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SITES
& LANDMARKS
Located in the village of
Varden, the following landmarks highlight the region's rich cultural
history.
Click on the thumbnails to view full-sized images. Shaffer House
Built
by Robert Enslin
(1850-1855), the Shaffer house was a single-story structure.
Originally, the first floor was composed of a kitchen area and a small
inner hall. Mr. Enslin eventually enlarged the house to include a
second
floor where two bedrooms and a living room are today. In 1932, Mead
Shaffer Sr. and Frank Shaffer bought the house. At that time, fourteen
windowpanes were broken and stuffed with old clothing and
newspaper. A second story was built over the kitchen, and in the late
1930s, Mead Shaffer Sr. constructed a fireplace containing some stone
from Moosic
Mountain. Also in the 1930s, a small brick chimney was built, and the
stairways to the second floor and basement were relocated. In the
1960s, Mead Shaffer
Sr. received two artificial hips, though this did not stop him from
building a retaining wall behind the house. Prior to the retaining
wall, the house sat before a rounded hillside, and in the middle of
this area was a cave for storing root vegetables. No evidence of this
cave remains today.
Icehouse  During
the 1930s and 40s,
ice was harvested from the pond upstream from Holster Creek. The ice
was transported to the Icehouse (pictured left, in background) by a team of horses with a bobsled, and
then
packed with sawdust. The Shaffers may have been the only ones in the
area with ice, for other villagers used the Icehouse during the
summer months. The Icehouse itself was approximately 20’ x
24’ with a garage attached to the south side. The ice
cakes
were about 16” x 20” and weighed about 100 pounds.
When the
ground level was filled with ice, a horse and a set of pulleys were
used to pull the blocks up two planks to the upper level of the
Icehouse. The Shaffers stopped harvesting ice after an accident in
1941. Mead Shaffer Sr. was filling the bobsled with ice when the horses
on the bank began to move, causing the ice to shift. The
horses became scared and ran toward Mid Valley Road, crossing the
bridge and crashing into a mailbox that was attached to a telephone
pole. The horses straddled the pole,
ruining the bobsled, harnesses, and tongue assembly. Fortunately, the
horses were unharmed. The Icehouse was eventually torn down sometime
during the 1950s. A young sycamore tree now stands in the site.Milk House Used
during the 1930s and
40s, the Milk House is located near the back door of the Shaffer House.
It contains a well and two chainfalls with which one can lower milk.
During the prime of the Shaffer farm, the Milk House produced two cans
of milk per day. The cans were wheeled out to the road where the milk
truck (Dairymen’s League Cooperative) picked them up and took
them to the creamery. A pipe on the left side of the Milk House was
used to hold buckets, strainers and other equipment used in milk
handling.
Sawmill Owned
by Robert Enslin,
the sawmill was located across the main road from the entrance to the
driveway on Holster Creek. From an adjacent property on the North side,
logs were skidded to the sawmill. In the winter, when vegetation is
scarce, one can
still see stone walls related to the old sawmill.
More information on the sawmill can be found in Assessment of Historic Architectural Resources: Varden, South Canaan Township, Wayne County, Pennsylvania, produced by Louis Berger and Associates, Inc. in March 2004 and submitted to the PA Department of Transportation. pp. 46. The document is available in the Salem Public Library in Hamlin, PA. There are numerous stone
walls throughout the VCA built
by farmers to confine livestock, mark boundaries, and rid the
fields of stone:
 The
original garden was located on
the hill behind the Shaffer House. There were blackberries, plum
and peach trees, and a vegetable garden. A corncrib was also located on
the side behind the dairy barn. The corncrib was elevated three feet
above the ground in order to keep out rodents. It was approximately 4
feet wide and 20 feet long and flared out at the top.
Masonry BuildingThe
structure was
built by Mead Shaffer, Sr. as a storage building for his masonry
business. It is now used as a storage and maintenance building for the
Varden Conservation Area.
Root Cellar and
Horse BarnAt the
junction of Pond
View Trail and Shaffer's Way, just a short distance from Homestead
Pond, are the ruins of an old root cellar. The site of an old 40' x 60'
horse barn is located nearby.
Homestead Pond  The
Homestead Pond was
built in 1962 or 1963. The area was
originally occupied by a large, rocky swamp and a pigpen. There were
three drainage ditches across the swamp to keep the area dry.
A bulldozer was used to form the edge of the pond
with rock and clay. The pond was
originally stocked with trout, which were naturally replaced by blue
gills in the
late 1970s. The pond was later drained to remove most of the blue gills
and was restocked with bass, perch and bullheads. Chain pickerel have
since taken over. The pond experienced beaver
problems in the 1980s and again in the summer of 2001, though no
beavers have
been seen since 2002. There is a trickle tube on the far northern end,
as well as an
earthen spillway on the far eastern end of the dike, to aid in drainage
if a large amount of water rushes down from the hills. This spring-fed
pond is not supplied by any streams. The pond is 18 feet deep at its
center and about 6 feet deep near the southern edge.The
diverse species of trees and shrubs which surround the pond include:
Red
Pine (planted 1966/1977)
Morheim Blue Spruce (1965) White Ash (naturally-occuring) White Birch Balsam Fir Canadian Hemlock Japanese Larch Eastern White Pine (1966/1967) Western White Pine Scotch Pine Englemann Spruce White Spruce Douglas Fir Austrian Pine Butternut Black Cherry Willow Tree High Bush Blueberry Mugo Pine Black Locust |