors. Visit them all and support your favorite food vendor this fall! To find a constantly evolving list of vendors and their locations, please visit this article from Susquehanna Valley Girl Views: susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-2020-bloomsburg-fair-where-to-find.html – it will have a complete and current list of the vendors and where they’re located. Map embedded via Google Maps from Susquehanna Valley Girl Views article:

by Nancy Bishop Eat your veggies! Seems like we’re hearing that advice from everywhere these days – TV news, social media, magazines, newspapers. Even your mother! (Of course, that’s what she’s been saying ever since you were a toddler…) If you’re a real meat-lover, that can be daunting advice. You know you should, but that hamburger or steak cooked on the grill is calling your name. Well, there’s a new Danville restaurant that’s making it easier – and absolutely delicious – to eat your veggies. The PB&J Bar opened on Mill Street in March, just a couple of weeks before…

by Nancy Bishop Were you looking forward to attending this year’s Covered Bridge Festival in October at Knoebels Amusement Resort? If you were disappointed to learn the Festival is another of COVID-19’s victims because you wanted to shop at the hundreds of craft and food vendors, then you’re in luck. You can shop them online! – CHECK OUT THE FULL VENDOR LIST HERE – My neighbors and I always enjoyed going to the Festival. It was a chance to find the perfect Christmas present for some of the hard-to-please people on our shopping lists. This year I particularly wanted to…

by Nancy Bishop It’s summertime. Time to grab a picnic and head to the outdoors! The days are sunny and hot. Take the family and get out of the house. But what if you don’t want to go to the fuss and work of putting a picnic meal together, making it something the whole family will like and then packing it all up? Instead, try ordering each person’s choice from one of the area restaurants and take it to a nearby picnic spot. You’ll be helping an area business out during the pandemic and you’ll be having a special time…

Information from the Danville Business Alliance UPDATE REGARDING FIREWORKS IN DANVILLE/RIVERSIDE: There WILL be fireworks this year in Danville on Saturday, July 18, 2020 beginning at approximately 9:15 PM as part of the Danville Heritage Festival & Celebrate Danville weekend. Fireworks will be set off behind the English Garden in Riverside and will be visible over the river. This year’s firework display is made possible by the following generous sponsors:GeisingerWhitenight’s Fireworks LLC & Farm MarketMeadows At Maria Joseph ManorAmerican Legion Auxiliary Unit 40Danville American Legion Post 40VFW Post 298 Also, a big thank you to Borough of Riverside, Danville Police…