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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?

I guess it is human nature to want to have the biggest and the best. We are always impressed by the tallest buildings and the most gigantic pumpkins.

Our forebears were no different, as we can see by the Lewis Miller drawing above of a huge pumpkin. Miller captioned it: “1809. Christian Leaman, big and large pumpkin grown in his garden. It was as large as a barrel and more in circumference around. Old Dr. John Fisher bought it and sent it to Baltimore to let them see what old York can raise and examine it. No man could lift it from the ground.”

The citizens often made sure the local newspapers knew about their accomplishments. Short items from all over the county in the York Gazette in the autumn of 1877 list several examples:

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:

50 years ago this week, Judith Brown, a 17-year-old senior at Kennard-Dale High School, was declared the winner of York County’s apple baking dessert contest. She competed against five other county high school students: Nancy Jones, Spring Grove, runner-up; Pauline Landis, Susquehannock; Harriett Shelley, Northeastern; Georgia Weigle, Central; and (remember--this is 1957) Donald Stambaugh, Northern. Even though he didn’t win, Donald should be commended for entering a cooking contest in those more gender-rigid times.