About This Website

 
A Message From the Webmaster

This website is a labor of love and is dedicated to all Somerset Countians whose roots run deep in its valleys and mountains.

My ancestors were among the first settlers in Somerset County. Through my mother, the late Helen Gnagey Fike, I am a direct descendant of Christian Gnaegi (Gnagey) who settled on a 500-acre tract by Tomahawk Claim two miles west of Meyersdale in 1774. He first came to America sometime between 1750 and 1760 from Switzerland.

Through my father, Robert Fike, I am a descendant of Christian Fike, the pioneer ancestor of the Fike family in America, who emigrated to America from Switzerland prior to the War of the Revolution. Also, through my father's mother, the late Martha Klingaman Fike, I am also a descendant of the Klingaman family that settled in Greenville Township prior to the Revolutionary War when it was a wilderness.

So, I am a Meyersdale native. I graduated from Meyersdale Area High School. Many people in Somerset County may remember me working as a reporter and photographer for The New Republic in Meyersdale and The Daily American in Somerset from 1975 to 1988. I then attended the University of Maryland and Frostburg State University, graduating in 1991 with a bachelor of science in English. From February, 1992, to October, 1997, I worked for the Somerset County Planning Commission as the recycling and solid waste coordinator and took on the historic rehabilitation of the Western Maryland Railway Station in Meyersdale as a pet project.

Working with the newly founded Meyersdale Area Historical Society as a board member and as a county planner, we were successful in acquiring the initial funding to undertake the rehabilitation of the station. And it happened "just in time," as the station was in danger of severe damage due to the very sadly deteriorated roof. Most visitors to the station now are unable to picture how it might have looked back then, suffering from 20 years of neglect , vandalism, and the harsh Somerset County winters.

Today, the station stands as a testament of the faith of a few who were determined to save it, namely Mary Neimiller and Alice Saylor who spearheaded that effort, and the generosity of those who support the Meyersdale Area Historial Society in its endeavor to maintain the station as a trailhead for the growing Allegheny Highlands Trail. People in the area should be proud to have such a fine facility that attracts visitors from far and wide!

I am happy to see the Allegheny Highlands Trail finally completed. It was a dream of mine for 30 or more years to see the connections made through Somerset County to what is now the Great Allegheny Passage, allowing people to traverse along the former Western Maryland Railway from the Savage Mountain Tunnel to Confluence and beyond--from Washington, D.C., to Pittsburgh. Thanks to the efforts of the Somerset County Rails-to-Trails Association, on whose board I served in the early 90s, and the County of Somerset and Planning Commission, that day has finally come.

I first introduced myself to website design in 1998 as a result of a compelling need to provide information on the fine efforts of PA CleanWays, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Greensburg that battles littering and illegal dumping. I served as a state board member from 1992 to 1997 and founded the Somerset County Chapter of PA CleanWays in 1992. Please visit the PA CleanWays website. Since 1999, PA CleanWays has been at the forefront of removing illegally dumped trash from Pennsylvania's beautiful countryside, forest lands and state parks.

If you have information or photos significant to the history of Meyersdale, its places and its people, please feel free to submit it to me. For photos, scan them and save as a "jpeg" with a .jpg or .jpeg file extension and simply attach it to an e-mail to my attention Sally Fike Statler. Please provide as much information as possible identifying the place or names of the people pictured and the approximate year when the photo was taken. Eventually, I hope to expand upon these pages to include genealogy files, as this website is affiliated with the PAGenWeb Project. Encouraged by Carol Hepburn who previously maintained the Somerset County Genealogy pages, I established this site for Meyersdale, since there were few boroughs in Somerset County "adopted" for this purpose. I purchased the Meyersdalepa.org domain name with the blessings of Donald Walukas, who was president of Meyersdale Borough Council and with whom I served on council for a four-year term through 1997.

Thank you for visiting, feel free to bookmark these pages, and stop by often. I look forward to hearing from you. --Sally Fike Statler

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This page last updated August 17, 2007.