Steamers and Oliver Buffs Gather in Williams Grove

Dick Wanner
Lancaster Farming Staff

WILLIAMS GROVE, Pa. — Tons of metal, thousands of people and truckloads of good country eatin’ came together here Labor Day for the annual steam show sponsored by the Williams Grove Historical Steam Engine Association.

The WGHSEA’s featured tractor this year was the Oliver Super 99/990 Series.

The Williams Grove steamers invited the national Hart-Parr/Oliver Collector’s Association and its 8,000 members to show off their stuff, and they did. The Oliver brand was represented with some 430 wheeled and crawler tractors, and there were about 1,100 tractors all told.

A couple of the Oliver crawlers came all the way from California, according to Jim Leib of Dover, Pa., who co-chaired the Oliver part of the event with his brother, Jerry. It was the first time in 15-years that the Oliver event was held in Pennsylvania.

The old steam folks had a thundering herd of wood- and coal-fired engines, doing just about everything that steam used to do on and off the farm. There was threshing and baling demonstrations, a stone crusher, a shingle mill and an operating saw mill. They had a full-sized operating steam railroad. There was a daily tractor parade, a blacksmith shop, a model railroad, tractor pulls, horse pulls, and for those who wanted to part with old iron, there were others eager to buy it at the annual day-before-Labor Day consignment sale.

Jim Leib said the Oliver portion of the show was hosted by the Mason Dixon Oliver Cletrac Collectors Association, and that they had 360 people at their Saturday night banquet. The attendees were mostly from the Northeast down to North Carolina, but there was that guy from California. Like other devoted Oliver fans, Leib grew up with the brand.

As did Landis Zimmerman of Ephrata, Pa., another Oliver association member who worked at getting the Oliver folks to Williams Grove. Landis said he was raised with 60s and 70s and has an 80 and a 90 now, which he uses to work part of his six-acre homestead. “It’s just hobby now,” he said.

A big, heavy, noisy hobby popular with farm folks all over the country, and one that drew thousands of people for a Labor Day weekend in Williams Grove.

Dick Wanner can be reached at rwanner.eph@lnpnews.com, or by phone at 717-419-4703.