Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1915-01-22


from scandal. although the amount of
money that is involved will run into
the millions.
''It is entirely under Harrisburg or
local authority, however. that there
has been effected, largely in recent
years and still continuing. gradual
transformation of the side of the Sus-
quehanna river within the municipal
limits. Front street has always been
q pleasant residential avenue. But it
is now becoming not only highly at
tractive. but extensive. Much of what
was once marsh or meadow land, with
kind of malarial taint in it, has been
transformed into solid ground; the
highway has been laid with modern
paving. and the banks of the stream
have been frequently strengthened
with masonry. A treatment somewhat
kindred to the one which Boston ap-
piled. years ago. to territory along the
Charles river has been accorded to it.
That is to say 1t is regarded and man.
pure enu9AB uB SO AIduuIs lou p9SB
driveway, but as Il riparian park.
Here, too, a long row of old houses is
to be cleared away in the vicinity of
the cable ferry which runs over to In
dependence Island. From the old
once lived, or the neighborhood of
John Harris grave there is now Il
long line of attractive mansions on the
way toward Rockville. In fact, the
roac to Rockville. where the Pennsyl-
vania Railroad bridge crosses the Sus-
quehanna five or six miles from Har-
rfsburg, has been entirely macadamized
beyond the city limits, and the drive
along the river bank, looking over to
the old hills of Cumberland and to
the glorious vista of the upper reaches
or the Susquehanna. furnishes one of
those picturesque views which many
of us become enraptured over when
they are seen in a foreign land. but
which we fail to appreciate fully and
enjoy when we see 1t in our own.
LAS one rides along the banks of the
Susquehanna, especially as it was on
Tuesday and yesterday, with the water
up to the nine and ten foot mark, and
looks around at the growing popu-
latfon and takes into consideration the
significance of the new Enola over on
the Cumberland side-the 'classifica-
ton and distribution focal point of
the freight service of the Pennsylva-
nia-he cannot but wonder. for the
moment in his musings and specu-
lations, whether the time may not
come when interest in the river at this
point will not be chiefly pictorial or
as source of diversion. l remember
that about twenty-five or twenty-three
years ago, when General Harrison was
President. he made a tour into the
Susquehanna valley and that In at least
| one or his always meaty speeches he
pictured strikfngly the possibilities of
the stream as a future inland water
way for transportation to and from the
Chesapeake-as IL 1t might be so deep
ened as to become something like a
pennsylvania Rhine, for q large part
OF the great German river or from
Holland to Mayence, is filed with ves-
sels or utility and commerce. The idea
ls' indeed, very old; 1t was in vogue
even when Washington was President.
OF When 1t was proposed that the capt.
tai of the United States should he
| situated at Wright's Ferry, and some
| day when the interior of PENNSYLVANIA
tends TO become as populous as Eng
Ian9. with the same area. now is, the
navigation of the Susquehanna will be
one OF the great resources of ADVANCING
ciVlnzauon But as it is now, a man
IKE Il. j. Stackpole, who has Furnished
OF Facilitated in the Harrisburg TeIe-
graph so many of the live ideas which
are adaptable to the local life of his
CITY may look out restfully from his
Ine mansion on the shore of the river
and easily fancy at times that II ie
almost as primitive in its scenery as II
was when Simon Snyder or William
F1ndlay was Governor of Pennsylvania
ana the capital had been moved from
Fhliadelphia, after having tarried for
Wh1le at Lancaster.
To-day the landscaping of this
river front or parkway ought to be a
prime and constant object of the citvis
poncy. Nature and art do not often
comblne in such an opportunity for
| the creation of a great public delight
at once rural and urban. In the course
VI lline II can be made as famous an
attraction III its way as the Capitol is
pecohlng; such things indicate that
provincial habits of Thought orc no
longer wholly dominant The Harris
purg or say. the United States Hotel
and the old Reading Railway denot
and the Paxtang creek, and the hrioi,
capitol, and the Susquehanna flats
ana the dirty stretes and dull shons
ana CRIBS OF vice. has certainly beer
| modlned. Market street is harflIv 10 h.
cognized-particular at night tip,e
with Its bright lighting-as COMPARED
with what 1t was in it's half somnolenI
Gays, and such works as the concratf
Waduct and the new omen conduit,
which has superseded a foul nuisance
help TO put new face on the towr
ana quicken the spread of materia
Improvement. 1t will not be long foo
when the Pennsylvania Railroad Com,
pany VIII build new Cumberlanf
valley bridge across the Susouehann,
lone of the most notable of IN,
projects of that kind to which II i
\ dehn1tely committed in what has beer
ana still Is a season of caution an,
retrenchment.
| 1t is not so many years ago tba
there was a long gap between Harris
purg and Steelton, but It is now gettini
TO De so nearly closed up that the tim
is not far off when each will merg
into the other. Doubtless If towns lilS
1t and others that are outlying depend
encies of Harrisburg were to be united
as they probably will be hereafter
there would be easily q DC ouIation a
hundred thousand within its iuris
dlctfon. Now that the new CapitoI ha
anchored the seat of government i
the town and we in PhiIadelnhia %,
| no longer plead for its transfer hitheI
and trains have brought Ii reeuIart
| within two hours and twenty minute
or US. We all have more than an ordi
nary right to be interested in its future
lt seems to need q good modern audi
tor1um; the vacant lot where the Operi
House was burned down doesn't lool
well. and it is curious, too. as il ha
been these many years. why a tol
erably large, commodlous. spick-and
span hotel cannot be established ii
the capital of the second State of tn
Union. That at least is one of tn
things over which even an outsider
when he temporarily sojourns there. /
fully entitled to pipe up an objection.
THE capital of Pennnsylvani