The "What Lancastrians Say And Think About Their City: Part I" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Looking at one of the three Facebook pages I have bookmarked that deal with the goings on of Lancaster and its history.  This Facebook page is titled "Lancaster PA in photos, Video, Etc."  My wife and I just love looking at all the old photos and reading the comments that its readers post with the photos.  Just about all deal with the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Lancaster was originally called Hickory Town and was part of the 1681 Penn's Woods Charter of William Penn, and was laid out by James Hamilton in 1734.  During the American Revolution it was the capital of the United States for one day, September 27, 1777, after the Continental Congress fled Philadelphia which had been captured by the British.  Lancaster also was capital of Pennsylvania from 1799 to 1812.  The first paved road in the United States was the former Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike which opened in 1795 and makes up the present day U.S. Route 30.  Lancaster City has a population of close to 60,000 and ranks 8th in population among Pennsylvania cities.  The metropolitan area population of almost 510,000 makes it the 101st largest in the U.S.  The city is about 7 square miles in size and is located within driving distance of Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York as well as the Delaware and New Jersey shores.  Lancaster City is a place where historic preservation and a cutting-edge arts scene live and thrive side by side.  After visiting one of the Facebook pages today, I thought you might be interested in seeing what those of us who live in Lancaster, and have for most of our lives, post to the Facebook page.  So...I hope you enjoy as well as see what Lancaster is all about in the eyes of its residents.  Today I will show you half of what I picked out and tomorrow I will post the second half.  It was another extraordinary day in life of an ordinary guy.  PS - All these photos and artwork had been posted on Facebook.  I copied and pasted comments made by those viewing the photos.  Remember to click on photos to enlarge them.

The last tollhouse on State Route 501N was at Newport Road.  House is still there.

Saint Mary's Catholic Church right after construction of the wall.  The stones for the wall were from the old jail on Prince Street.  You can compare them to the stone wall at the back of the Fulton Theatre.  They were given to St. Mary's by Christopher Hager.

The "scoop" device on the front of the trolley car directly above the rails was invented and patented by Anthony and Albert Iske, two local inventors who came up with the idea at the request of the Conestoga Traction Company to save people's live's if they fell in front of the cars. Most CTC cars were equipped with a scoop along with those of the Pequea trolley and another operation in Lebanon County. Albert Iske was known as "The Edison of Lancaster" in his heyday and several organs in Lancaster churches were also constructed by him. He also invented a combination pocket knife-burglar alarm if you can picture that in your mind.

Happy (Early) New Beer's Eve! On April 7, 1933, legal beer sales resumed in Lancaster County and in the rest of the country. Prohibition, however, would not be officially repealed until December 5. Pictured is a police raid of an illegal Lancaster distillery circa 1920.

 I'm fascinated by these aerial photos of Lancaster from the time I grew up there. Lancaster Stockyards (arrow) in its "hay" day in the 50's. It was the second biggest stockyard in the US (next to the infamous Chicago stockyards featured in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle"), and the Lancaster Stockyards rerouted all livestock brought from the Midwest to east coast cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Train station seen left center.

1909 Ocean to Ocean endurance race.  Crossing the Susquehanna at Columbia/Wrightsville to east coast cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. 

 I remember watching the tillerman spinning his steering wheel like crazy in order to get the tail of Truck 2 around the corner of Plum and King. The manual transmission was not synchronized, which meant the driver had to double clutch when changing gears.

JUNE 5 1897 FIRST TRAIN CROSSING BRIDGE APPROACHING COLUMBIA.

Everybody knew someone who worked at RCA. These are the First broadcast color camera's built by hand in Lancaster. They had little idea how hot they would get, if they would be top heavy, Etc. All six are still in existence, on display or in storage. All broadcast camera's into the 1990's were later generations of these.

CTC CAR 236 ON DUKE STREET.  (CTC is Conestoga Transportation Company)

When I was in College, I was told Gasoline was the spelling for Gas with no additives, and has a Overlapping Molecular structure. Plain Gas was very common up to the thirty's. Gasolene was the spelling for gas with white lead added. White lead additive was very common from the 30s until the 70s. Spellings never caught on. This spelling thing was modeled after Benzine-Benzene in Europe which did catch on.

 This is on Orange, looking at the southeast corner of Orange and Prince intersection where the Prince St parking garage is now. If the photo was snapped today, you'd be looking at Orange St side of the parking garage. Actually, this appears to be a half a block East up by Orange and Market Sts.

Chief Half-town sometimes worked with Sally Starr on her after school show broadcast on WPVI, channel 6 in Philadelphia.