After recently posting the article on the 20 horse power York-made Pullman’s win in a 1908 hill climb, I was curious to see what the car looked like.

Click here to read about the hill climb.

The newspaper article didn’t say if the winning auto was a 1907 or 1908 model. Since the race was in early 1908, I went to a 1907 Pullman catalog in the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives.

The factory turned out three 20 horse power models that year. I’m including illustrations below from the catalog of all three models, along with specs and price. Which do you think beat the competitors up the hill?

Posted in 1900s Universal York York advertising automobiles contests industry manufacturing

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Automobile manufacturing was booming in York a hundred years ago. One of the most successful was the Pullman automobile, made by the York Motor Car Company. Manufacturers entered the cars in all kinds of races and competition to capture the attention of the public, and the results were duly reported in the sports pages.

One such competition was a hill climb in New York. The account in the April 11, 1908 York Gazette reads:

Posted in 1900s New York Universal York York automobiles competitions manufacturing

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In a previous post I pointed out that traffic accidents made the news long before automobiles were invented.

Click here to read about some pre-auto mishaps.

The advent of the motor car caused just added to the mix, as shown by the March 1908 Gazette account below:

Posted in 1900s Chanceford Twp. Spry Universal York accidents animals automobiles highways mules roads

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That’s what the York County Shopping Center (now York Marketplace) on East Market Street was offering in celebration of its Second Anniversary fifty years ago.

Does anyone know who won the brand new 1958 rear-engine Renault Dauphine automobile? It was a 4-door, 4-passenger sedan and you could enter the giveaway every time you visited the shopping center that October. It was a reasonably priced car (around $1,650) and reportedly got over 39 mpg. But, who cared in those cheap-gas days?

You can get a good idea of the cost of living in 1957 by comparing the following specials offered by other York County Shopping Center merchants:

Posted in 1950s Universal York York County advertising automobiles clothing confectionary contests food groceries history home prices retail stores shoes shopping

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The York Gazette & Daily arrived the same day it was printed, via the U.S. mail, in rural York County when I was growing up. That was most certainly the main reason my parents, and many others like them who didn’t agree with the paper’s political views, subscribed to “the morning paper.” They liked their news fresh.

Being a voracious reader from the time I discovered the magic of reading, I remember sitting down with the paper every day and pretty much reading it from cover to cover. That’s a habit I still haven’t broken.

The Gazette & Daily made a liberal out of me, which I am sure my parents never foresaw. Perhaps more importantly, it also deserves credit for my early interest in history, which ultimately became my profession. I never missed the regular feature on what happened in the past--small fascinating snippets of the news of the same day from 25, 50 or more years before.

Since the York Gazette, the York Daily, and the Gazette & Daily, all predecessors of the York Daily Record , are easily accessible on microfilm at the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives, this blog will be looking back to some of those bygone events, along with other tales from York County history and their connections to the larger world out there. Please let me know if you like the look back in time, and if there is anything else you would like to see. The universe is filled with intriguing York County stories from the past. We will do our best to snag them in orbit.

See below to find out the hot news from 50 and 90 years ago:

Expressway (Route 83) under construction in 1957.

Posted in 1910s 1950s Universal York War World War I automobiles highways history industry manufacturing roads transportation

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