The January updates to the History Project featured Hopewell school mascots, plus historic photos of “railroad trains and flooded bridges.” (See Site Updates for more.)
By the numbers, we finished the month with 290 files in the Archives, including 143 documents and 147 maps and aerials. The Image Gallery now has 3195 files, and the Panoramas Collection has 44 images. The Pamphlet Collection has 184 documents, and the Property Reports Collection has 87 documents, with 58 Site Survey reports and 29 Property Briefs. The interactive History Map includes 775 addresses with 102 historic places in Hopewell Borough. The History Project YouTube Channel is hosting 25 videos, plus 14 external local history videos, including 5 videos of History Project presentations. Please keep the materials coming!
Hopewell History Project – 2022 Highlights
Here are selected highlights of the 2022 additions to the History Project site, with links to more information, plus associated documents, maps, photos, and videos.
Thanks to the support of over 110 contributors, the site ended the year with some 525 documents and maps, and 3255 images and videos.
Some 830 files were added to the collection in the past year, continuing to grow from the beginning of the project in August 2019
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Hopewell School Mascots – and the Frog
Our Hopewell schools have interesting mascots, and interesting stories for the names for the schools as well.
Some of the schools use official logos that pretty much ignore the mascots, like Bear Tavern and Toll Gate, while others like Central High and Timberlane and Hopewell go all-in on the mascots as their logos, and Stony Brook splits the difference.
Some of the mascots play off the school’s name, like “Bear” Tavern, and the Toll “Gator.” Others are more traditional team names, like the Bulldogs and Timber Wolves, while the Stony Brook All-Stars break the mold. And then there’s the Hopewell Frog, with a twist on the historical connection to the Frog War – and now we have an original document with story of how the mascot was selected.
Commentators on Facebook have kindly provided additional information, which have been added to the linked post.
Railroad Trains and Flooded Bridges
Two pairs of images of local scenes of railroad trains and flooded bridges also lead to lots of commentary on Facebook. These are family photos from two kind contributors.
The first pair of images, courtesy of David Van Selous, show a “Bel-Del” Railroad train near Titusville in the 1940s, and the Washington Crossing bridge during the 1955 flood. The demolished structure on the right, lodged against the bridge on the upstream side, is the barn of Otto Niederer, Sr., lifted off its foundation on the riverbank at the north end of Titusville.
The second pair, courtesy of Richard Anderson, show a Reading Railroad train at the Pennington station in the 1920s/30s – and what may be the Glen Moore bridge in a flood.
The Image Gallery also has a new HwValley-Railroad album for area (and beyond) railroad scenes.
1960 / 61 Princeton Fact Books
Thanks to Roger Labaw, the site added the 1960 and 1961 editions of the Princeton Fact Book (Pamphlet Collection).
These have lots of information on Princeton, plus summaries and advertisements from other local communities.
For more convenient access to the local material, the collection also has a separate Local Communities extract for each Fact Book.
Please contact us if you have – or know of – other images and materials that we can share to help illuminate the history of our Hopewell Valley.
