Marker explains Hanover’s Ten Commandments monument
Let’s call it a marker marked by a marker.
Hanover’s Wirt Park, a public park, is home of a Ten Commandments marker sitting on a chunk of privately owned land.
The non-profit Gitt-Moul Historic Properties’ purchase of the land has ended a multi-year controversy. Now the monument has a nearby marker of its own… .
This marker details the history of the Ten Commandments monument but doesn’t delve into a recently resolved church-state controversy. In 2003, Americans United for Separation of Church and State challenged the monument sitting for decades on public land.
The new marker makes one thing perfectly clear: “The Borough of Hanover does not maintain the property, is not the owner of the property, and performs no municipal function in relation to the monument property.”
But the monument and its explanatory marker are not the only sights to see at Wirt Park.
The Hanover Fire Museum, part of the Central Station at Wirt Park, includes a room containing three pieces of apparatus:
– 1882-Silsby Steamer 550 GRM.
– 1830-circa 2 cylinder piston hand pumper, from Baltimore.
– 1770-circa Nushem grinder hand engine.
It also houses a working 1911 Gamewell Alarm Board and other fire memorabilia. http://www.borough.hanover.pa.us/images/hanover/hbfiremuseum.html
So there it is, overlooked York County landmark No. 26, Hanover’s Wirt Park Ten Commandments Monument and fire museum. Other overlooked York County sites and landmarks (See posts under York Town Square):
— The Little Courthouse
— Prospect Hill Cemetery
— War Mothers Memorial
— Work War II USO at former York County Academy gymnasium
— York’s Salem Square soldiers monument
— York’s Cookes House
— York’s rowhouses
— Wrightsville’s monuments
— The Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge
— Memorial trees along highways Route 30 & Susquehanna Trail.
— The Inches
— Camp Stewartstown
— The Wrightsville Bridge supports
— New York Wire Co.’s factory whistle
— Mary Ann Furnace
— York’s Hartman Building
— Hanover’s Iron Mike and The Picket
— York’s Eberts Lane
— Helen Reeves Thackston Memorial Park
— WW II defense worker housing
— Shiloh’s former town square
— Loucks one-room school
— Red Lion’s Fairmount Park
— Carlisle Avenue Market House
_ York’s Fairmount neighborhood
