My Hometown Has an Elephant Farm

This is the first blog post in an occasional series about what makes Berlin, Pennsylvania fantastic.

About a year or so ago, I saw a job posting on the Pittsburgh Zoo’s website for a caretaker at their elephant conservation center. If I had been at all interested in the job, and been qualified enough to be hired, I could have moved back into my old bedroom at my parents’ house. Why? Because the zoo posting listed the address for the sanctuary as: Berlin, PA 15530. This is the town in Somerset County (80 miles from Pittsburgh) that my family moved to when I was seven years old. I graduated from high school in Berlin.

From what I understand, the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium’s International Conservation Center is a sanctuary / stud farm / sperm bank for their retired elephants. It is not open to the public. I have never seen an elephant on any of my trips to Berlin to visit my family. Jonathan took the photo for this post at the actual Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium.

I was surprised that the zoo identified the elephant farm as being in Berlin, because I previously understood that it was actually in Fairhope, PA.  Fairhope is in the same school district as Berlin, but the district covers over 150 square miles. The official website for the elephant farm just lists the location as “Somerset County.” I don’t think that the zoo wants people driving around looking for aged elephants. I have a general idea of where one would need to turn off of the main highway to reach it, though. Now that I think about it, I guess that Berlin is the closest “big” town. If you worked at the elephant farm, you might go into Berlin to fill your gas tank or buy groceries. Maybe my parents could rent you my old room.  You would have to fight my youngest sister for it, though.

If you worked at the elephant farm, you wouldn’t have to deal with gridlock when you went into the “big” town. Berlin doesn’t have any real traffic lights. I used to drive from my parents’ house to my job 30 miles away in downtown Johnstown and only encounter one intersection with a full traffic light in my entire commute, and this single traffic light was at the bottom of the expressway ramp in Johnstown.

One of my uncles moved to Berlin in the very early 1980’s before our household followed him. At that time, he had to drive 10 miles to Somerset when he wanted a pizza. Today, Berlin residents go to Somerset if they feel like eating at McDonalds or Eat N Park. Even the nearest Sheetz is in Somerset.

Berlin does have a potato chip factory. Right before I graduated from high school, the entire senior class walked from our school, down the street past our football field and some houses, to the main door of the potato chip factory for our field trip. Miles of farmland sit directly behind the factory. From what I remember of the factory tour, many of the potatoes are grown locally. Unfortunately, the potato chips aren’t any less expensive in Berlin than they are in New Kensington or Pittsburgh.

I’m sure that the staff at the elephant farm have much to talk about with all of the other farmers in Berlin.  Even though my parents’ house is within the town limits, I can ride my bike down the street that their house is on, and in a few minutes I will pass a dairy farm and I can watch the cows graze. Sometimes I can even stop and get an up-close look at the newborn calves in their little shed. If I keep riding for about three miles on this same road, I will pass an Amish farm. The Amish themselves pass my parents’ house in their buggies when they come into town to shop.

Now, if I turn out of my parents’ driveway and head in the opposite direction, a short bike ride will take me to the other side of town and a horse farm that sits right on the end of a street there.

My school required everybody to take an introductory course in Vocational Agriculture (Vo-Ag) for a quarter in eighth grade so that we could decide whether we wanted to continue with this career track in high school. Our Vo-Ag teacher was a farmer and also the president of the town’s volunteer fire department. (Actually, he is still the president. My Google search just told me that he has been the president since 1973!) On the first day of class, he told us a story about a barn fire that resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. He concluded, “Farming is big business.”

Or in the case of the International Conservation Center, farming is elephantine business.