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OUR TOWN
By
Chester A. Lewis
Milestones Vol 9 No 4--Fall 1984

 

From the lakes of the North and the plains of the West,

Down through the Beaver Valley, to that district

Known as the Workshop of the World, runs an unbroken commercial highway.

Thus, because of the Beaver Valley, we have in Western Pennsylvania the heaviest traffic region of the globe, and earth's greatest production area.

At a vantage point on this commercial path of least resistance/at the junction of the Beaver and Ohio Rivers,

Blessed as is hardly any other people by a union of nature's resources and transportation facilities -

A component part of the industrial center of the world - lies a group of 60,000 people,

The business center of which is Beaver Falls,

Sometimes called the Beaver Falls community, termed often Beaver Valley.

Around this people are fields of oil, and rivers of power. Behind them towers a range of hills, set on limestone, packed with clay, topped with coal, and clad with the timber. Along the base of this range is a paradise of industry - within a radius of five miles ninety factories with fifty kinds of product. Here at forges are craftsmen outdoing the deeds of Vulcan: lighting the sky by night, dinning music from anvils by day, distributing over the earth fabrications of power and magic.

Well named the Beaver Valley!
Steady, reliable, busy.
Beaver - active little rodent; nature's prototype of industry.

Here, according to the last census, is one of the most rapidly growing places in all America.

Here, in 1923, says our Department of Interior, was the community that led all Pennsylvania in increase in per capita savings; and at the same time, says Roger Babson, led all Pennsylvania in increase in her capita purchases.

Here, above everything else, is a notable Christian community. We were born of the famous Economite; educated by the strait-laced Covenanter. We first established in the schools of this State a system of Week Day Religious Education.

We rule ourselves by decent men, set in the seats of power. From our own Geneva College we take this motto: "Christ and Country."

Our service, during the recent war, reads like an exaggeration.

We purchased, man for man, more Liberty and Victory Bonds than did any other community in the United States.

Our little valley, packed with preferred industries, according to Government reports produced per square mile and produced per day per man employed, a greater volume of war materials than did any other American manufacturing district.

Not only that!

But we gave the country that we love the noblest of her doughboys. Yes, the bodies of our boys paved that path which widened into the avenue over which the Allies triumphantly moved to Victory. AT ChateauThierry, company B, 1 10th, marched forward into the gap where the fire-swept French had broken. Beyond support, three days and nights, they stemmed invasion there; fifteen miles backward hurled the German there; held to the ground that their blood had bought and were decimated there.

In the Beaver Valley many important things are made; but the most important thing that is made. by far the finest thing that is made, in the little Beaver Valley, is an upstanding, God-serving, Country-loving race of man.