Eldred World War 2 Museum

[Buzzelli]

                          The Eldred World War ll Museum

                                               Vickie Buzzelli


The Eldred World War II Museum is located in Eldred, Pennsylvania, 80 miles south of Buffalo, New York and 175 miles north east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Established in May 1996, the museum has continually expanded from one room to three stories. 

Situated in the oil-rich hills of northern Pennsylvania, Eldred in the early 1900s was the site of a munitions plant that produced explosives used in the oil fields to "blow" the wells. The plant employed between forty and fifty people. When England went to war in 1939 against Germany, the country found itself in desperate need of munitions.  It looked to the United States for help. When the United States entered the war in 1941, women replaced the male workforce at the plant. At its zenith, 1,500 were employed in the facility and 95 percent of those workers were female. "They came from miles around to work at the plant, There were buses running from Olean, New York, Bradford, and from all over." Those workers assembled, filled, primed, boxed, and shipped eight million explosives, fuses, thermite incendiary bombs and grenades during the war.
A one-room display was opened in 1996 in Eldred as a tribute to the women who made the munitions. It quickly grew with the addition of a Hall of Valor displaying and emphasizing the training, shipping, transportation, and roles played by the individual branches of the military. With the acquisition of an adjacent building, the museum continued to grow.
Today the museum includes an interactive time line of the war and how it started. There is a hands-on tank battle and a wall display of the events that took place at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, with excerpts from the attack. There is a special exhibit from the Russian front and a special room dedicated to the Holocaust. There are displays from the home front and of Jeeps, motorcycles, a command post, a working periscope, and models of planes and shipsHighlights are a submarine display with an authentic World War II periscope, and the 'Tank Room', housing several uniforms changing based on the theme of each season.
Visitors can enter a life-sized European command post equipped with period communications equipment. Throughout the museum dioramas bring the conflict to life for visitors. A section on the Eastern Front details the conflict between Russia and Germany that would become the largest front of the war.
The newest addition to the museum, the Holocaust Room is home to the artifacts showing the true tragedy of WWII. Suitcases, prisoner uniforms, and children's book written by the Nazi regime are a few of the many things housed in this room. Most significant are the keys to Dachau Concentration Camp.

The cruise will take 3 ½ hrs to get to the museum. We will have lunch first at Munchies which is a about a block from the museum.  The tour of the museum will take about 2 hrs to complete. Our cruise would not be complete without Ice Cream at Country Pines Ice Cream Shop in Kane Pa. It is on Rt 6 and we can all leave to do home from there.  It should only take you about 2hrs to return home depending where you live.
Date and Time: June 15th 8:00am., Leaving 8:30am
Where: Sheetz: 1000 Dori Dr. Valencia Pa 16059
RSVP: June 1st to vjs@zoominternet.net or call 724-272-2806