Borough ready to celebrate 100th anniversary
RICES LANDING – This weekend will be a busy one in Rices Landing. During the annual Rices Landing Riverfest, the borough also will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its incorporation.
The Pennsylvania Association of Boroughs will present Mayor Remo Bertugli Sr. with a plaque during a ceremony at 7 p.m. Friday at the gazebo along the river.
Bertugli will speak, and past and present borough officials will be recognized.
Rices Landing may look like just one of countless other Pennsylvania river towns, but the borough was more than just a river town.
The borough has only 100 years behind it, but the name Rices Landing dates back to 1801, when Benjamin Franklin combined the villages of Prospect and Newport under that single name.
By the 1870s, Rices Landing was a boomtown, mostly due to its location along the Monongahela River. The self-supporting town attracted people from miles away to purchase goods like salt, flower, clay, wood and limestone from Pumpkin Run.
Eventually, it would be highways that took power away from the mighty Monongahela, which formerly sustained towns like Brownsville and Rices Landing.
“It’s horrible when you look at somewhere like Brownsville. It just makes you want to cry,” Rices Landing resident Murray Kline said. “As was typical of the river towns, the advent of motorized freight made them begin to pass into oblivion. That started right after World War II.”
Over the past two centuries, Rices Landing has seen an untold number of businesses come and go, including photo galleries, dry goods stores, blacksmiths and saw mills.
The town has endured the Industrial Revolution and the rise and fall of the coal industry.
Today, even as the community prepares to celebrate 100 years of incorporation, the leaders of Rices Landing are struggling to return the town to its once thriving status.
Kline and his wife, Norma, chairman of the Rices Landing Planning Commission, have been active in historic preservation there since 1976. They have been involved in establishing the Lock 6 Museum, located in the borough building, as well as the preservation of the town jail on Main Street.
“We have talked about having a historical ghost tour of the town,” Norma said. “There are all these little ghost stories about Pumpkin Run, the jail and the W.A. Young Foundry. The jail itself is over 100 years old. We have a motion-activated mannequin in the cell there that talks to entrants. We are hoping someday to have a camera in place for visitors to the jail to have their picture taken in a jail cell.”
The W.A. Young Foundry, owned by the Greene County Historical Society, is a great source of pride and frustration for the residents. Although the building has been stabilized, more work needs to be done, which will be expensive.
“The curator emeritus of the Smithsonian has called the foundry one of the greatest finds in the nation,” Norma Kline said. “It has the potential to be a national museum; yet there are people right here in Rices Landing who have never been in it.”
Rices Landing borough administrator Debbie Haring said she remembers growing up not knowing the town’s history. As a kid, it wasn’t something that interested her. It wasn’t until she was working on a calendar with former mayor Ben Roseberry and others that she began to really learn about her hometown.
“I love working here in town. I know everyone, and that makes it nice.” Haring said. “People are so busy any more. Kids have so many advantages that we didn’t have growing up. Parents are busy running them everywhere, to dance and ball and all sorts of other activities. But kids miss out on how we grew up when everybody would just get together and play. We all got along and knew each other.”
But young families aren’t home much these days.
“No one has the time to volunteer anymore,” Haring said. “We have a large older population in Rices Landing, and they just can’t do it all. The Klines do a tremendous amount for this community. If I call Murray, he is here. Same with Big Remo [Bertugli Sr.]. Some might say they are involved in everything, but if they don’t do it, then who is going to? It is the same group of people who consistently are involved in everything.”
Haring said she hopes that an interest in the town will begin to grow among the younger residents. The planning commission has a vision for the town, but Norma Kline said they need more help.
“I would be glad to work with anybody who wants to help,” she said. “And I am sure the borough would be, too. We have the potential. This can be a very pleasant, enjoyable community.”