When it was officially opened ceremoniously for traffic on January 16, 1839, the Susquehanna River bridge, also referred to as the Cumberland Valley Railroad Bridge, was intended to connect the Cumberland Valley with the Harrisburg and Lancaster Railroad.
The editor of the Carlisle Herald newspaper devoted several columns in the December 31 edition of the paper to describe some of the Christmas festivities in Carlisle.
A headline in an 1882 newspaper read, “A Man and his Wife Pounded.” A reader of today would interpret this as an act of violence, but it was actually an act of benevolence.
The Dillsburg and Mechanicsburg Railroad was built with the backing of the Cumberland Valley Railroad primarily to haul iron ore from the vast reserves around Dillsburg to furnaces in the Harrisburg region.
On Tuesday, August 19, 1884, a train left New York City with 100 children bound for the Cumberland Valley. They were “Fresh Air Fund” children; a movement started by Pennsylvania clergyman Willard Parsons in 1877.
The village of Greason is unknown to most people traveling on Cumberland County's major roads. It sits between Newville Road in the north and Ritner Highway (Rt. 11) in the south. It is less than one mile south of Plainfield and grew up along the old Cumberland Valley Railroad line. Approaching the village today, the first thing you notice is the abandoned warehouse. Vines cover the gable end of the warehouse and cling to its board walls that show little of the paint that once covered them. The railroad tracks are gone, and their route is now part of the Rail Trail walking path. The Station Depot is gone, the Greason Academy building, with its many additions, is a private home, but many of the dozen or so houses remain and evoke an image of what the village was like in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
For nearly half a century until his death on January 2 at the age of 85 Milton Embick Flower was the best informed, most authoritative, and most widely known historian of Carlisle and Cumberland County. He was the author of books, monographs, and catalogues that recorded and interpreted the past of this area, and, in the words of one of his successors as president of the Cumberland County Historical Society...
Carlisle historian Ruth Hodge, representing the African-American community of Carlisle, was actively involved in the discussion about renaming Carlisle High School's West Building. She had several individuals in mind who qualified for the honor, but when requested to pick just one name, she had no difficulty in narrowing the selection to the late Emma Thompson McGowan, a teacher in the Carlisle school system for almost thirty years.
Mechanicsburg is situated about midway between Harrisburg and Carlisle. Due to this location, it was a reasonable place to build an inn and tavern which resulted in the beginning of the town.
The township of Middlesex lies along the northerly half of the west side of the Stony (“Stoney”) Ridge, a geological trap dike (older than the North or South mountains) which formed the original boundary between the west and east divisions of Pennsborough Township (established in 1735) as early a