xiggi
September 2, 2012, 10:16pm
78
<p>Stephen Reed also thought his projects in Harrisburg would make money. The community might even have believed that there was a pot of (well-hidden) gold in the museum, the baseball team, and the sports hall of fame. </p>
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Enter Stephen Reed, then a young man with big ideas. Elected mayor in 1981 at the age of 32, Reed dreamed of turning the city into more than an afterthought on the Amish Country tour maps.</p>
<p>He opened a Civil War museum and planned a slew of others, including a sports hall of fame and a Wild West museum to celebrate Harrisburg’s role in America’s westward migration. Never mind that the city is about a thousand miles east of the Mississippi River, more than 1,600 miles away from the Alamo, and more than six months by wagon train to the California coast, give or take a hard winter.</p>
<p>The project became a passion for Reed, who friends say lived for the city. He even traveled around the American West as often as he could, hand-selecting items for the museum.</p>
<p>Reed, who once described his management style as “autocratic,” told Reuters last year that the city had spent $15 million on museum artifacts – including $45,000 for a tomahawk that may or may not have belonged to Crazy Horse, chief of the Lakota tribe. (The chief fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn; his connection to Harrisburg remains unclear.)
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<p>[Special</a> Report: Harrisburg, Pa: a city at war with itself](<a href=“Westlaw Today - Premium Legal News | Thomson Reuters ”>Westlaw Today - Premium Legal News | Thomson Reuters )</p>
<p>This turned out to be … </p>
<p><a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203687504577001570935149322.html[/url] ”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203687504577001570935149322.html</a></p> ;