- Hi, I'm Brandy Schimp, Mayor of Kane, and welcome to our town.

(mid tempo music) - [Narrator] Welcome to Kane, Pennsylvania.

Surrounded by the Allegheny National Forest, this McKean County Borough was founded in 1863 by civil war General, Thomas L. Kane.

The people of Kane are working very hard to push this community into the future while respecting its storied past.

Join us as several residents show and tell what makes their community a great place to live.

Your friends and neighbors welcome you to "Our Town Kane".

Support for "Our Town Kane" comes from UPMC Kane, providing the community with services in primary care, women's health, orthopedic and general surgery, pain management, and emergency medicine.

More at UPM UPMCkane.com.

The laughing owl press company Kane, a full service letterpress and foil print shop providing stationery for occasions and events and identity and promotion.

More at laughingowlpress.com or on Instagram and Facebook.

Area Transportation Authority RideATA.

Lobo Fitness, 27 Fraley Street, Kane, PA. And viewers like you, thank you.

- Hi, my name is Dennis Driscoll and today, I'm here to talk about the Kane Memorial Chapel.

Our Memorial, we believe is dedicated to courtesy and loving kindness.

Really, there are very few things that people discover.

Like for instance, even the trail that led to this town was an ancient trail.

And the Iroquois Confederacy, which was one of the oldest participant democracies on earth of six nations have been crossing through here for centuries.

But they stopped at a place called the Seneca Springs on the summit of the Western end of the Big Level, which is this area is affectionately known.

And so what happened was the Kanes had this property.

And so Thomas Leeper Kane was the one who was sent here to explore it.

And so he came to this region.

It was the summit of basically the Western part.

He found it to be most favorable and he found it to be aesthetically appealing to him.

And so he wanted to stay here.

The interesting thing is that he stayed here when no one else did.

Even all the Senecas passed through here, The Iroquois passed through here.

All six nations passed here on the way to the High river, the Mississippi, the Carolinas, however they never stayed here.

They never built anything here.

So Thomas Leeper Kane one day decided in 1859 to build a log cabin.

And with that construction, he planted the beginning to the whole community.

(gentle music) Thomas was in England, did a sketch of a timber framing chapel that actually Charles Dickinson had been in.

And so he decided someday to build it.

We have a photograph here.

The construction is probably one of the Thomas's favorite photographs, but in choosing to do this, he decided that rather than investing in natural wealth, rather than investing in simple economic things 'cause he knew they came and went, he decided he wanted to invest in a spiritual wealth.

And so we're sitting right now in an edifice and that contains that hope and spirit for the future.

(bright music) We actually came here for a year in 1969.

And the more we stayed here, we realized that the people had a heart true and loving.

I think the greatest gift of this area was personal autonomy.

If you really want to do something, you can do it.

No one's going to stop you.

It's difficult, it's not any easier, but you can follow your dreams.

And then there's enough space and enough opportunity and enough acceptance from other people to do what you feel is important.

- Hello, my name is Ned Karger, and I'm here to tell you about the Kane Park System, how it's a locally supported and entreasured within our community.

Kane was founded by general Thomas Kane who was an abolitionist and a civil war general who after being wounded twice was discharged from the Union Army.

He came and founded Kane in 1864.

Just three years later, he'd set aside three tracks of land in Kane, which would become the Kane park system.

So community support for the Kane park systems comes in many ways.

Primarily it is volunteers working in the parks to help the borough maintain and develop the facilities within the park system.

The citizens of Kane really cherish this park system and proper maintenance of the park system is really important.

The Kinzua Avenue mini park is a small neighborhood park.

The local chapter of the rotary club stepped forward and put some money into that local neighborhood park.

That spurred the borough to replace swing sets and to do even more work in the park.

Southover park is 47 acres on the South edge of Kane.

You'll pass the Steve German Memorial.

Steve German was a Kane borough police officer.

There's also a Steve German Memorial trail, which was built by Kane school students.

After the trail had been around for a while, it was in some need of maintenance and it was adopted as a Eagle scout project.

And it really made a nice loop trail of about a mile trail right on the edge of town.

Glenwood park is on the North edge of town.

It includes our athletic facilities.

Santilli field is a baseball field.

We also have two soccer fields in Glenwood park.

And then we also have the skate park.

For a long time, there was a wooden skate park locally built, locally maintained, which began to deteriorate to the point it could not be insured.

Instead of saying, we just lost an asset, we had a committee formed and they put together the skate park that we have now, beautiful new skate park.

Evergreen park is the crown jewel in the Kane park system.

Evergreen park's 19 acres' right in the middle of town.

It holds the enchanted playground, which was a community built project in 1988.

Generations of kids have grown up playing there and now the parents are bringing their kids when they started playing there 30 years ago.

We have a great court system with pickle ball, tennis and basketball.

We have a disc golf course, which people from all over have traveled to play at.

Memorial point was established after World War I when the citizens of Kane wanted to commemorate the end of World war I and memorialized the local citizens who had lost their life.

Back about five years ago, everybody was recognizing that the sidewalks were cracked up, landscaping was overgrown and it really needed to be revitalized.

A partnership formed with Kane VFW post, Kane Area Development Center.

It included the Kane Parks Commission in the borough.

We dedicated it just this last Memorial day.

And so it'll be 101 years old, and we hope that this new revitalization there will go on for the next century and beyond.

I really feel that some of the revitalization that's happened in the Kane park system over the last five years or so has been part of the Renaissance that we're seeing in Kane overall.

- I'm Melanie Clabaugh, and today I'm talking about Care for Kane.

(upbeat music) Care for Kane is a project that was started by the Kane Area Revitalization Enterprise.

And during Care for Kane, we collect projects from the borough, the townships, local community organizations, churches, and then solicit volunteers to come out to complete those projects in one day in May.

Our winters in Kane can be hard, and so it's a lot of cleanup of our public spaces.

And then we'll take on some larger projects, building bleachers, we've done some trail work, completely renovating some trail systems that we have in the community.

We've done a lot of landscaping work, painting uptown, cleaning up town, litter pickup, those kinds of things.

The first year, our thought was we would reach out to the business community and try to get everybody to come out with their employees, their teams so that they could work together.

And I remember a lot of people said, "Oh, we probably won't have a lot of people come out.

"This isn't gonna work."

And in reality that first year, we had 240 volunteers come out and complete projects across the community.

I think it's such an awesome event.

Volunteers are all ages.

We have involved over the years, the schools.

And so the schools will actually let classes out during the day to complete projects, all the way up to senior citizens who come out and either volunteer at the community center or do projects.

To see people of different ages from different walks of life coming together to complete those projects is just an incredible thing.

Our largest year, we had 625 volunteers come out in one day to complete a number of volunteer projects in the community, which is an incredible testament to the way that the community is and the way that people wanna give back here in Kane.

This year we had over 300 volunteers come out for Care for Kane, which is good considering the pandemic.

Coming back into 2021, I went around to the different sites to take photos and talk with people.

We did a couple of video interviews, and it's just the sense of community that everybody feels during Care for Kane.

That feeling of calling out into the community and working on projects to improve our community together is just a really great feeling.

What you have here is something that's very nostalgic.

Many communities have lost that feeling of community and that's something that is certainly not lost here in Kane.

- Hi, I'm Charlotte Floravit.

I'm the CEO at the Lutheran home at Kane, and here to talk all about what we have to offer to the community.

(gentle music) We are a CCRC, Continue of Care Retirement Community, so we have a 90 bed skilled nursing facility, 33 bed personal care home, and then six cottages for independent living.

We provide quality care to our residents in a home-like atmosphere.

We are one of the top employers of the community.

So we provide a lot of economic impact, but we're also the only nursing home in Kane.

So we're here to provide for all of the aging needs of our population.

That's why we provide for the entire continuum of care from independent living and we provide meals to those residents, to personal care.

When they no longer can live on their own, they go to the personal care home where we provide medication administration, we assist with activities of daily living, and then we provide them with three meals daily.

And then if they no longer can be in the personal care side, then they go to the skilled side where we provide physical occupational speech therapy, skilled nursing, where if they need oxygen, IVs, any other type of care that requires licensed professionals.

Activities are very important.

You wanna make sure that your residents are engaged, that they're out, they're socializing with their peers.

It's very important to make sure that they have that connection with others.

We have activities daily for our residents.

It ranges from bingo to noodle ball.

We do coffee hour every day at 2:30, where the residents all get together in our dining room for coffee and cookies.

We have monthly celebrations, birthday celebrations.

We do parking lot parties, karaoke parties.

You name it, we do it.

Trying to make sure that our residents have the activities they would have outside of a skilled nursing facility.

Kane is a great community, very supportive.

I can tell you that the last year and a half has been a nightmare in nursing homes as everyone can imagine with the global pandemic.

We were not isolated from that pandemic.

When it hit on Thanksgiving night, our team was in the building till three in the morning, moving residents from green zones to red zones.

But this community rallied and supported us.

You feel beat down when you're going through a pandemic and it comes in your building because you feel personally responsible for these lives that you're promising the families that you're protecting.

And this community rallied behind us.

We weren't allowed to have any visitors.

They provided food, letters of support.

They made sure that we knew they supported us.

- My name is Jillian Chittester, and my story is about being a Boomerang.

(upbeat music) So what a boomerang is, is somebody who has left town and then eventually returned to open up a business or just be a professional in the area back in their hometown, where they grew up.

My boomerang story is that I left Kane.

I am in the fitness industry.

And over the span of 10 years, I worked in state college.

I worked in Pittsburgh and then I came back to Kane and opened Lobo fitness, which is right uptown in Kane.

I was excited to move back to Kane because there was a spark in Kane.

People were opening up new businesses so it was definitely the right time to do it.

But also with that being said, we wouldn't be where we were at today if it wasn't for all the businesses that have withstand the test of time.

I feel like it's way different in a small town when people kind of know who you are, they knew who you were growing up, and they kind of followed you as you left Kane.

And so when you came back, they were just more than welcoming, People always ask me, friends that live in cities, "How do you market your business?"

And it's like you don't really have to, people know who you are and it's a small town and there's a lot of support for whatever your dreams or your businesses.

One thing that always strikes home with me is some of my older clients are the people that helped me grow up, helped me walk, taught me right from wrong, whether it was in the community, the church or the school.

And so seeing that come full circle and me helping them continue to live a healthy lifestyle just means so much to give back to those who have already given so much to me as far as my journey so far.

Being a business owner in Kane is awesome.

I opened up Lobo fitness in March of 2019.

We've been growing pretty quickly.

And hopefully, we're actually looking to hire somebody else this Fall to help take up all of the needs of personal training and classes as well.

If you asked me when we were living in Pittsburgh, I would probably say, "Yeah, I don't think it's in the cards for us "to ever move back home."

And then it was boom.

We were there and Kane for two months and it was just, you could see the future of the rest of my life being invested in Kane and happy to be back.

Just the receiving end of that boomerang, everybody happy that you're back.

So that makes such a difference too of being back in Kane.

I just think we're so proud of our town.

I think a lot of people relate to this, when we'd go off to college or move away, it didn't seem like it took too long for all your friends and everybody to be like, "We wanna go to Kane."

We have just be so proud of our town that everybody that you knew wanted to come home with you and go to Kane and see all the local celebrities and the local spots that we have so much nostalgia with that makes it so glad to be home and just a great town.

- I'm Mark Luciano, and I'm here to talk about the Kane Passive House.

The Kane Passive House project, we started it a little over a year ago.

Joel Morrison purchased the building with the intention of making a passive house.

He's with West Penn Power Sustainable Energy Fund and a passive house saves energy.

It saves the environment.

And West Penn Power is about that.

In a passive house, you have to pass a certain criteria.

We have to have it air tight and have less than a envelope size of air to come into the building or go out of the building.

So we continually do a blower door test in order to make sure that we're making it air tight.

We get the air tight by painting a product called viscon that's on the brick.

Every little pinhole, every little joint has to be filled and painted and sealed so we don't get any air and filtration.

It's very difficult.

If you build a home and complete the passive house criteria, you will save 90% on your heating and electric bills.

It's all about the air tightness.

The Kane passive house uses a lot of green materials.

We use a lot of the rock wool insulation and a lot of recycled materials to make it more green.

It's been very difficult with the pandemic getting materials.

Materials are 10 to 12 weeks out, some materials you can't even get, but we've worked through all that with Norm Horn, the project manager has done a great job.

Norm is a certified passive house builder, And Norm will work right alongside of us, working with us, teaching us the passive house.

So the entire roof on the passive building will be covered with solar panels.

Those solar panels, we believe will sustain all the energy for that building.

The windows are a triple pane window.

The thing about a passive house window that I've learned is passive house windows aren't that much more expensive.

And sometimes the same amount of money as our standard windows, but they're way more energy efficient than our windows.

And they accomplish that by having a air break between different sections of the windows so that you don't have cold transferring from one part to another.

The windows you'll sit next to a window when it's 40 below zero and not feel draft when normally you do.

As a builder, I've been building houses for 48 years.

I've learned a lot about passive house, about saving energy, about air tightness with the painting of prosecco, concealers, the tape.

There's a lot of different things that need to be learned.

I believe this is a future of our industry.

Kane has done a lot in the last two or three years with buildings.

We've done four other projects in Kane.

On Fraley Street, we're remodeling the Logyard Brewing.

We're remodeling the H&R Block.

We've remodeled the PA Wilds building and are also talking about remodeling the Temple Theater into a wedding venue, which will be beautiful.

So Kane is making things happen.

- Hi, my name is Brandy Schimp, and today we're gonna talk about opportunities for kids in Kane.

(gentle music) Kane is one of the best places to grow up and live for kids specifically because Kane invests in their kids early on and it gives them a sense of pride.

It gives them a sense of roots and it gives them a sense of places to grow from.

For early aged kids, we have some really great day cares, early learning programs, preschools, you name it.

There's a variety of them available.

We have a Kane Area Community Center that offers lunch to every child no matter of income throughout the summer.

The community also does a backpack shoe and sock drive.

Our library is phenomenal.

During COVID, they made take and make crafts you'd pick up on the side of the road for your kids to do at home.

Once you get into the Kane area school district, the opportunities don't stop.

They continue to grow.

We have great mentors, great teachers, great afterschool programs, athletics, academics.

There's opportunities for kids in school with the yearbook, with the drama club, choraliers through music.

There's also your traditional sports.

We have very strong sports programs.

And we have a lot of teachers that double as coaches and as inspiration and mentors for kids while they're trying to figure out what their interests are.

Some other really great organizations that your kids can join, there's Studio K if you're into dancing, there's soccer, there's little league, there's girl Scouts, boy Scouts, tons of afterschool programs and all sorts of variety for anything that you're interested in.

There's some really great opportunities just by where we live.

If you're into hiking, you're into fishing, kids learn how to camp here.

You learn boating and snowshoeing and skiing.

You get to play at the tennis courts.

You get to play at the basketball courts.

The opportunities are endless if you're into outdoor rec for all four seasons.

One of the reasons that Kane is so great is they really invest in their kids from a young age.

Our Care for Kane program where we go out and we beautify the community one day a year, maybe beautify the park or to work on the playground.

And so we have kids who have started 10 years ago, and then they end up coming back after college and signing up again, just because they have now this investment in this root, in this pride here that they can almost take an ownership in it.

When I was a little girl, one of the most impactful things that happened to me was in 1988 was the building of their creative playground, also known as Evergreen Enchanted Play Land.

My parents were on the committee to help construct the playground.

It was built in four days, the community theme was, we build it together.

And now it's incredible to see over 30 years later, my children get to play somewhere that my parents had a hand in building.

And now that my dad's no longer here, it even means that much more.

And they get to enjoy it with their friends and they get to go out on Care for Kane Day and clean up the playground, and re-stain the playground and really understand when people years ago invested in generations to come and why that's so important that we take care of the things that we have.

We love it.

We absolutely love the playground.

I feel like this is hands down the best place to raise our children.

It's very much for the kids.

And I think the best thing that the community does is invest in their children, which is our most valuable asset.

- Hello, my name is Lowell Watts, and we're going to talk about the Kane family drive-in theater today.

(gentle music) The theater was originally built in 1952 and seven years ago, we became the proud owners of the Kane family drive-in.

- So my name is Jackie Watts, and my family and I own the Kane family drive-in theater.

We had an opportunity to consider purchasing the drive-in.

Now, we had quite a history with the drive-in.

Lowell and I had our first date there.

We had taken our children there many, many times as they were growing up.

So the kids were more than anxious to be a part of that history.

And that's how we came to be the stewards of this community theater.

- When we purchased it, we decided that we would purchase the potential that the drive-in had and try to develop that potential.

And we wanna save it for the next generation 'cause it's a very, very special place in the community and everybody loves it.

I'm definitely not a drive-in guy.

I'm definitely not a movie guy, but yes, it's something we absolutely wanna preserve in our community.

- We just love that this is a place where everybody comes and everybody's happy to be there.

With COVID, you really didn't know what to expect about any place you went or anything you did for the last year.

But I think that people come to the drive-in, and it's the drive-in.

It's like it's always been, nothing has changed and everybody feels kind of happy and relaxed to be there because it's just like it's always been.

- Wow, last year was an eye opener.

We had church services out there, which was wonderful.

Everybody could stay socially distanced in their car.

It was non ecumenical.

It was wonderful.

We got the opportunity to have graduation at the drive-in.

I'm just get goosebumps talking about it.

It was phenomenal.

We had a beautiful fireworks display.

We had a great commencement address by our mayor.

We've been able to do so many different things out there.

- The cohesive part of all those events is the community involvement.

The community involvement though in this little town of Kane, there is more talent.

There are makers, there are cooks, there are musicians.

There are people who build, people who do technology.

Everybody came together to make all those events happen.

It was fabulous just because everybody wants to work together to do something special for a purpose.

- My goal is when my kids are graduated from college and I'm no longer able to stay out until 2:30, 3 o'clock in the morning and we do sell it, I wanna make sure that it's a profitable business so it gets to stay a drive-in and it doesn't become something else.

That's our goal is to preserve it for future generations.

- It thrills me to be at the ticket booth and see our community pass right by me.

I get a chance to talk to everyone.

We just love that this is a place where everybody comes and everybody's happy to be there.

- Hi, I'm Kate Kennedy, and I'm going to talk about the 100 days of Kane Pennsylvania project.

For 100 days of Kane, I decided to do 100 interviews in a row of people telling their stories about why they love it here in Kane.

The community rallied and we had great participation.

We were able to interview people of all generations, lots of different types of stories, outdoor recreation, which is a huge aspect of what we offer here in Kane.

- So it was really cool to experience it with my dad and to go up to him and walk up to this.

- [Kate] Oh my gosh, look at that.

We did Wednesday nights as our history night.

So I interviewed somebody from the depot every Wednesday to tell a story about Kane's history.

- On the back of the card, and we realized quite quickly that this is general Kane's handwriting.

- [Kate] So from his journals and all that?

- Yes, we've seen his handwriting.

This is his handwriting.

So he wrote that.

This is what he wrote on the back.

He wrote, "These are the two cartridges "that saved me from the hangman's rope.

"They misfired and by doing so, "saved a man's life and mine also."

- [Kate] We had kids, elementary, middle, and high school kids interviewed.

- I've been a girl scout for a while now.

And I have this one is called polar bear plunge.

And we go to this camp, and every morning we have to get up out of our tent, no matter how cold it is and jump in lake.

- [Kate] Oh my gosh.

- So that's a lot of fun.

- Every single story was really great and really meaningful.

And I felt really connected to the people that were telling them.

I remember the first story that I got emotional hearing was when I interviewed John Knapp about his experience coming back from Vietnam.

And then his experience years later of kind of some healing from that down the road.

- I went to her house.

I knocked on the door and I told her that I had walked at parade and what it meant, a big deal.

(bright music) - Another couple of stories that today are meaningful to me are Mick Patrone and Becky Mary.

You're just this volunteer that just kind of cared about these kids and wanted them to have a place.

- Care about these kids.

Anybody that loved this sport this much that would work diligently to try to get it back, I'm gonna call it back on the pad.

But yeah, they were willing and they loved it.

And these kids were so good kids that gee whiz, somebody's got to do something for 'em, and it turned around having to be me (chuckling).

- I told them to grab something that they liked and let's go downstairs and they did follow the instructions just like little troopers (chuckling).

- They both have since passed.

And it is really special to have their stories captured and their spirits still living on through those stories, and they're still being told in their voice.

And that was something I didn't think about when we first started doing it, but it was an impact that I'm really grateful that we have.

- My name is Matt Boyer.

I'm the chairman of the Ludlow Historic Society, and I'm here to talk about Wildcat Park.

(gentle music) Wildcat Park is a 64 acre park in the little town of Ludlow.

The park originally was six acres starting in 1922 for a baseball diamond by some local kids and the Ludlow Athletic Association.

Years later on, George W. Olmstead donated 58 acres to make the current park that we have today.

We have four pavilions that are able to be rented out.

One's an enclosed that can be used both for winter or for Spring time.

And the other three can be enclosed though, for the most part, they are outside pavilions, though we can accommodate for almost any type of event that you might wanna have there at Wildcat Park.

We also have a wonderful fishing stream that is filled with all native fish to this area and all stocked, including rainbow and brown trout further down the creek.

We still have our baseball diamond and we do help to try and get baseball games going again in the near future.

Right now, we are celebrating 150 years of Ludlow.

And in 2025, we'll be celebrating 100 years of Wildcat Park.

And we do all types of celebrations including the yearly Ludlow Day celebration, a music festival in October, the October Fest and haunted trail also in October.

And then we've done Christmas lights in the park in December, a fishing Derby in March and a Easter egg hunt around the Easter season as well.

It's great that we have such an amazing park and that the communities of Kane and Ludlow and the surrounding area have been so generous to come and help support us.

And we always hear great responses from people, whether they're coming to one of our events or just coming on a weekend to have a picnic, or maybe have their kids play baseball around the diamond.

It's just an amazing place, especially with the history, with everything that's happened there from our Centennial in 1971 when 25,000 people entered through the park gates from the historic horse shows that used to be there.

It's just amazing how much this park has been able to contribute to the community and appeal to every single person who comes through the gates to Wildcat Park.

This area is a great to live because around here, it's not just a group of citizens, we're one family.

And that's the wonderful thing about a small town.

- I'm Tom Piorotti.

I'm here to speak about the wolves in Kane, Pennsylvania.

The lobo wolf lived by killing the American bison.

And when the development of the West included the slaughter of the bison, that meant that the wolves had to eat something else.

So they began to eat cattle and probably seemed close to a bison.

And so the ranchers of course demanded that the government do something to help them by exterminating the lobo wolves.

In 1921, Dr. McCleary petitioned the federal government and made arrangements to purchase and save some pups of the lobo wolves.

So over the years, he accumulated quite a few and he began by keeping these animals right in town.

After a while, he moved them to a site just a couple of miles east of Kane on route six and developed a park there.

When Dr. McCleary could no longer care for the wolves, fortunately, he had found another man Jack Lynch who was interested in buying the wolves and continuing to care for them here in Kane, Pennsylvania.

During that time, Dr. McCleary died and the wolves began to howl.

And although wolves would often howl, this time it was a prolonged howl.

The whole pack calling together for a length of time, more than a half an hour, I believe.

And that was seen as unusual, and then later discovered that was exactly when Dr. McCleary died, almost 30 miles away.

(gentle music) The lobo Wolf still exists because of Dr. McCleary's efforts.

Way back in 1921, before people thought about saving species from extinction, he was one of the first people to have that kind of a caring heart to care for species of animals in our planet.

There's something mysterious maybe about Kane and a little bit magical and very special.

And I think it has to do with history because people in Kane, they celebrate the history of Kane.

Residents of Kane know that they are blessed with a legacy from the original founders of Kane that teaches them things about how to relate to each other.

And that's a wonderful gift that just keeps on giving.

- Hi, my name is Janine Smith, and I'm gonna talk about art in the wilds and artworks on the summit.

The Kane area has two organizations, art in the wilds and artworks on the summit and both help support and encourage in our community.

Artworks is a retail shop uptown on Fraley Street in Kane, and it provides the platform for local artists to present their art and sell it in Kane.

Artworks has 31 current artists that have either jewelry, woodturning, soaps, paintings, mixed media pottery in artworks.

Part of our mission is to have workshops for students and adults.

We have volunteers present these workshops.

Our region has such specific history to it, and you'll see through the artwork that it showcases this.

You'll see the beautiful forest, the rivers, the animals, the wildlife so it's just really neat to stop in and slow down and enjoy the art, Art in the wild is a fine art show.

It started in 2006.

It's a venue that's nestled in the Evergreen Park and artists come from Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and it's a two day event.

Leather making pottery.

You'll see painting, you'll see wood turning, you'll see lots of jewelry, felting fibers.

What would a community be without art to see it, touch it and feel it and have access to it?

To encourage and promote and support the arts is just vital.

It's lovely to share with everybody.

I sell soap and hand felt materials at artworks.

I also volunteer, design t-shirts at art in the wilds.

An outlet that I need and thrive on along with many artists is to also create things with our hands and share it.

And it's a network that's becoming more and more a niche in Kane, and it's great to be a part of.

Kane's such a close knit community.

Once you start talking to the people, you just want more and more.

You just wanna be more involved and it's a welcoming community.

It's just fun to be a part of and to encourage art to continue, and the youth in our town to keep creating and drawing and making and coming up with new ideas, it's vital.

I'm happy to be a part of it.

- My name is Royce Novosel-Johnson.

I'm here today to talk a little bit about the libations industry that we have in Kane, as well as the wonderful collaboration we have between the various businesses here that are operating.

(gentle music) Currently, there are several different libation operations in Kane.

You have Logyard brewing, which is a brewery that makes the beer here and sells at all throughout the state.

You have Flickerwood Winery, that's been here for a few decades.

You have CJ spirits, which focuses more on the liquor side of things, vodka, rum, bourbon, even scotch.

You have Twisted Vine Winery as well, that has locations throughout Pennsylvania.

And you also have a new one coming out called the Sunshine Factory, which specializes in a very unique type of liquor as well.

Collaboration is very important.

One of the things that we try to do is communicate and not duplicate efforts.

One interesting story about collaboration that always jumps to my mind is during the pandemic when so much of our industry, the hospitality industry really in libations were affected.

We found ourselves at Logyard Brewing having a surplus of beer.

What we were able to do is work with CJ Spirits.

We did something that's a little innovative, not a lot of people have done it, but we shipped down there a couple thousand gallons of beer that would have expired, and we would've to poured it down the drain.

Instead, they were able to distill with our beer that is now sitting in barrels that within about four years, that will turn into a bourbon that is infused with Logyard beer.

So, although we weren't able to use that beer now, we still salvaged that.

And we were able to work together as two companies that are looking to do something creative and be innovative so that in a couple years from now, when this catches on, we're way ahead of the curve.

Logyard Brewing, we opened in 2018.

I moved back five years prior to opening the brewery to take over my family's timber industry.

I'm fourth generation in the logging industry.

And we brew at a garage that is on my family's log yard, and it's been my family's log yard for probably at least 60 years.

The decor in our building, the labels that we create, a lot of these are family pictures of relatives that are logging or they're saws or axes that were just in our sheds that my ancestors, my family used.

So it really identifies Kane.

I mean, Kane was a community that was founded a lot on logging and it's a big industry here.

We care about our forests.

We care about sustainable logging.

And so we kind of get that message out with our branding, in the names of our beers and the overall message of what we're trying to do and who we represent and who we stand for.

There's a lot of things that make Kane a great place to live.

I think one of the strongest ones is just the sense of community.

And this is an interesting town and I hear it from people from other towns when they look at Kane and they're inspired because this is a town that everybody is on the same team.

- Hello, I'm James Greville.

I'm speaking today about the Kane volunteer fire department.

(gentle music) We started with four departments back in 1886.

And then in 1969, we consolidated in one station on Poplar Street where the West Side Hose Company was.

Dr. Harry Gardner known by everybody in Kane as Doc.

Gardner was probably the most famous fireman.

He was our department chief for 28 years.

He was a dentist and had his own practice in the middle of town.

Funny thing with doc, there's many, many stories of doc, people being in his dentist's chair and him running off and leaving them sitting in the chair.

So 1985, May 31st was the tornado that devastated our community, ravaged more than 100 houses, took three lives.

For the next two weeks, the fire department was the heartbeat of the community.

Politicians started to show up and help from all over the country, that's where the organization was all done out of our station.

The Volmer fire was right in the middle of town, that was in 1976 was a very significant fire.

After the fire, the lot sat vacant for many years until just a few years ago when it became the amphitheater, which is now the nice park in the middle of the town.

(gentle music) Today, the fire services has evolved so much.

Firefighting is maybe only 20% of what we do today.

Medical calls, assistance with helping ambulance.

Also car accidents have overtaken the amount of fires that we have.

We're a six unit department.

We have class A engines.

Class A meaning, large engine.

We have a heavy duty rescue truck, a utility truck.

And the chief wanted me to get in here.

We have a 95 foot tower, and it's the only volunteer department in McKean County that has a tower.

One of the strengths of our department is we've had members from all the different generations.

When you look at departments that have problems getting enough man power, it's usually because they miss a generation and then there's a communication gap between the older members and the younger members.

And we've been fortunate enough never to have that.

Very fortunate to have the number of members that we have.

I've been a member for 40 years.

I was approached by an existing member when I had taken pictures of a major fire.

And he asked me to join, to become a photographer for the department.

I went to my first fire school and liked it so much, I became a firefighter instead of photographer.

- My name is Mark Papalia.

I'm the President of UPMC Kane.

And today I'm gonna talk about the history of healthcare in the Kane area.

The beginning of healthcare in Kane started in 1887 when Elizabeth Kane, along with her two sons, William and Evan purchased the original Thompson House and converted that into the Woodside Carriage Hospital.

That hospital existed until 1938 and was replaced by the new Summit Hospital.

The new Summit Hospital was a 20 bed facility, and we currently occupied that at the current day for use of primary care and specialty care and it's called the Summit Medical Center.

In 1929, the community saw the need to have a new modern facility.

Fundraising efforts were very successful at that point in time.

And that was the construction of the community hospital, which is located at the current campus of the existing hospital here today.

So one of the most famous stories from that timeframe was Dr. Evan O'Neill Kane who was a pioneer at self surgeries.

He removed his own appendix in 1921, which is what is most known for.

Major milestones along the way, in 1997, we actually changed our name from the Community Hospital to Kane Community Hospital.

In 2010, Kane Community Hospital became an affiliate of Hamot Health Foundation, which later in 2011 became an affiliate of UPMC Hamot.

In 2017, we officially became UPMC Kane.

Our current initiative in working on this Pennsylvania rural health model with the Pennsylvania Department of Health and CMMI, the PA rural health model is really an innovative effort working with the state as sustaining essential services here in our rural communities, knowing the challenges that rural hospitals face across the Commonwealth.

The Pennsylvania rural health initiative, we're in year three working through this model with the state.

We submit transformational plans every year as part of this model.

One such change in recent days that we have done is we've implemented a tele hospitalist model.

And so the telemedicine is gonna be a key component going forward, working through this model and working through initiatives here in Kane as that provides access here locally to specialists that may be either an Erie or in Pittsburgh.

We have a telemedicine equipment, which has a cart with tele video where the doctors can have live feed and examine the patients right here over that telemedicine equipment.

And there's a diagnostic side along with that equipment as well as providing 24/7 access to world-class care right here in our Kane community.

What has really kept me here is my family has been from the area.

I was born in Warren, Pennsylvania, but I consider that very similar to Kane.

It's rural Pennsylvania, very much like the rural area.

The outdoor activities, hunting, fishing.

All the outdoor activities is really what kinda has kept me here to the area.

- My name is Tom Kase.

I'm here to talk about the Knox and Kane rail trail that we're currently developing through Kane.

(upbeat music) Originally, the Knox and Kane rail trail was a railroad that was laid out by our founder, Thomas Kane.

And it was a way to get his coal and timber products to market.

In 2008, it was purchased by the Kovalchick corporation and he had the foresight to rail bank it and create an opportunity for a rail trail.

2017, my trail group was formed where the Trail Association of the McKean Elk divide, our acronym is TAMED, hence the shirt and our catchphrase is "The wilds are being TAMED, come see."

The one we're developing here in the Kane portion of it is a traditional rail trail.

It's taking an old railroad corridor, transform it into a trail.

Ours is gonna be non-motorized.

So it's for hiking, biking, cross country skiing, seeing people birdwatching.

There's just multiple things you can do on that type of trail.

One of our first challenges was the bridge behind the high school that goes over the active railroad line.

And it really was an impediment from that part of our community to the village of Kane.

So I wrote a grant to the the Collins Companies Foundation for the materials for that project.

And they funded it, seeing that it was gonna be a collaborative project between our trail group, the Kane area of OAG students, and we use the Care for Kane volunteers on Care for Kane Day in May of 2019.

It took us two weekends to build that bridge.

It's about 175 feet from one end to the other.

You're probably about 60 feet in the air above the act of airline.

It was quite a project and it really built community spirit.

There was multiple generations of people, anything from middle school students to 70 some year olds out there helping put our bridge together.

(gentle music) Our trail has really added value to our community.

For our citizens, it's definitely added value.

Our trail numbers just continue to grow every month, but for the economy, it's been important as well is it's grown to a point where we're starting to attract new visitors that wanna come experience the trail we're building.

And as we do that, we help bring new money into our community.

And also we're creating opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Currently, Kane has no bike repair shop or bike retail shop or an outfitter type place.

So opportunities are being created as this trail begins to grow.

I really feel that Kane's a special place mainly because of our people.

There's a special spirit here in Kane, a real can-do attitude.

No matter what's thrown at the community, we seem to rally together and make things happen.

- Hi, my name is Deborah Miller and I'm here to talk about the Kane Manor Inn.

The Kane Manor Inn is a 19th century historic residence here in Kane.

It was the family home of General Thomas Kane, who is the founder of our town and his wife, Dr. Elizabeth Kane and her family.

So one of the really cool things about the Kane Manor Inn is that we are on a national registry of historic places.

And this place is so well built.

It was actually designed by two really famous architects that were in Philadelphia in the early 1900's, late 1800's named Cope and Stewardson.

They were famous for building places like Princeton University, buildings on that campus, Bryn Mawr University, which are fantastic places.

And the building certainly shows that she was built really well.

It sits back at the edge of the forest.

It is on originally 250 acres that was owned by the Kane family.

Our 10 acres, our little island that we live on and where the property is, that goes back the whole way into the National Forest.

We have two different buildings.

Our main building is an 18,000 square foot home, and that was the original residence.

We have 10 guests rooms each with a private bath, and we have numerous common areas.

We also have a separate guest house with five rooms and an apartment.

We can accommodate up to 15 rooms for various guests over any particular time.

So my husband and I were looking at some bed and breakfast opportunities in the Hershey area where we used to live.

I decided, well, let's broaden our search a little bit.

And so I went on a website for bed and breakfast that are for sale in Pennsylvania, and this one popped up, the Kane Manor.

We met the previous owner and he was amazing.

Told us so much about the place and its history.

We saw a lot of potential.

The folks here have such great energy.

They have such a vision and we love the innovation and everything that they were bringing to it.

And really that, and the property, just kind of solidified it.

- I'm Terry Collins.

I'm here to talk about the Kane hardwood division of Collins Pine Company.

This part of Pennsylvania was really kind of where it all started.

The Kane hardwood sawmill is operated here in Kane since 1975, but our history actually goes back long before that.

My great grandfather Truman Collins came to this region from upstate New York in 1854.

And he worked in a logging camp over by East Hickory for the winter.

And then the following Spring, he and a brother and three other young men took out a loan, bought a little steam saw mill and about 1400 acres of timberland.

And that was to be the start of a long career in lumbering and timbering spanning close to 60 years, during which time he operated nine saw mills and purchased 60,000 acres of timberland over at Forest County.

So TD Collins was very much a part of what is known as the logging railroad era in Western Pennsylvania, a time when almost the whole Allegheny plateau was clear cut.

The last of his sawmills operated up until about the mid 1920's.

His son had gone out West and got involved in a mill out in Western Washington, railroad logging, and later went on to make purchases in Oregon and California as well.

So there really wasn't much going on for Collins back here in Pennsylvania, but in 1940, Truman Collins came back to Pennsylvania from out West with his head forester, and they decided that they were gonna take a look at these lands, which his grandfather had harvested about 30,000 acres that they still owned.

And they discovered that these Eastern forests were growing back vigorously with wide variety of species and some pretty valuable species like black cherry, Northern red Oak and white Ash.

So they decided to hold onto these lands, figuring that in the next 20 years, there would be some value growing back onto these lands.

So then about a decade later, 1950, Truman established a staff of foresters, setting up a little office in a little farmhouse on the other side of Sheffield.

And they started to buy more land in this area.

And a lot of those acres were bought over four different counties, so McKean, Potter, Forest, and Warren County.

So that actually made Kane kind of the centrally located town for this land ownership.

In 1966, they bought a little bill out at Lance Corners, about eight miles East of here.

And they started to process some of the timber that was starting to grow into merchantable sizes.

And then in 1975, they built the new mill at Kane.

And at that time, this was probably about the biggest saw mill in Pennsylvania.

Truman Collins was actually a very early proponent of sustained yield forestry, which basically means that you don't harvest more each year than what the forest can replace with new growth.

So by doing that, you can support a permanent community with stable long-term jobs backed up by a sustainable forestry operation.

So that's why we're still here.

And we hope to continue to be a part of this community for many years to come.

- Hi, my name is Dave Kearney.

I'm here to talk about the Friends Memorial library in Kane PA. (gentle music) I'm a patron of the library and my wife is a volunteer there.

I've been an amateur genealogist for over 20 years.

And I find that the Friends of Memorial library in Kane is very helpful for genealogical and family tree research.

They have city directories, micro films of the local newspapers where obituaries can be found and copied.

They have census records.

They have online resources that they have available, that they subscribed to that people can use for genealogy research.

Recently, I've been involved with some research for a civil war veteran through the local VFW, trying to verify the cemetery that he's been buried in and try to find records because we wanna put a headstone on his grave site.

Other veterans that don't have headstones, we do research there too to find their obituary and make contact with their family.

There's a great section of civil war and revolutionary war books.

It's a great help that way.

So I've been going there to use their facilities to do that research.

I know a lot of people throughout the town use the library.

The children go there and use the children's books.

I think they have a special place in the basement for little kids.

They have special times for children to go there and do readings.

My wife and I both use the audio books that are available through the library.

It's very convenient during harsh winter months to just download from their site and the book appears on your device at home, so it's very helpful that way.

It's a big, big asset.

Kane's a great place to live.

It's just a great community.

When there's a need for something to get done in Kane, the people in Kane pull together and we get it done.

- I'm Pastor Calvin Cook, and I'm here to speak about the faith communities of Kane.

So originally, there were 20 communities of faith made up of Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish communities, which there now are 16 of the original 20 remaining.

Kane First United Methodist Church was established the same year as Kane in 1864.

- [Debbie] I'm Debbie Airgood.

I'm a history buff of first United Methodist Church of Kane.

I'm going to share a little bit about the church.

A certain riding preacher came by horseback from Sheffield to lead services in private homes, then in the school house and then a church was built on Fraley street in 1872.

The current building on Greeves street was built in 1905 after a fire destroyed the previous church on Fraley.

The windows were put in in 1905 when the building was built as was the pipe organ.

The pipe organ was a gift of the Olmsted family and is still in use today.

In addition to church activities, we have a preschool during the school year.

AA and NA use our building as well as scout troops and whip.

We have a sharing room that provides cleaning and hygiene items free of charge to those who need them.

Our most recent project has been weekly drive-in dinners, a product of COVID-19 and a need for food security for many in our community.

- St. Callistus Roman Catholic Church was started in 1866 and has been very active within community and sharing more ship for the community.

(gentle music) The Presbyterian Church was a gift by General Kane to the community.

Also is very adorned architecturally and provide services throughout the community.

The Tabor Lutheran church has also been existed in Kane since the early days, and was built on property that was donated by General Kane.

These are just a few of the many churches that are located in Kane.

There's an awesome faith community here that is cooperatively working within the community to help in sponsoring various services and overseeing various ministries within the community such as the food pantry.

It is a great community, it's friendly.

You pass people on the street and they say, "Hello."

There's a great neighborly feeling to the community.

A small town, laid back.

It's just an awesome place to live.

- I'm Missy Cleer, and I'm here to talk about Chestnut Street Center.

(upbeat music) I'm one of four owners of the property.

The site was first a high school built in 1909.

And at one point in 1965, they decided that they needed to consolidate all the local small schools.

And they decided to build an elementary school on the site.

The high school was eventually torn down there and a new one was built up on Hemlock Avenue.

And the Chestnut Street Elementary School was opened, and that was with the 70-71 school year.

That closed in 2010.

We ended up buying the place in 2018.

We decided to buy the building because I guess a little bit of sentimentality played a part there because our parents went to school there, we went to school there.

and our kids went to school there.

So we knew the building was very sound and strong, but needed some work.

And we thought that we could revitalize the building and keep it going.

So moving forward, that's what we're hoping to do is just make it a safe, comfortable environment for some local businesses.

People ask me like, what direction we want the building to go in, if there's a theme?

And I just feel like with Kane being such a small town, that we can have a wide variety of people in there.

And today, there are seven different businesses in there.

Kane Innovations that used to own it, there's a massage therapist, a therapist, IU9 offices, Kids Learning Center, Headstart Preschool, and PA American Water Company office.

The Chestnut Street Center has 66,000 square feet, and only probably half of that is rented.

The original library, gym and cafeteria still stands.

That has been untouched and it's ready to be worked on.

So moving forward, we're just hoping that maybe we can attract a new business into that area and give Kane something new.

I love living in Kane because you do know everyone and I love the old fashioned Main Street.

Kane has a great sense of community, and I just think it's a wonderful place to live.

- [Narrator] And that's "Our town Kane", a look at this McKean County Borough through the eyes of its residents.

Support for "Our town Kane" comes from UPMCs Kane, providing the community with services in primary care, women's health, orthopedic, and general surgery, pain management, and emergency medicine.

More at upmckane.com.

Laughing owl press company Kane, a full service letterpress and foil print shop providing stationery for occasions and events and identity and promotion.

More at laughingowlpress.com or on Instagram and Facebook.

And viewers like you, thank you.

(upbeat music)