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Utz or Martin's--which is best?

York County potato chips manufacturers are in the news again. It looks like Utz has pulled out of the deal to merge with Snyder's of Hanover.

Before I wrap up my "potato chip series," I want to give a nod to Herr's snack foods, located not too far away in Nottingham. Their sour cream and onion ripple chips are second only to regular Utz in my book. Jim Herr bought a small Lancaster potato chip company in 1946, shortly before marrying wife Mim. They built the business up over the years, surviving a devastating plant fire in 1951. They now make over 340 snack foods and distribute them in 26 states and in Canada.

The chip manufacturers I have been researching had their beginnings in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. In a search for more early chip makers, I checked the Polk's city directories for York County. These directories were issued every two years and covered York city and "all boroughs located on the lines of York Railways Company" [the trolley lines]. York County Heritage Trust doesn't have quite a full run of directories, but I found more than I thought I would. (See below for a sampling of the results).

Who know how many more chipmakers there were out in the rural areas, like my mother and father. Even though my parents didn't stay in the potato chip business and become multi-millionaries, I would love to have one of the little wax paper bags with the imprint of Burk's Potato Chips. I remember some unused ones around the house from my childhood, long after they stopped making chips, but I guess they were eventually discarded. You just never know what might come up at a public sale or antique shop, so if anyone ever locates one, keep me in mind.

Some chipmakers listed in city directories:

Remember Charles Chips?

I have been posting brief histories of York County potato chip makers and fellow blogger Jim McClure has touched on them too. Jim took the subject to the York Daily Record online Exchange community forum, which has stirred up more chip discussion. One exchanger commented on the home-delivered Charles Chips. That brings up memories for my family.

When my children were growing up, the Charles Chips man stopped by our house regularly, bring a one pound tin of very fresh chips and picking up the empty tin. We kept it on top of the refrigerator, probably to save space as well as to keep short young people from overindulging. I remember them as being similar to Utz chips, my favorite.

My husband remembered helping a relative who had a Charles Chips route deliver to homes in Red Lion, including the day a tin escaped and rolled the whole way down East High Street from Main Street to the borough limits.

Who made Charles Chips and what happened to them?

1864 Bridgen's map of Conestoga Township showing dam.

1860 Shearer & Lake map of Chanceford Township.

A friend recently alerted me to an article about the port of Safe Harbor on the east bank of the Susquehanna River. The article referred to the Conestoga Navigation, which operated from the late 1820s to around 1850. It was an 18-mile-long slack water navigation utilizing the Conestoga Creek with a system of nine locks. It ended at Safe Harbor on the Susquehanna River. Where did the cargo go from there?

York Furnace Bridge piers, probably in the 1890s.

Residents of "the lower end" of York and Lancaster counties thought they could beat winter weather in the 1850s by building a bridge across the Susquehanna River at York Furnace.

The Lancaster Examiner of November 20, 1855 celebrated the opening of the bridge. The paper said that the York County people of Fawn, Lower Chanceford, and Peach Bottom would no longer be cut off from commerce in the winter, when the Susquehanna and Tidewater canal was closed and roads were bad to York. Now they could easily get to Lancaster to do their buying and selling.

The York Furnace bridge was to be an integral part of a state road system stretching across four counties from Gettysburg to Chester County.

That very weather they were trying to bypass was the final nemisis of the bridge. The wooden bridge across a narrow part of the Susquehanna was no match for first, wind, and then ice, that came roaring down the river.

See my recent York Sunday News column below for the story of the ill-fated bridge at York Furnace.

This photo may show the ice that carried away the remaining bridge piers in the early 1900s. The red circle marks men standing on the ice, giving you an idea of the size of the ice blocks.

Sometimes criminal minds seem brilliant in the convoluted ways they think up to fleece the public. On the other hand, sometimes the schemes are so simple that you wonder how so many people could have fallen for it.

According to the October 12, 1928 Gazette one such con apparently easily separated many York people from their dollars before the perpetrator was caught.