Wellsboro, Pennsylvania: Gas Lamps and the Grand Canyon

Wellsboro, the seat of Tioga County, is one of those small Pennsylvania towns that has figured out its identity and committed to it completely. Its Main Street is lit by dozens of genuine gas lamps, not reproductions, actual gas-fueled lamps, that cast a warm flicker along a grassy median all year round. The town was founded in eighteen oh six and served as a service center for the surrounding timber and farming country.

Today its more dramatic calling card is the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, ten miles to the west: Pine Creek Gorge, forty-five miles long and nearly fifteen hundred feet deep in places, cut by meltwater draining at the end of the last ice age. Wellsboro serves as the main gateway town, its Main Street gas lamps a warm contrast to the windswept gorge rim waiting down the road.