Gov. George M. Leader signs plans on March 19, 1958, for constructing the dam which formed the lake that became the centerpiece of Gifford Pinchot State Park in northern York County. Legislative aid and brother Henry B. Leader looks on. The location was chosen, according to The Gazette and Daily where this photograph was taken, because it was equidistant between York and Harrisburg. Background posts: Gov. George Leader cleared dam plan and Historians, journalists draw on work of forebears and Central Pennsylvania histories make smart part of summer reading stack.
York County - specifically Newberry Township - was home to the first Pinchot road, a highway program designed in the early 1930s "to get the farmer out of the mud."
That was the start of construction of some 20,000 miles of roads in Pennsylvania designed to aid farmers and to create jobs during the growing Great Depression.
That program took then-Gov. Gifford Pinchot's name, as did the nearby state park that grew under the administration of York County native George Leader.
York County farmers might have felt some conflict at the time of the road program in 1931... .
