Photo courtesy of Jake Collins.
0114 Homewood History Hunt
At the intersection of 18th Street and Valley Avenue, Camille Colter holds a photo of the Edgewood Electric Railway Track from 1909-1911 while her classmates reenact the laying of the railroad behind her.
Jake Collins, a history teacher at Homewood Middle School, will speak at a Homewood Historical Society meeting on Saturday, Jan. 17. The presentation begins at 10 a.m. at the Homewood Public Library.
Collins will be explaining how a project with his eighth-grade history students turned into an opportunity to co-author a book with Martha Wurtele on the history of Homewood.
Collins grew up in Homewood and graduated from HHS in 2001. To create the Homewood Histoy Hunt, he pored over the pages of Homewood: The Life of a City by Sheryl Spradling Summe, dug through archival photos and news clippings, and talked with community members who remember the days of Edgewood Lake and streetcars.
Every Monday he posts an old photo with clues to find its current location, and students have until the following Monday to find it and take photos of themselves in front of the landmark.
He and Wurtele’s pictorial history, an Images of America book published by Arcadia, is schedule to be published at the end of 2015.
