‘A special place.’ How a new book honors the history of the Mountaintop
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Snow Shoe community members associated with the David House Heritage Museum recently published a book that captures what life in the region — a place that locals call the Mountaintop — has been like through the past half-century.
“Mountaintop History: Memories of the Last 50 Years” was published in late April to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, and follows “Mountaintop Area: A Bicentennial History,” which was published in 1976 by then-resident William Hall. The Mountaintop comprises Snow Shoe Borough and the Moshannon, Gillentown, Clarence and Pine Glen villages in Snow Shoe and Burnside townships.
Kelly Miller, a Clarence resident and one of the book’s editors, said that the book took roughly six months to write. The process included stitching together more than 40 interviews with residents and reviewing countless hours of municipal meeting minutes, highlighting the many lows and highs that those living in the area have faced over the last 50 years.
Comparatively, Hall’s original book only took six weeks to make, and heavily relied on John Blair Linn’s “History of Centre and Clinton Counties.”
“We gave ourselves a lot more time to be as thorough as we felt we needed to be with this,” Miller said. “It covers a lot of stuff that I think may have been accidentally missed in the last book, and hopefully after reading it, people will have a really clear idea of what kind of tight-knit community this place is, and how we got to this point.”
In that past half-century, the area has experienced a decrease in population, several key business closures and is classified as a food desert. While those aspects are all highlighted in the book, Miller also hopes that the book will remind people why residents enjoy living there today, along with what sort of place the Mountaintop was in its heyday.
From the early 1800s to the early 2000s, the Mountaintop was home to several successful coal mining and timbering businesses, but as time went on, those industries faded, as did the luxuries they brought to the area.
“I think a lot of people forget that this area was once a rather booming place,” Miller said. “Back then, this really small community had three hotels and two movie theaters, a racetrack, multiple train stations, a bunch of businesses and restaurants and stores — I think almost every other house in Clarence had a storefront. It was all happening back then.”
The past and future of the Mountaintop
The book opens with a brief two-page foreword by book committee member, local author and Mountaintop resident Cordes Chambers, who conducted every one of the local interviews on his own.
After a short introduction section and some pages of background on the area as a whole — including how each respective municipality in the area was founded — the book has a compilation of several first-hand accounts on the many goings-on of the Mountaintop in the last 50 years.
Those sections explore things like community life, the area’s churches, industries and services, early immigrant life, various national, regional and local businesses, education and more.
While the Mountaintop area has been hit hard by crucial business closings, such as Hall’s Market in 2020, the Moshannon Valley Pharmacy’s Snow Shoe branch later that year and the Mountaintop Area Medical Center in 2021, the book also outlines a beacon of hope for the region’s future, in the form of outdoor recreation and ecotourism.
“I think that one of the big selling points for why people move or visit here nowadays is because they like this small-town lifestyle, and they especially like living so close to nature,” Miller said. “They like being able to head to their camp a couple of miles deep into the wilderness on the weekend, or they like being able to walk down the road a half-mile and get to a hiking trailhead; it’s peaceful.”
Aside from the seclusion on living in a small Allegheny Mountain range town, one of the big selling points that Miller, Chambers and Mountaintop resident and book co-editor Lori Hoffman believe brings the most people to the area is the Snow Shoe Rails to Trails Association, which operates more than 40 miles of trails for walkers, bikers, equestrians, ATV riders and snowmobile riders.
“Sometimes it divides opinions, but the Rails to Trails has brought in a ton of business to the Mountaintop over the years,” Hoffman said. “Who knows where we’d be without it, so we made sure to give it a big mention in the book.”
In addition to Rails to Trails, some of the outdoor activities mentioned in the book that have contributed to the Mountaintop’s ecotourism success include the Trophy Rack Lodge, Three Point Sportsman’s Club, the Red Moshannon Downriver Race, the former Snow Shoe mud races and more.
While it isn’t mentioned in the book, Miller, Chambers and Hoffman all agree that in the years to come, the Mountaintop could benefit greatly from the addition of businesses like a hardware store, a café or small eatery and a public library.
David House Museum preserves local history
Copies of the book will be on sale at the America250 Celebration on June 20, which runs from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Snow Shoe Park, 301 E. Sycamore St., and at the Snow Shoe Carnival, which runs from July 14-18.
The book can also be purchased by reaching out to Miller at 703-574-2363, Hoffman at 814-404-0880 and museum President Zach Chambers at 814-574-2363. “Mountaintop Area: A Bicentennial History” can also be purchased the same way.
All of the book’s proceeds go directly toward helping fund the David House Heritage Museum, which is located at 206 N. Fourth St. in Snow Shoe Borough, and is dedicated to keeping the Mountaintop’s rich history alive for all to see.
Despite seeming small from the outside, the heritage museum contains a massive amount of Mountaintop memorabilia from over the years, spread across several rooms on the building’s first and second floors.
Visitors to the museum are first greeted by two rooms — a mining-themed room on the right, and a room on the left that features a small set of vinyl train tracks on taped all four walls, serving as a timeline for the Mountaintop’s history from its founding to present day.
Also located in the museum are rooms dedicated to the history of the many local sporting teams that have graced the Mountaintop over the years, the area’s various clubs and businesses, the schools and much more.
“We’ve really got a bit of everything in here, and really, we still have so much more we’d like to display,” Miller said.
Hoffman agreed, adding that while the “extremely hardworking” Zach Chambers has made a number of improvements to the museum over the years — such as the transformation of the front room into the mining room and various general upkeep improvements — there are several other improvements that those involved with museum have their eyes set on.
“We’d really like to give the upstairs a new paint job, and we’d also like to get some proper shelving in to display even more memorabilia,” Hoffman said. “Honestly, it’s going to be Zach that does most of that work too, all on his own time, and boy he does an outstanding job with it. He’s not getting paid for it either, he just wants to help preserve this community’s history.”
The majority of funds raised by museum are from donations from local organizations like the Moose Lodge 1565, the Snow Shoe Township supervisors, the Snow Shoe VFW Post 5644 and the Young Democratic Club, and proceeds from the sale of the books.
According to Miller though, most of that funding doesn’t go toward the upgrades — it goes toward utility fees like the electric bill, water bill and more.
“It’s been a slow process, but little by little we are making progress here,” Miller said. “The Mountaintop area is a special place with a lot of really special people here, and they deserve a museum that’s going to display and honor their history to the best of its abilities, and that’s what we’re striving to be.”
The David House Heritage Museum is open from noon to 4 p.m. on the third Saturday of each month. If you’re unable to make that time, Miller recommends making an appointment for a tour by calling 814-387-4057.
More information on the museum, the book and other Mountaintop-related events, visit the museum’s Facebook page.