Daniel H. Hastings
Lamar Township, Clinton County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Governor of Pennsylvania, 1895-1899; born, 1849, on a farm 4.5 miles SE of here. During his term, the State Department of Agriculture was created and the present State Capitol planned. Lived most of his life in Bellefonte. Died there in 1903.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Daniel H. Hastings was born in 1849 on a farm a few miles from here and rose to become governor of Pennsylvania from 1895 to 1899. During his single term, the state created its Department of Agriculture and set in motion the plans for the grand State Capitol that stands in Harrisburg today. Though he made his home in Bellefonte for most of his life, his career carried him to the height of Gilded Age state politics.
Why it matters
Hastings's tenure captures the Gilded Age impulse toward building modern state institutions — a professional government meant to serve a rapidly industrializing Pennsylvania.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Daniel H. Hastings
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pennsylvania Canal (West Branch Division)
Lock Haven, PA · est. 1952
Built between 1828 and 1834, the West Branch Division of the Pennsylvania Canal carried the traffic of the upper Susquehanna region down to eastern markets. Boats loaded with iron, lumber, and manufactured goods moved along this artificial waterway until 1889. Here the Bald Eagle Cross Cut Canal tied in through two locks, a dam, and a towpath bridge, knitting the region's valleys into a single commercial network.
Clinton County
Lock Haven, PA · est. 1982
Clinton County was carved from Lycoming and Centre in 1839 and most likely named for New York's Governor DeWitt Clinton, the champion of the Erie Canal. Its ground carries an older memory: the 1776 'Tiadaghton Declaration of Independence,' when frontier 'Fair Play' settlers reportedly declared their own independence in the same season as the Continental Congress. By the 19th century the county was a busy lumbering center, and Lock Haven, its seat, became a city in 1870.
Piper Aircraft Corporation
Lock Haven, PA · est. 2024
What began as the Taylor Brothers company in 1927 became an American aviation giant after William T. Piper bought the firm and moved it to Lock Haven in 1937. At its height Piper Aircraft employed more than 2,000 people and built nearly 77,000 general-aviation planes here, including some 20,000 of the iconic yellow J-3 Cub. During World War II, thousands of Cubs were adapted into L-4 Grasshoppers that trained pilots and flew reconnaissance for the U.S. Army.
Eagle Ironworks
Boggs Township, PA · est. 1947
Around 1810 Roland Curtin began making iron at nearby Curtin, launching an enterprise that would outlast nearly all its peers. Remarkably, the last old-style charcoal furnace in the entire United States stood here, remaining in blast until it finally went cold in 1922. The site is a living bookend to more than a century of American iron-making tradition.