After years of planning and fundraising, hundreds upon hundreds of hours of labor and love and after two centuries of history, the Jonas Bake Oven is in its new home.

What is even more exciting is that this wonderful piece of Americana will once again be operational and will be used to bake bread almost 300 years after the first loaf was slid off the wooden paddle into its bee-hive shaped interior.On Tuesday, the Polk County Historical Society will hold a dedication ceremony at the West End Fair Grounds officially welcoming the oven to its new home there.Over 100 local dignitaries, donors and volunteers have been invited to attend the ceremony. State, County and local officials will be on hand, along with the scores of volunteers and will each be given a mini-loaf, baked in the oven as a memento of the ceremony.The dedication will begin at 11 a.m. at the oven building which is adjacent to the museum at the fairgrounds. The public is welcome to attend the ceremony. An invitation only luncheon will follow.The hotelIn 1858 Jonas Snyder settled in New Mechanicsville where he purchased a 120 acre tract of land. On that piece of land was a plot which contained a small hotel which had served mainly as a stagecoach stop since the 1700s.The property was located on the road that connected the Lehigh Valley and the Wyoming Valley. Stagecoach traffic was steady after the Sullivan-Clinton expedition, which in 1778 and 1779 nearly wiped out the Iroquois Indian Nation and made travel safer for settlers.The property included, an apple orchard, sawmill, stream and an oven that was used for baking and cooking for the hotel. Snyder later purchased an adjoining 330 acres. The Snyder family continued to operate the hotel, which included a post office, general store, bar and dining room.At some time during Snyders life the town was renamed Sterners. In 1905, the year that Jonas Snyder died, the town was renamed Jonas when it became known that there was already another town in Pennsylvania named Sterners.The building that currently stands on the corner of Jonas Road and Route 534 was completed in 1901. The hotel stayed in the Snyder family well into the twentieth century. In the 1950's the property was sold outside the family and remains so.In 1999 the property was purchased by Mike Pandolfo and Al Cantiello they renamed the property Hotel Jonas. The property went into bankruptcy in 2012 and was purchased in 2014 by the VALOR Clinic Foundation. Today the hotel serves as a shelter for military veterans.The hotelThe Jonas Bake Oven is one of structures original to the Jonas Snyder property located along Rt. 534. The oven pre-dates Snyder by over a century. The oven remained in use at that site for at least 250 years.The oven is made of native stone and held together by lime and sand stone. The oven consists of a front hearth, which is used for cooking and a rear bee-hive oven, which would be used for baking.The oven was housed in a building, separate from the hotel at its original location.In September of 2005, Tiberiu Mugur Mironescu set the Hotel Jonas on fire. The fire caused $200,000 in damages to the property. In the course of fighting the fire the fire company had to knock down the two chimneys that are part of the bake oven. The structure housing the bake oven was destroyed.Mironescu was arrested and plead guilty. He was sentenced to 25 to 59 months in Monroe County Correctional Facility.The oven was covered by a tarp after the fire, but after a few rough Pocono winters it was obvious that the oven would need to be either restored where it was, demolished or moved to another location where it could be restored.Initially, the owners of the property wanted to keep the oven at its original location. Pandolfo and Cantiello eventually decided to turn the oven over to the Polk Township Historical Society. The historical society came up with a new home for the oven, the West End Fairgrounds."At the fairground, we know that almost 365 days a year there is someone here who will check on the safety and welfare of the oven," said Norm Burger, President of the Polk Township Historical Society.The move to the fairgrounds was no easy task.It took years to raise the money for the move. The move cost $24,000.In addition to the move, the historical society is in the process of completing a building which houses the bake oven. That will add an approximately $10,000 to the total cost of the move.In 2006 the historical society received a grant for $20,000 from Monroe County for the project. In 2009 the final agreement was reached with the property owners and in March of 2010, the move began.The moveInitially the ground around the oven had to be excavated. The crews tunneled under the oven and placed steel I-beams through the foundation. The I-beams allowed the crew to jack up the oven to place it on a trailer so that it could be transported to the fairgrounds in Gilbert.Meanwhile, at the fairgrounds the property had to be readied to accept the heavy oven. The site was chosen and a large concrete pad was poured in anticipation of the oven. The site is located at the northeast corner of the museum building.During the excavation of the oven, two feet of the oven's foundation was left at the original site. Even so, the oven weighed 65,000 pounds.The oven has been restored and is fully functional.The futureThe Polk County Historical Society plans to utilize the oven to help finance future projects. At the upcoming West End Fair the society will be selling raffle tickets for a number of prizes. People who purchase a certain number of raffle tickets will be given a mini-loaf as a thank you.By next year the historical society hopes to be selling sandwiches made with their own fresh baked bread at the fair and by 2016 the hope is to add fresh baked pies to the menu as well.