Author: Sarah

Looking for a vintage spooky read to enjoy this season?

Author Helen Hoke (1903-1990) from California, Washington County, PA published horror anthologies that’ll give you the heebie-jeebies.

Helen Hoke’s Life & Career

Helen was the daughter of H.L. and Mary Lamb. Her father co-owned the California Sentinel newspaper along with his brother Auburn Lamb. As a child, Helen helped at the newspaper by setting type, and later wrote articles for the paper. 

In 1929, Helen opened a book department in a department store in Pittsburgh. Shortly thereafter, she headed another book department at Bullock’s department store in Los Angeles. In 1934, she became the director of the Julia Ellsworth Ford Foundation for Children’s Literature, a position she held until 1945. Julia Ford (1859-1950), an author and socialite, created the Foundation in 1924, which gave $2,000 for the best juvenile book of the year as well as produced movies for children. 

Spooky Anthologies

In the 1950s, Helen began to edit analogies, and her horror collections stand out as some of the earliest spooky anthologies created specifically with young readers in mind. They introduced generations of kids and teens to classic writers of the weird and uncanny—names like Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, and August Derleth—through stories that were chilling but still accessible for school and library shelves. The repeated-title branding (Monsters, Monsters, Monsters; Terrors, Terrors, Terrors) became a hallmark of her editorial style, making them instantly recognizable to browsing readers.

Helen’s Impact

In total, she edited 29 anthologies of horror and supernatural stories for young adults. For many readers, her volumes served as a gateway into lifelong appreciation of horror and science fiction. They also played a quiet but important role in establishing horror as a legitimate category for young adult publishing, well before the boom of YA horror series in the 1980s and 1990s.

While Helen edited dozens of spooky anthologies, she also edited and wrote other types of stories. Examples include The Fuzzy Puppy (1954), Jokes, Riddles, Puns: the best of brief humor (1959), Patriotism, Patriotism, Patriotism (1963), Whales (1973), and Giants! Giants! Giants!: From many lands and many times (1980). When she passed in 1990, her obituary in the New York Times noted she had written nearly 100 books and ran children’s books divisions at five publishing companies.

Where to Find Books from Helen Hoke

 A few of her books are available in Washington County libraries, and some can be found online.

• Weirdies, Weirdies, Weirdies
• Creepies, Creepie, Creepies
• Devils, Devils, Devils 
• For a full list here’s her goodreads >>

Do you have any other local spooky authors we should highlight? Contact us or send a message on insta or facebook.

The National Road Heritage Corridor (NRHC) is proud to share a new logo design that honors the road that built a nation while pointing boldly toward the future of our region.

For more than three decades, NRHC has worked to protect, celebrate, and revitalize the communities, landscapes, and stories of the National Road. As our organization has grown to embrace cultural preservation, trails and outdoor recreation, riverfront revitalization, and community partnerships across Southwestern Pennsylvania, we felt it was time for our visual identity to evolve as well.

The new logo is filled with meaning drawn directly from the corridor:

• The blue roofline represents the Monongahela River and the broad skies of our landscape—symbols of renewal, resilience, and possibility.
• The golden rectangles echo the dashes on the National Road itself, grounding the design in the path that continues to connect our communities.
• The warm brick pattern reflects both the craftsmanship of our historic structures and the trails that now knit our towns, parks, and natural places together.

Together, these elements symbolize the building blocks of Place: our natural environment, built environment, cultural heritage, history and memory, community connections, and the meanings people attach to them.

This refreshed identity gives us a flexible, modern mark that still feels grounded in tradition. It reflects NRHC’s role as a place steward, weaving together past, present, and future; road and river; culture and nature. Our mission remains the same, but our look now better matches our energy, vision, and wide-ranging work.

You’ll begin seeing this logo across our programs, projects, and communications. From trail signage to community events, it will serve as a symbol of connection between people and landscapes, heritage and progress, memory and imagination.

We’re excited to carry this new look forward as we continue strengthening the National Road Heritage Corridor together.

PA Route 6 Takes the Crown in the Ultimate Road Trip Playlist Challenge – But the Real Winner is Pennsylvania

Over the last few weeks, three of Pennsylvania’s most historic roadways — PA Route 6, the Lincoln Highway, and the PA National Road — came together for something a little unexpected: a friendly playlist showdown.

The idea was simple: what if each corridor built a playlist that captured the sound of their region — the feel of the open road, the character of the towns, the history behind the landscapes?

The result was the Ultimate Road Trip Playlist Challenge, a first-of-its-kind collaboration between three Pennsylvania Heritage Areas. Together, we invited communities across the state to help shape playlists that honored the places we call home. Aaaand we got a little competitive.

While PA Route 6 came out on top (HUGE congratulations to them by the way!) the real achievement wasn’t about who “won.” It was about how music brought us together.

While our roads keep us connected from town to town, it’s music that keeps us connected from person to person.

Each playlist became a story of it’s own — a blend of local favorites, road trip classics, hidden gems, and homegrown pride. From bluegrass and folk to rock and soul, the submissions told stories far beyond what a brochure or historic marker ever could.

And behind it all was the collaboration.

This wasn’t just a competition between heritage corridors — it was a celebration of what our heritage areas share: a love for Pennsylvania’s communities, history, culture, and the things that keep us Pennsylvania.

So whether you’re winding through the northern hills of Route 6, tracing the early transcontinental path of the Lincoln Highway, or riding the legacy of America’s first federally funded road on the National Road — we hope you’ll press play and take the journey with us again. We’ll be sure to build more playlists for you to enjoy along the way. 

🎧 The playlists are still live. The music still matters. Rock on!
Keep listening. Keep exploring. And let the soundtrack of Pennsylvania stay with you, wherever you go.

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Get to know the Heritage Corridors of PA

Three officially designated Pennsylvania Heritage Areas have joined the challenge:

• PA Route 6 Heritage Corridor
  Stretching across the northern tier of the state, covering 11 counties,Route 6 offers all the best of PA’s scenic byways. Rural towns, bike ways and artist alleys are found along the stretch of road.
  
• The Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor
  Running 200 miles through the south-central part of Pennsylvania, the Penn-Lincoln Highway is steeped in Americana, vintage roadside culture, and stories of innovation and industry.
  
• The National Road Heritage Corridor
  The National Road winds through PA’s southwestern counties including Fayette, Somerset, and Washington highlighting rich industrial and cultural history.