There have been a lot of momentous things happening lately here in Happy Valley!
One of those was that last week PennDOT announced its recommendation for where the long-debated U.S. 322 four-lane highway connection would go through the valley to match up the highways ending in Potters Mills and Boalsburg.
Having arrived as a freshman at Penn State in the fall of 1977, this section is the last of the many pieces of U.S. 322 that would allow me and fellow travelers to get from State College to Harrisburg on four-lane roads. In almost a half-century of construction, the stretch west of Dauphin along the Susquehanna River and the “orphaned” Hardee’s, the “narrows” along the Juniata River east of Lewistown, the part from Reedsville past Milroy to head up Seven Mountains, and then in the last decade the Potters Mills Gap which eliminated Brownie’s all have been completed.
But those sections were through relatively uninhabited areas. And it still took a half-century to get them done.
This “State College Area Connector” project is going through land that’s significantly more inhabited. Which is why it’s still on the drawing boards. According to reports, if everything goes as planned construction would not begin until 2030 and not be complete until 2035.
I’m thinking that those dates are aggressive at best, and that it’s likely this project ends up where it has ended before – with nothing being built. But, it would be a good thing if we did have a four-lane highway between here and Milroy.
Just over a decade ago I wrote a column touting a solution to this problem – build a tunnel straight from Galbraith Gap through to the Laurel Creek Reservoir. It clears up almost all of the NIMBY issues associated with the project. Which, I imagine, will again be its downfall.
I’ve been told the problem with a tunnel is that hazardous materials cannot go through it – and there is apparently a lot of hazardous material traveling on U.S. 322.
To which I say this: skip the tunnel then, and just build an above-ground highway through Rothrock State Forest. Because, almost 50 years after arriving in State College for the first time in my life, it would be a nice change-of-pace to not worry about driving a two-lane road with 18-wheelers zipping the other way when I’m making my rare trips toward Harrisburg.
Another momentous thing that happened recently was last Friday Penn State announced the results of its annual election of trustees by the alumni.
Penn State alumni and former students elect a total of nine trustees for staggered three-year terms. That means three are elected each year.
However, because there are 38 members on the Board of Trustees, the nine alumni members make up less than a quarter of the total Board. In practice there are not enough alumni-elected members to make a difference should they be united about a topic that their constituents – the alumni – felt strongly about. Especially when the Board passed nearly 85% of measures it considered between 2019 and 2024 without a single opposing vote, according to Spotlight PA.
Which is why it was annoying to me that the Board spent so much time and energy doing whatever it could to keep one trustee off the Board. My guess is somewhere along the line it cost the Board, and by extension, the university some money. Maybe that was money which could have been better spent keeping Commonwealth Campuses open.
Which is another momentous thing going on locally as I type this: the continuing saga of what Penn State “branch campuses” may be closed down for good – another issue involving the Penn State Board of Trustees.
The Board plans to meet later this month to decide the fate of many of these campuses. Much like the description the little alien toys give to the arcade machine claw in the movie Toy Story, “The claw is our master. The claw chooses who will go and who will stay.”
As mentioned before, I started as a freshman at Penn State in 1977 and my recollection is that this was a “thing” even then. The efficacy of branch campuses has been a topic of conversation for years and years.
As the topic is unfolding these days, I’m not a fan of those playing the financial hardship card. That’s primarily because Penn State has a university-wide budget of approximately $9.9 billion for 2025-26 and, as far as I can tell, plans to allocate $340 million to the Commonwealth Campuses. A mere 3.4% of the entire Penn State budget. The point being, who cares if they lose money. How much could they possibly lose?
So, for me, the question is simply, does Penn State see value in having branch campuses spread around the state? And since Penn State does have some control over the number of students enrolled at various branch campuses, the university could do more to direct students to the various campuses if enrollment is a concern. Maybe they keep them open, and focus some of them more toward technical education – which is a growing need for all of us.
But the biggest and most momentous recent event in Happy Valley was the great power outage of 2025!
Exactly two weeks ago I wrote a column on this website welcoming warmer weather, a mistake I plan to never duplicate. Later that same day the weather took a turn for the worse and caused a storm so large it left more than 36,000 homes and businesses without power. For many thousands, it lasted days, not hours. As in, several days, not just one day.
And we were one of those homes without power for a little more than two days. The photos you may have seen in the news of the utility poles snapped along West College Avenue were just down the street from our neighborhood.
Here’s my annoyance at power outages. As a kid, I don’t ever remember them happening. I didn’t live in Happy Valley, and I’m sure they happened, it’s simply that I just don’t remember them. As a young adult, my wife and I spent more than a decade in Orlando, lived through several hurricanes, and only rarely lost power – never for any extended period. When we returned to the northeast, we lived in Bucks County for a few years, and again, never had an issue.
But since moving back to Happy Valley we’ve experienced more power outages more frequently than anywhere else. Granted, until this past storm our outages here were always measured in hours, and usually not the double-digit kind. Not to mention, our power company’s previous prognostications on when our power would be back on were always either correct, or the power came on earlier than we were notified. This time those text alerts were off by more than a few hours.
Our power, as with most everyone’s, went out before 7 p.m. on Tuesday. The first update with an estimated time of restoration was it would be on at 10:30 p.m.. The next update was 12:30 a.m.. The next update was “we’ll let you know”. The next update – 18 hours later – was 5 p.m. the following day, which was mimicked by another alert that following day. Around 8 p.m. Thursday our power came back on.
Oddly enough, because there were businesses around town with power – Giant, Weis and Home Depot, for example – the only two major issues we experienced from the outage were, first, that my wife and I work mainly from home, so our laptops lasted just a few hours and second, and more importantly, we had a side of beef in the chest freezer in the garage.
The first issue we solved after-the-fact by buying DC-to-AC lighter adaptors from Harbor Freight, so we can charge our laptops in our cars.
The second issue was solved by buying almost $100 worth of ice over two days. And then also solved after-the-fact by buying a 5,000 watt portable gas-powered generator. It was a purchase I’d long considered, but chasing down ice like it was gold more than justified the expense!
That’s a lot of momentous things in a short time here in Happy Valley as the spring semester came to a close. Let’s hope with Penn State’s graduation over and Happy Valley having downsized for the summer, that we’re done with momentous for awhile. Off to 814 Cider Works for a drink!
