The "My Opinion On The Topic: Will The Amish Survive In Lancaster County" Story

Preface:  Tonight the Mannheim Township commissioners will vote on a 76-acre piece of land in Manheim Township, Lancaster County Pennsylvania.  In play are 554 housing units, a large supermarket, a 120-room hotel, restaurant, bank and retail stores.  Will the land be given over to large scale develpment or will it remain farmland that is farmed mostly by the Amish?  The following tells story of the land and those involved in the life changing decision.

It was an ordinary day.  Reading another story about the proposed development in Manheim Township called Oregon Village.  

Will scenes like this cease to be in Lancaster County?

It is a 75-acre housing and commercial project that has been proposed in the middle of a thriving, centuries-old Amish community.  Many people who live outside of Lancaster County believe that the county is primarily an Amish community.  The latest census count shows that the Amish population in Lancaster County has now exceeded the 33,000 mark.  Most of those Amish ride in horse-drawn buggies and farm equipment on the county roads.  

Will roads like these be filled with cars and trucks
instead of Amish buggies?

And, many of those 33,000 live in Manheim Township.  Recently, an authority on Amish culture, Mr. Donald Kraybill, testified in front of the Manheim Township commiss- ioners telling them that many Amish in the township oppose the new project, but chose not to speak up out of a faith-based reluctance to participate in government.  Mr. Kraybill estimated that 1,200 Amish adults and children live within a 2-mile radius of Oregon.  They consist of 246 households and belong to eight church districts in an area that stretches from the Lancaster Airport, east of Route 501, to Leola, north of Route 23.  

Scene's such as this will no longer be seen in Manheim
Township if Oregon Village is approved.

Mr. Kraybill's estimate was based on a church district directory and a map prepared by the Geographic information System division of the Lancaster County Information Technology Depart- ment.  There are 44 parcels farmed by, but not all owned by Amish and Old Order Mennonite farmers and their families.  If Oregon Village were to be built it would tremendously increase vehicle traffic on the narrow county roads which are frequented by the slower-moving, horse-drawn traffic.  

It will no longer be safe for The Amish to walk on the
side of the road or drive their buggies on the roads.

Mr. Kraybill said the road traffic issues could, over time, cause many of the Amish to leave Manheim Township and its agricult- urally rich soil.  How sad it would be to lose those who farm the land to supply the county, state and country with food.  A few years ago something similar happened and more than a dozen Lancaster County Amish families moved across the Susquehanna River to York County as well as to Farmville, Virginia.  When people talk of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, they right away associate the county with the Amish population and rich farmland.  Can we afford to lose that farmland to houses and apartments?  

Let's keep the land looking like this!

Are there no other places to build the houseing units that will not take much needed farmland?  Is it all about money?  You bet!  We have all this empty land and developers can see the dollar signs in front of their eyes.  They have no concern for the many Amish who have made the county so rich in agricultural history.  I for one hope the commissioners will turn down the building and keep it as agricultural land.  I know that some person's pockets will not be padded due to that decision, but it is the correct one to make for the good of mankind.  I fear my children and grandchildren will never get to see those iconic buggies traveling the county roads of Lancaster.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.