During Penn State’s first few decades, the original Old Main (above) was the institution’s only building of note.

The fact that the first County Agents had no precedents to guide them made the first days, weeks, and even months of their work exceedingly stimulating in the newness of each experience. Such stimulation came through the newness of each road, each farm, each project, each livery horse and buggy, each meal at a farm home, each overnight stay in such homes.

—R. Bruce Dunlap, extension agent in Blair County, 1912-1927

This photo (left), as described in The College of Agriculture at Penn State—A Tradition of Excellence (Penn State Press, 1987), shows “Floyd ‘Dutch’ Bucher, Lancaster County’s first extension agent, on his Harley-Davidson ‘Go Devil.’ For more than three decades, it was a common sight for local farmers to see Bucher traveling the back lanes on his motorcycle. He carried visiting extension specialists in an attached sidecar.”