-----This required some external work: Look up Peirce Lewis. Look up Bellefonte and State College. Look up lime production in Bellefonte.
----- A good 30 years after the article, Bellefonte's population still hovers at the low 6,000 mark and has declined since the 2000 census, while State College stays over 38,000. Apparently the exodus from Bellefonte to State College has ended.
-----My main reason for looking things up was to find if Bellefonte had attracted new white collar type industries (apparently not). I though maybe the proximity to State College would induce someone to settle there, but that would be like someone settling a business in Sparks for its proximity to UNR. It does not look like Bellefonte has its own college, even as a part of Penn State.
-----Apparently the town made some changes after the article was published (influence of the article?), and halted the destruction of old buidings and got registered as a historic town. It is using its historic past as a center of revitalization. At least the town's websites sound upbeat and purposeful.
-----I would like to be better able to gauge why the town has not become a bedroom community for State College as the real estate prices seem lower and 10 miles is not a great distance, if not for the faculty which may want to stay closer together, at least for the general staff. Is the lime plant still causing unpleasantness? How come some medium company with internet intensive activities has not relaocated there (There is an airport in State College though I was shocked at the prices) ? Also what are the prospect of the town as a retiremement community? It is only a 100 miles or so from Pittsburg, and not that far from Megalopolis. How many other similar towns are there in teh area?
-----Otherwise the article was interesting as we can relate it to so many of the towns in Nevada or even rural California, and the need for an industry - be it prisons or mining, gambling or warehousing - to sustain them. The article is as much historical as geographical, and it definitely stimulate thought as I was compelled to research quite a variety of topics to satisfy the curiosity it aroused, mostly to know about the rest of the story: what has happened since then. I was impressed in how he took a minor town and made it relevent at the national level as a model of an American small town.
-----Side note: I was amused to see that Penn State, though a bastion of Geography, could have such a diversity in the quality of maps for their different locations on their website, and apparently not one map locating all their campuses!
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