POTTSVILLE -- Officials in Pottsville are preventing pieces of history from literally rotting away.
Beverly Butler appreciates that. She passes pieces of the Civil War every day, cannons from the war which are part of Pottsville's heritage.
The cannons are in Garfield Square and were last fired nearly 150 years ago.
Butler said she has always admired the park and the cannons.
"It's a good thing, like I said, for future generations for children growing up, you know what I am saying? It looks nice; it must be many years old, right? It's beautiful. You sit over here; it's serene over here with the plants and stuff."
There is more to Garfield Square than just a few cannons. There's a huge monument dedicated to those who fought in the civil war including 13,000 from Schuylkill County.
Officials say the cannons are important. Just ask those who run the Historical Society of Schuylkill County. They have a whole room dedicated to the Civil War.
Dr. Peter Yasenchak heads the society.
"They were small cannons, they were on the boat, built for a boat but they were small enough to take from the boat out onto land by a couple of soldiers or sailors and they could take them in three to five minutes."
Time took its toll on the cannons, especially the wheels. They rotted away and that's why they were recently replaced. City crews painted and sealed them.
Dan Kelly the superintendent of streets said there is a simple way to keep them looking like new.
"What you have to do, every once in a while, is turn them, so the water doesn't lay in the same spots all the time because the water gets down inside and rots the wheels."
Garfield Square and its Civil War pieces have been around since the turn of the 20th century and officials predict it and it's cannons will be around for future generations.