York Town Square

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When the rings of trees give history lessons

Web search technology helps the York Daily Record/Sunday News keep track of residents from York and Adams counties who make news elsewhere.
Various search engines scrape prescribed names of York County towns and turn up local people making news across the nation.
For example, an article from a Vermont newspaper tells about Tom and Nadine Bosley’s interest in a “nature-meets-history-meets-technology display” called “Rings of Time.” http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060910/NEWS/609100379/1003/NEWS02 The Bosleys, of Thomasville, and other users are treated to a multi-media show telling the story of different periods during the life of a 120-year-old white pine stump.
Actually, the Bosleys did not need to go to Vermont to experience such a history lesson, albeit lower tech… .


The York County Heritage Trust’s Agricultural and Industrial Museum www.yorkheritage.org cues users in on past happenings using part of a 300-year-old tree, its stump and a computer.
That circa-1690 tree came from Emigsville, as described in this “Never to be Forgotten” excerpt:

An acorn sprouts into a tree in future Emigsville. Almost 300 years later, the tree, described as possibly the county’s oldest resident, crashed to the ground. The tree had grown into a behemoth with a 17-foot circumference. The book “Penn’s Woods” listed the tree as among the oldest in the mid-Atlantic region. “Although this tree has the dubious distinction of proximity to Three Mile Island, it has good health and unusually good form,” the book noted in 1982.

Related post: Mechanical museum intrigues York County newcomers.