The Daniel Boone Homestead

I have been pet sitting in Macungie, Pa for the past few days, and so today I decided to take advantage of my time in Southeastern Pennsylvania and meet up with my former co-worker Ryan and visit our old place of employment, the Daniel Boone Homestead. Boone has always been a healing sort of place for me, it's extremely quiet, secluded, and the landscape and architecture is beautiful. I found that aspect of the site intact for me, but much else had changed. Boone has been essentially closed by the PHMC because of funding issues. To give the Commission some credit, it is still funding the maintenance of the site, it just won't pay people to operate it anymore.

You may remember hearing about the PHMC's closures of other sites last summer. These included the Conrad Wiser Homestead, Joseph Priestly House, and Brandywine Battlefield. I thought that the closures would end there, but this fall Daniel Boone was also closed, all of its staff laid off, and it's site administrator (my former boss Jim Lewars) transferred to Landis Valley State Historic Site.

When I visited Boone today I found one former staff member behind the counter at the visitor's center. She explained to me that the Friends of the Daniel Boone Homestead, an auxiliary organization that partially funded the site, was paying her to keep Boone open on Sundays in December. She was not sure how long this would go on or what the schedule would be like as the busy summer season approached. She complained that without anyone being in the office, it was impossible to schedule school group visits, which is a major part of the visitation revenue each spring.

If that wasn't enough I found that two of my favorite animals at the site had been euthanized due to old age and chronic illness. Reds, the 27 year old, ornery, former race horse, had to be put down last summer and our old calico barn cat, Kitten, suffered the same fate.

Happily they found another horse to replace Reds, named Axle, because they didn't want to leave 30 year old Dancer (who nearly broke my jaw today I might add. Don't ask.) all alone with nobody but three extremely lazy sheep and a few grumpy geese for company.

Anyway, here are some pictures I took of the place, as if you haven't seen enough on this blog already.

Axle


Dancer

A few shots of the buildings, graves, and the landscape.