Bucks County, located in Southeastern Pennsylvania, was one of three original Pennsylvania counties founded by William Penn in 1682. Although Bucks County has many white-tailed deer, the name Bucks has nothing to do with the animal. Rather, it's a shortening of the name Buckinghamshire, England, which is where the Penn family originally lived.
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Designed by William Penn |
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1644-1718 |
William Penn, a Quaker, was seeking a place to build a society with more relgious tolerance than was found in England at the time. Penn looked to the "New World" for this opportunity. In 1681 40,000 square miles were given by King Charles II to William Penn in exchage for forgiveness of a 16,000 pound debt owed to his father who was an Admiral in the British Navy. The king named the land "Pensilvania" (meaning "Penn's Woods") in honor of William's father who died eleven years earlier. However, a tax was applied to this land by the king: each year Penn was to provide two beaver skins and 1/5 of all gold and silver found in the land. In November, 1682 Penn sailed to America aboard the ship Welcome, and the rest is history.
A lot has occured here over the centuries, much of it little known to even those who live in the county. 
Bucks County is where George Washington and his ragtag Continental Army crossed the Delaware River on Christmas Eve, 1776. The Liberty Bell was also hidden here temporarily to prevent the British Army from melting it to make cannons.
More recently, in the mid-20th century NASA astronauts in some of the Apollo missions trained in the centrifuge on the county's Naval Base. It's even where the Burpee Seed Company got it's start. The town of New Hope was the setting for a 1914 "Peril's of Pauline" movie and a Bucks County farm was selected as the backdrop of a Hollywood movie called "Signs" which was filmed in the fall of 2001.
Bucks County has also had a long history with various arts. The County is mentioned in literary works ranging from Thomas Paine's 1776 "Common Sense" to the 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning novel "American Pastoral" by Philip Roth. In addition, Bucks County has also been home to numerous well-known figures, such as the Nobel-Prize winning author Pearl S. Buck, the Pulitzer Prize winning authors James Michener and Jonathan Weiner, the composer Oscar Hammersten II, the anthropologist Margaret Mead, and the artists Daniel Garber and Edward Hicks, painter of The Peacable Kingdom. It's even the home of the Berenstain's, creators of the Berenstain Bears.
Located between New York City and Philadelphia, Bucks County, once a stagecoach stop between the two cities, has now become a destination in its own right. Tourists flock here every year to see a part of America that is rapidly disappearing. The county has retained much of what has been lost in other suburbs, although in an ironic twist of fate much of the county's "charm" that has drawn so many people to live here is now becoming it's own downfall.
The county covers 640 square miles and, in a gross demonstration of pure greed, is being over-developed at a lightning-fast pace, mostly against the will of the residents who live there.
Because of outdated state laws the residents are virtually powerless to stop the developers with their large volumes of cash who on an almost daily basis can be found knocking on the doors of farmhouses with the intent to buy the rolling hills of farmland and turn the cornfields and pastures into housing developments that stretch as far as the eye can see. The term for this avarice is "suburban sprawl." A national issue, suburban sprawl has been called "Pennsylvania's most pressing environmental problem." In fact, according to a 1999 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Southeastern Pennsylvania is part of a mid-Atlantic belt that is rated the nation's second-most threatened agricultural area by the American Farmland Trust."
Efforts are now underway to save at least a little of the remaining farmland to preserve the agricultural roots of the area but much irreversible damage has already been done. In 1945 Bucks County was 67% farmland and farms occupied over 260,000 acres. As of 1996 the farmland was down to only 18% of the county, representing 70,000 acres, and the remaining farmland is still disappearing at an alarming rate, with about 2,500 acres of farmland at risk for development each year as of 2007. Unfortunately, it is not just farmland that is being lost--important natural areas are at risk as well. Cooks Creek in Springfield township was listed in 2000 as one of the top ten "Last Chance Landscapes" by Scenic America, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit environmental lobbying group. The significance of this distinction was that the area was deemed to be in immediate danger to permanent loss by development and that the creek could potentially be saved if strong preservation efforts were made to do so. To the best of my knowledge, the area has not yet been (and may never be) preserved.
The onslaught of development has not only destroyed many beautiful views, but has erased a great deal of history as well. An example of this can be found at the former home of Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960), who lived in Doylestown on a 40 acre property. A historic marker by the property states that Hammerstein was a "lyricist and librettist whose collaboration with composer Richard Rodgers transformed the Broadway musical. Their works include South Pacific (1949), The King & I (1951), and The Sound of Music (1959). The bucolic landscape of Hammerstein's nearby farm inspired him to write, 'Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,' for the musical Oklahoma! in 1943." While only 5 of the original 40 acres remain, even these have now become critically endangered. As of 2004, the current owners have revealed plans to subdivide the remaining open space for more houses. Fortunately, the plans call for the preservation of the original 1840 farmhouse on a 1¼ acre tract of land. Yet, much is lost by saving the farmhouse without preserving any of the remaining farmland--the historic home, standing amongst a modern subdivision, becomes history out of context.
If after reading this you are shocked, upset, or angry about what is going on you are not alone. But then if you do nothing more you are just one of the vast majority of people who are sitting by idly as the area is being bull-dozed, paved, and built over with little protest. However, if you do want to do something--anything--to help, options are available. Thankfully, there are some people in the area who do care enough to take the trouble and time to stop the onslaught of suburban sprawl and there are several private and goverment organizations working to protect what they can of whatever open space remains. One of these organizations is The Heritage Conservancy, located in Doylestown. In November 2007 voters will have the opportunity to approve an $87 million referendum to save more open space. This comes 10 years after a former $59 million referendum was approved by voters and led to thousand of acres being preserved. Whether or not voters will approve the current bond issue is still uncertain, but hopefully the citizens of Bucks County will understand that a small investment now will pay off tremendously for themselves and for future generations. This tour contains a detailed account of suburban sprawl and the link to this can be found at the bottom of the page.
Despite the increased congestion, traffic jams, and loss of the peaceful rolling hills to housing developments, Bucks County still has a lot to offer and is a nice place to visit (emphasis on visit; the population is just growing too fast!). As of December, 2000, the county had the second largest park system in the state, and it continues to grow. A number of years ago Bucks County was listed among the "50 Fabulous Places to Raise a Family." Fodors has listed Bucks County to be one of it's "Dozen Dazzling Drives" around the United States, which was featured on their website as of 2001 and in their printed Fodor's Road Guide USA. Doylestown was featured in a recent National Geographic Publication in their "Guide to Small Town Escapes." And even more recently, in 2001 the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed the town as one of its "Dozen Distinctive Destinations." New Hope, another Bucks County town, is not only the home of the official State Theater of Pennsylvania, but was also voted to be the 5th "Top Art City Destination" in the U.S, according to American Style Magazine's readers. How these ratings will change as the over-development continues remains to be seen.
"Sandwiched between the two great metropolitan areas of the east, it has been necessarily keenly responsive to the manifold changes wrought by time and the spirit of progress....Amid it all, the county has been able to preserve a measure of its pristine rural beauty and to live its life much as the wise founder hoped for, at the same time keeping pace with the best things that swift moving industrial, economic and educational revolutions bring forth."--from Place Names in Bucks County,by George MacReynolds, copyright 1955.
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This is a section of the frieze found in the Rotunda of the United State Capitol Building. The entire freeze is 300 feet around, 8 feet high, starts 58 feet from the floor, and depicts various scenes in American History. This section is called "William Penn and the Indians," and depicts William Penn with the Delaware Indians. It was painted in what is known as grisaille, which is a mixture of white and brown which is supposed to resemble a sculpture. The William Penn scene was painted by Constantino Brumidi, an Italian artist, who began work on the frieze in 1878.
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This is Benjamin's West's William Penn's Treaty with the Indians, painted in 1771.
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This is a painting by Bucks County artist Edward Hicks, entitled Penn's Treaty with the Indians, painted in 1840.
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Another old stone bridge on a small road near Route 611 in northern Bucks.
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This is a photograph of the Burgess Lea farm in Solebury. It is also known as the Isaiah Paxson Farm and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Established in 1689 by Richard Burgess, the son-in-law of Henry Paxson, it is remarkable that until 1978 the farm had been owned by only two families. The Paxson/Burgess family owned it from 1689 to 1814, and the Johnson family then owned it from 1814 until 1978. The buildings on the farm are thought to date from around 1785. The farm is privately owned.
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Hot air balloons can be seen, although with landing spaces disappearing under housing developments, their future in the area remains uncertain.
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This is Erwin-Stover House in Tinicum County Park park. This park can be found along River Road in Upper Bucks. The house is an 1800 Federal-Style structure which had additions made to it in 1840 and 1860. The land on which the house sits was purchased by Arthur Erwin, an Irish immigrant, in 1761. William Erwin, Arthur's son, built the oldest part of the house in 1800. William's daughter inherited the house, and when she died in 1846, the house was purchased by Henry Stover, a miller, for around $8800. Stover's son Jacob added the last addition to the house in the 1860s. It remained in the Stover family until 1955 when the house, and its 126 surrounding acres, was donated to the county to become Bucks County's first park.
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A barn at Tinicum County Park.
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Another view of the barn.
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This picture of a farmer on a tractor was taken along River Road in Tinicum, not far from Tinicum County Park.
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A country road in upper Bucks County.
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Photo by Mitch Bunkin
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A private residence along the Tohickon Creek.
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An old barn in upper Bucks County.
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Ruins of an old home being overtaken by the forest. Throughout Bucks County, history is being lost by much more destructive forces than trees: developers.
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More ruins by the old home.
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Photo by Chuck Rudy
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The view along Bridgeton Hill Road in Upper Black Eddy, northern Bucks County.
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A farm along Pebble Hill Road. These beautiful views are becoming rare as they are being replaced by house after house after house.
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Bucks County's new cash crop: housing. This tour's section on suburban sprawl contains more information about this terrible problem facing the county.
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Photographs from this website can be found:
- On NASA's Earth Observatory in an article entitled Urbanization's Aftermath
- On America Online's DigitalCity.com site in an overview of Ringing Rocks Park
- In the report Recommendations to the Rendell administration on environmental and natural resources priorities, written in 2003 by Robert B. McKinstry, Jr. of Pennsylvania State University
- In a pamphlet entitled "Save Our Open Spaces", published by the PennEnvironment organization in 2003
This tour has even made it into print! It has been featured in:
- A June 2007 column from the Daily Intelligencer in an article entitled Expatriate keeping Bucks history alive.
- The July 2001 issue of Dignity in an article about Ringing Rocks Park, called Song of the Stones.
An original letter written by George Washington from his Bucks County headquarters during the Revolutionary War, 1776.
Images of Bucks County Sunsets, by Don Swaim
The Story of John Steinbeck's Sweet Odyssey to Bucks County, PA, by Don Swaim
The Scumblers and their Shack at Edison in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, by Chuck Rudy
Beautiful photographs of Bucks County, PA , by Chuck Rudy
Photographic Images of James Henry Wilson - Bucks County
"The Barns of Bucks County"--visit the website and order the book.