Shortly after driving past a rather large sign that read “Welcome to Bloomsburg: The Only Town In Pennsylvania” a question that’s probably rather common came into my mind. Why?
A small class of students in my news writing class at Bloomsburg University confirmed my assumptions that others have wondered this same thing, and they too wondered what made Bloomsburg so special. I couldn’t understand that if Bloomsburg has the honor of being the only town in the state of Pa., why wouldn’t everyone be aware of the reason? I decided to take my question to the general population of Bloomsburg University students to hopefully find my answer.
Unfortunately, the students were just as uncertain as I was. My first victim, Jesse Betar, a sophomore at the university, shrugged his shoulders with a blank stare on his face and replied, “because it’s on all the signs,” a detail that apparently no one has missed around here.
In another attempt to uncover the real uniqueness of the town of Bloomsburg I stopped Mark Schroeder, a friend of mine who lives down the hall from me, who gave his answer a little more thought. “Probably because it’s too small in population to be a city,” Schroeder replied.
This information that I received from Schroeder did make sense. However, I felt as though there had to be more in order for Bloomsburg to be so different from everywhere else in Pa.
I decided to continue asking my question to random people on the streets but couldn’t keep it a secret from myself for much longer. I decided the most practical way to uncover the truth was to look it up in a good old fashion Websters Dictionary which read, “a thickly populated area, usually smaller than a city and larger than a village, having fixed boundaries and certain local powers of government.”
Although it wasn’t as exciting of a definition as I may have hoped, it still gave me closure that I was probably one of the only 12 Bloomsburg University students who knew. I thought to myself how confused and embarrassed the other seven random students who I had asked probably felt that responded, “I don’t know” or “I have no idea,” and ran off without giving me their name.
The person who I give the most credit to, however, is my roommate. After noticing my desire to find an interesting answer to my question she did some research herself. About two days later she ran up to me in excitement and said, “I know the answer to your question! Because it’s historic… and stuff.”
Courtesy of Google Images
