Small-town high school students prepare for the journey of a lifetime in the middle of the Great Depression (Part 4)
The boys of Arendtsville Vocational High School had already seen so much during the summer of 1937. They had traveled across the United States, down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and upon an ocean to reach Alaska. It was almost too much to take in fully, and yet, their journey wasn’t complete. From Vancouver, British Columbia, they climbed aboard a half-ton truck that they had specially outfitted to carry the 25 boys and their teacher, Edwin Rice. “Most of the roads in British Columbia are dirt and not very good at that,” Rice wrote in a letter to The Gettysburg Times. “We were saturated with dust when we got to Asveyoos.” They drove into Washington State where they watched the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam. “Today it is one of the largest dams in the world, but Read more…
Small-town high school students prepare for the journey of a lifetime in the middle of the Great Depression (Part 3)
Few of the boys of Arendtsville Vocational High School had traveled beyond the borders of Adams County, but in a short time during the summer of 1937, they had visited two countries, traveled through 19 states and territories, swam in two oceans, and were getting ready to sail on an ocean. They boys had traveled a southern route across the country with their teacher, Edwin Rice, but now they were in Vancouver, British Columbia. There, they boarded the steamship, Prince Rupert. Since the group was traveling on a shoestring budget, they had booked passage on the freight deck. It was cramped quarters. The boys slept in bunk beds and the rooms had no windows, “but we could see out when the doors opened,” Wayne Criswell said in “The Journey of a Lifetime Summer 1937” an unpublished article Criswell told to Read more…
Small-town high school students prepare for the journey of a lifetime in the middle of the Great Depression (Part 2)
Twenty-six students from Arendtsville Vocational High School set out on a cross-country journey to Alaska and back on June 18, 1937. The trip had been years in the making and for the boys, many of whom had barely ventured to the furthest reaches of Adams County, no matter what happened, it would be well worth the wait. They first headed east in their Ford half-ton flatbed truck, which had been specially outfitted to carry all of the boys, their teacher Edwin Rice, and everything they would need for their journey. Rice had taken his students on a number of summer trips over the years, but the 9,000-mile trip planned for 1937 was by far, the grandest trip that he had undertaken. The traveled along the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Delaware, and down into Virginia. They stopped at Virginia Beach where Read more…
Small-town high school students prepare for the journey of a lifetime in the middle of the Great Depression (Part 1)
Arendtsville is a small town in south central Pennsylvania 3,800 miles from Alaska. In 1937, a group of teenagers set out from their little community with Alaska as their destination. The teenagers were students of Arendtsville Vocational High School. The school had first opened as a two-year high school in 1911 on the second floor of the elementary school. Enrollment quickly grew and within a couple years the students moved to the second floor of the fire house on South High Street, according to the National Apple Museum web site. The students got their own building in 1914 when the school board voted to build a high school on South High Street. The course work was expanded to a three-year program. This was due to the urging of Edwin Rice, who was a student a State College. His arguments convinced Read more…
Military plane found 60 years after it went down on Alaskan glacier
Wreckage of a military plane believed to have crashed on Colony Glacier, east of Anchorage, AK, was discovered on June 10. Along with the wreckage, human remains of the 52 people who had been on board the plane were also found. This is a story that struck a chord with me. It reminds me of the stories you read occasionally of mammoths being found in glaciers in Russia or even the story of Captain America that was touched on in “The Avengers” earlier this year. Unfortunately, these people weren’t lucky enough to live in an age when medical miracles like that could happen. According to an AP account, the civil air patrol member was Terris Moore, who was president of the University of Alaska. After returning from the site, he told reporters that the plane “obviously was flying at full Read more…
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