More on the Roads to Red Lion
Dallastown to Red Lion, 1876 and 1928
A recent post related the troubles motorists had traveling from Dallastown to Red Lion in the fall of 1928 because of road construction and deep mud on the detour. I was asked exactly where those roads were.
Click here to read that post.
The state road that was being reconstructed was probably the short stretch of Route 74 that runs between Red Lion and Dallastown today. I don’t think the path of that road changed much over the years, so it still pretty much follows the red line on the map.
As for the detour and the alternate route mentioned in the newspaper–I tried to reconstruct them using the 1876 Pomeroy, Whitman and Co. Atlas of York County, a present-day ADC atlas and the advice of a friend who knows the area.
I used a blue line for what I think was the detour. It would follow much of Locust Street, starting at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Dallastown. The street today doesn’t quite go through like that, but much of it is the same. It would also go near the Dallastown Furniture Company mentioned in the article, now an antique mall. Locust Street would have joined today’s Springwood Road to continue into Red Lion.
The new road to Yoe is trickier. That would start with today’s North Pleasant Avenue in Dallastown, which didn’t exist on the 1876 map. I marked the probably route in yellow, which would have been mostly a new road, hence the name, laid out after 1876. It probably incorporated some parts of older roads and met up with another road at Yoe. I marked the pre-existing road from Yoe to East Yoe (Cape Horn) in green. From there the drivers could turn left on today’s Route 24 to get to Red Lion.
We don’t reroute roads much anymore. They are made of permanent materials and there are more buildings in the way. Acquiring the land and getting all the necessary permits can be an administrative nightmare. When the roads were dirt, perhaps just improved with gravel, and the settlement was sparse, it was a lot easier to move a road.
For example, if you look closely at the map above and follow the Springwood road from the Red Lion Hotel and Store on the east to J. Spots and J. Holtzapple to the northwest, you see that the road crosses over Mill Creek (then called the Little Codorus) at least twice. Today the creek runs to the south of the road through that stretch, only crossing the road initially as a tiny little stream near its origin just outside of Red Lion.
As for the detours above, I think the people who parked their autos in Dallastown and took the trolley to Red Lion may have been the smartest of all.
Click the links below for more on York County transportation.
Artist Lewis Miller draws new 1868 Wrightsville bridge.
Getting to and from York before railroads.
Railroads come to York County.
Oh, the places you could go.
Hunters travel by train.
Tragic train wreck at Glen Rock.
Hanover trolley line has a new life.
Pre-auto traffic accidents.
Mule-1, Automobile-0.
Crater in York street.
Wrightsville hopping.
