You will find my hometown in the Pocono Mountains: Hawley, Pennsylvania.
Until recently, Hawley did not have a traffic light. You can walk from one end of Main Street to the other in a few minutes (depending on your stride of course).
When I was a little girl, Main Street used to host a bakery, a fish market, two paper stores, a department store (appropriately named, The Hawley Department Store, with a big HDS logo on the front), Teeters Furniture, The Hawley Diner, a couple of bars, a doctor's office, and a few other places that I've forgotten. While a few of these old time places remain, many have been replaced by antique stores, novelty stores, a pizza joint...
While Hawley has changed and evolved a great deal, it still has that small town charm. Finally, we have a traffic light! Electronic parking meters! We have a cooking school! We've hit the big time now!
While snooping around on Google, I came across a funky "HawleyWood History Page" I remember my parents referring to that little development by Lake Wallenpaupack as the "Hawley Wood Outlet." Anyway, there are a few pictures of a newsletter from the early 1950's. The article in the upper right hand corner caught my eye:
Lots 'Way Up In Price
Owners Chalk Up Profit
Present Owners Advised to Increase Holdings
There was a quiet but sincere rejoicing in and among the
veteran Hawley Wood property owners when a new sign was
posted on the road indicating that the price of a 50x100 lot
would now be $135.
It was a "prophecy come true" - - for those woners who paid $70
and $95 for similar plots have realized 45% to 50% on their
investments...
Wow! $135 for a lot - when just a couple years before they were going for under $100. I checked the MLS and found a lot (granted, quite a bit larger in size - 136x218) in HawleyWood - the price however is over $17,000!
When the land that is now Lake Wallenpaupack was purchased around 1924, the original landowners were paid around $20 an acre, according to the Hawley - Lake Wallenpaupack Chamber of Commerce. Now, a 1/4 acre lakefront lot is going for over half a million dollars! (To be fair, prices for lots around Lake wallenpaupack start around $5,000, but that's not as impressive as the half million dollar 1/4 acre lot!)
Interesting Hawley History Page I don't think this has been updated for some time, but it is interesting to see the old pictures.
Hawley even has a big-screen claim to fame - back in the mid-1980's, a film titled Playing for Keeps was made in Wayne County, featuring our town and some other local scenery as well as a few local personalities. Hawley has changed somewhat since the movie was made - there is no Acme market, no Hawley Department Store - but it's a nifty time capsule. (Even if the movie STUNK....in spite of the fact that Marisa Tomei made her motion picture debut in this bomb...)
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