Roads

Fort Granville Road

Forgotten roads shimmer like fragile cobwebs over the mountains and valleys of central Pennsylvania. Many have disappeared under later roads and tracks. Others wind over the ridges as hiking trails or forestry roads. A very few remain as narrow paths in the woodlands. Their histories have become confused by 300 years of European settlers’ traffic. There were many such roads near Carlisle for the town was always a knot in this skein. The Fort Granville Road, mapped in 1755-1756, is an example of a truly forgotten, but still existing road.

Denny Hamilton

Interview of Dennis "Denny" Hamilton for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library. Hamilton discusses growing up in Oakville, North Newton Township including his mother's general store and his father's work with the Township as a Supervisor and Road Foreman.

Transportation, Competition, and the Growth of a Town: Carlisle, 1750-1860

Rapid improvements in modes of transportation occurred during the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. These innovations altered the structure of the United States demographically, causing some population centers to flourish, others to die, and still others to be born. Major cities, such as Baltimore and Philadelphia, competed to build more extensive and efficient transportation systems to the hinterlands so that they could become the dominate outlets for the goods of the rural areas. Small towns in the interior of Pennsylvania which became entangled in this transportation web, such as Carlisle, prospered as a result of this competition.