Passerine named one of the best restaurants in America: Top 5 most-read stories Sept. 23 - 29 [ICYMI]

Each Monday, our digital team takes a look at last week's top stories on LancasterOnline.

We look at news, sports, business, life, culture and local history.

Here are the most-read stories between Monday, Sept. 23, and Sunday, Sept. 29.

"As a kid you looked for the Ferris wheel going over the bridge (into Ocean City),'' recalls one Facebook user. "Then you knew you were at the shore. Such excitement! Please save the wheel!''

Thousands of Lancaster County residents know exactly what that commenter means. Ocean City, N.J., was Lancaster's preferred summer beach for many years. Practically everyone went there in the middle decades of the 20th century — before Ocean City, Maryland, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and other resorts drew some families away.

Last week's Scribbler column takes a further look at Gillian's Wonderland Pier, which recently closed down after a sale to the owner of Icona hotels.

New York Times recently shared a list of its 50 favorite restaurants in the country, and a Lancaster eatery made the cut.

Passerine, a restaurant located at 114 N. Prince St., Lancaster, is one of three Pennsylvania businesses on the New York Times' "The Restaurant List." (Fet-Fisk in Pittsburgh and Little Walter's in Philadelphia were also included.)

Passerine's farm-to-table ethos was highlighted, and the Times praised the restaurant for "quietly serving outstanding dishes made with the bounty of the surrounding farmland and accented by global sensibilities."

Search and rescue crews looking for a missing person in state game lands in northern Lancaster County found the man's body Sunday, Sept. 22, after searching throughout the weekend.

Officers with Lititz Borough Police Department were notified Friday that William Zee , 50, of Lititz, was missing, and investigators learned the man might have been in the woods near Route 322 in Elizabeth Township, police said.

The Lancaster County Coroner's Office identified Zee's body last Monday and said he died of suicide.

To facilitate a harvest that could prove a key step in the decades-long effort to restore the nearly extinct American chestnut, Go Native Tree Farm employees used a 55-foot lift to gather the neon green, spiky seed pods that chestnut grower John Rosenfeld called "squirrel armor" and likened to sea urchins.

"They're nice and soft and velvety on the inside," Rosenfeld said of the seed pods gathered during Tuesday's harvest, "and they're evil on the outside."

The 25-year-old American chestnuts in Rosenfeld's East Hempfield Township backyard are rare survivors of a blight that virtually wiped out the once dominant eastern forest species in the first 50 years of the 20th century and continues to stymie recovery efforts.