Pennsylvania
Usually called "the world's largest maze" when it is created every year at this site, the maze, cut into a cornfield, is one of several major "maize mazes" that "crop up" across the country at the end of each summer. The company that operates and promotes...
The legendary steel mill in Bethlehem is one of the most dramatic abandoned industrial landscapes in the country, and portions of the 200 acre complex will soon be developed into the National Museum of Industrial History', an affiliate of the Smithsonian...
An processing facility handling radium, uranium and other ores operated here, in western Pennsylvania, from 1911 to 1957. Radioactive contamination at the site was addressed in the 1980s, and the materials were isolated in a pentagonal disposal cell, and...
The museum, which is located on the site of the world's first oil well, contains information on the industrial technology of the Early Pennsylvania oil industry, and the global impact of oil.
An abandoned eco-land art site. In 1985 the artist Harriet Feigenbaum planted three circles of willow trees around a pond formed from coal dust runoff in this strip mining site. Currently maintained as a wetland wildlife preserve, but the art site is unkept...
As much as 1,600 tons per day of trash is converted into energy here at this plant, finished in 1994. Billed as the "world's most technologically advanced trash-to-energy plant" by its parent company WMX Technologies, the large waste-handling company. The...
A 17,000-acre National Guard Training site, one of the busiest Guard sites in the nation. Includes machine gun firing ranges, equipment training facilities, an urban assault complex, and an airfield that is especially busy with helicopters. Also on site is...
A museum describing the Johnstown Flood, a disaster that occurred in 1889, when a dam burst and a twenty-million-ton wall of water swept away the town of Johnstown, killing 2,200 people. The museum is located in a former Carnegie library, and shows the film "...
Located on the Delaware River, this is the second largest refinery in the northeast, capable of processing 190,000 barrels a day. Owned by Sunoco. Employs around 700 people and openend in 1902.
A museum about the region's canals, and canals in general. Located in a historical canal system which has been turned into the Hugh Moore Historical Park, containing a preserved system of channels, locks, bridges, and other structures.
Fossil fuel energy research facility owned and operated by the Department of Energy. Primarily involved in coal-based energy research. This 237 acre site in Pittsburgh has around 320 employees. The NETL has a site in Morgantown, West Virginia; Sugar Land,...
Officially closed in 2001, this was an aviation R&D center north of Philadelphia, operated by the Navy, employing over 1,000 people. Included the Naval Command Control and Oceanic Surveillance Center. Many of the functions of the installation were...
A museum with displays on regional coal-mining. It is adjacent to the Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour, where visitors may enter 250 feet into the mine.
A major military shipyard with four miles of waterfront on the Delaware River, in south Philadelphia. Formerly called the Philadelphia Naval Station and the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, entities officially closed by BRAC in 1995. Portions of the complex are...
An underground complex, built by the Department of Defense as an emergency shelter and electronic control center. Located underneath 650 acres in the hills near the Pennsylvania/Maryland border, Raven Rock, AKA "Site R", reportedly had a full-time staff of...
A large miniature landscape of villages and scenes, with many mechanical parts, model railways, hills and roads. Partly a stylized and idealized version of the typical landscape of Pennsylvania, with significant historical buildings modeled as well. Much of...
A museum devoted to the indispensible building material, that "liquid rock," known as cement. The museum is located in a grouping of nine 19th century vertical cement kilns. These odd looking structures are the Schoefer Kilns, built in 1893 by David Saylor's...
