Harrisburg's Unrealized Economic Expectations

It would be inaccurate to say that Harrisburg, Pennsylvania has been an economic failure. For two and a half centuries It has enjoyed relative prosperity, providing livelihoods for most if not all of its residents, and very comfortable livings to many. On the other hand, the community never achieved the economic superstatus among American cities that its entrepreneurs aspired to at various stages in its development. To a large degree, geography more than any other single force encouraged those ambitious hopes. At the same time geography also imposed barriers to their realization.

John Harris, Sr., the Yorkshireman who early in the 18th century acquired title to several hundred acres of what today is downtown Harrisburg, had seen enormous potential in the site. It stood at an intersection of two important natural highways: the north-south Susquehanna River Valley reaching from south central New York and northern and central Pennsylvania in the north to Chesapeake Bay in the south, and the broad east-west Great Valley of Pennsylvania stretching from Philadelphia and the Delaware River Valley at the east to the upper reaches of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia to the west and southwest.

Since pre-Columbian times the canoes of native Indians had plied the Susquehanna, and their trails had paralleled its course. By Harris's time they had been joined by white fur traders and adventurers. Meanwhile, over the east-west corridor a trickle of pioneers and settlers were already coming west from Philadelphia and the central Atlantic coastal plain. Because the vicinity of Harrisburg offered one of the better fordings of the Susquehanna, it prospectively was a natural commercial center. There Harris erected a trading post on the eastern shore at the site of modem Harrisburg and obtained a license for ferrying rights. At his store both red and white traders exchanged pelts for salt, guns, gunpowder, and other merchandise. There also, settlers following the river north and northwestward took advantage of a last chance to lay in supplies. As the flow of settlers swelled to a mighty stream, Harris prospered and a small settlement called Harris's Ferry developed around his properties. The frontier stage passed too quickly, however, for the place to become a major trading post.

A simple agricultural economy supplanted the frontier by the time that Harris's son, also named John, inherited the area. The younger Harris worked to convert the spot into an important city and before his death saw it named as the seat of Dauphin County in 1785 and incorporated as the borough of Harrisburg in 1791. When he platted his land into lots, he had four acres set aside for the use of the Commonwealth should it choose to locate its capital there. In the meantime he prospered as a realtor, selling lots to blacksmiths, cabinetmakers, shoemakers and other craftsmen, and to keepers of general stores.

At this stage Harrisburg businessmen expected the town to become an important river port and entreport for area farmers and inhabitants of the vast hinterland to the north and northwest. Agricultural surpluses soon began floating down river on rafts and keelboats. At first grain was the chief product, over 150,000 bushels in 1790.¹ As grist and saw mills and small iron furnaces arose in the hinterland, flour, lumber, and pig iron were added to the list. By the mid-nineteenth century, each spring brought a harvest of logs cut by fanners and lumbermen during the fall and winter months and strapped together in large rafts. Harrisburg became a center for processing part of the logs into lumber. The rest went overland to Philadelphia or on down river to Baltimore. In return, long files of packhorses carried loads of salt, crafted goods. and other merchandise northward along the river from Harrisburg.

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