Photo of the Month

December, 2001

Aristes, March 26, 1936

Aristes is a small village in Conyngham Township, Columbia County, located on state route 42, fourteen miles south of Catawissa and one mile north Centralia. In the early 1800s it was first called Montana. John Rhodenberger built a tavern here called the "Red Tavern" around 1804 to serve the travelers using the old Reading Road. Samuel Leidy laid out the village in 1865. Lehigh Valley Railroad, seen in the picture’s foreground, served the Morris Robinson and Company Colliery and Midvalley Coal Mines that were near Aristes.