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Wrightsville has always occupied an important location in the transportation network. The Monocacy Trail, orginally a Native American path, became one of the first roads for the European settlers to York County and beyond. That road crossed the Susquehanna River at Wrightsville, first by ferry and then over bridges covered and modern.

The Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal, opened in 1840, followed the west bank of the river from the Chesapeake Bay to Wrightsville. Then the mules, working from towpaths on the covered bridge, pulled the canal boats across the river to Columbia to continue on their journey up the east bank.

Railroads soon replaced canals as movers of people and freight, again crossing the bridge at Wrightsville. The excerpt below from the November 20, 1877 Gazette shows the hazards passengers could face and the volume of products shipped out from Wrightsville.

You have probably noticed your bread costs more lately. The rise in the price of flour has been blamed on several factors.

Prosperity seems to have come to the York County of 140 years ago, if the ads in the December 31, 1867 issue of the York Gazette are any indication.

Entrepreneurs and agents from New York, Philadelphia, Maryland, and Adams County were offering investment opportunities.

Real estate was enticingly offered by New Oxford Agent J. C. Zouck as an appeal to:

“CAPITALISTS
LOOK TO YOUR INTEREST!”

We know York Countians have had a long love affair with the oyster. Start digging near the site of any old tavern, such as the Golden Plough, and you are likely to turn up remnants of long-ago oyster shells. Crushed oyster shells might be far under the streets you travel daily, since they were used as an early paving material.

With its proximity and trade orientation to Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay, oysters have always been popular here, especially in the months with an “R” in them. Why are oysters still mostly consumed in those months, September through April? There seems to be several reasons: Oysters reproduce during the summer months, keeping up a good supply of oysters; in the old days refrigeration wasn’t available, leading to spoilage in hot weather; and the quality is said to not be as good in the summer.

We just wish the prices were the same as those in the following Gazette ad for Bozman’s Oyster House on South George Street 110 years ago, in the fall of 1897:

50 years ago, you could buy a three, five, seven, or nine-piece chrome or wrought-iron dinette set at York Supply Company, 43-45 West Market Street, starting at $39 to $50 for the set.

While you were there, you might as well equip your laundry with a Speed Queen wringer washer. It came with a laundry cabinet, double laundry tubs, 100 ft. of clothes line, clothes pins, and 20 boxes of Tide, all for $100. Thus equipped, the happy housewife could turn out seven full loads per hour.

King’s Factory Showroom, just down the street at 113 West Market, had men’s zipper-fly dungarees, size 28 to 42 on sale for two for $3. They were probably fun to put through that wringer on the washer.

Across the street

50 years ago, in 1957, Lawrence B. Sheppard, President of Hanover Shoe Company, opposed a Hanover council proposal to limit parking on Carlisle Street from Park Avenue to Library Place to three-hours. Mr. Sheppard warned that such an ordinance “... would force the factory owners to move from the community.” The regulation, which had been proposed to provide more parking for shoppers, was then tabled. However the parking regulations played out, the shoe company continued to prosper in Hanover.

Sheppard was the son of Harper D. Sheppard, who, with his partner Clinton N. Myers, built a struggling shoe factory into a nationally-known maker of quality shoes. The web site of the Sheppard Mansion, an inn and fine dining establishment opened in 1998 by Sheppard descendants, states that Sheppard and Myers built their shoe empire on selling the best possible shoes for one price ($2.50 in 1899) and by selling directly to the public.