Transportation and Natural Resources

Transportation and Natural Resources. Perry County Bicentennial.

1889: Johnstown flood ended canal era. , 1892: Homestead Strike in Pittsburgh symbolized labor unrest. , 1898: Spanish American War.

, Railroads , Economic expansion in Perry County following the Civil War required an efficient transportation system. In 1877 at Marysville, the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) replaced its single-track wooden bridge with a double-track iron bridge across the Susquehanna. In 1902, Italian stonemasons completed the Rockville Bridge, an iconic four-track stone arch bridge , the longest in the world., Between 1889 and 1983, New Bloomfield and Duncannon business leaders financed the standard-gauge Perry County Railroad (PCRR), from Duncannon through New Bloomfield to Landisburg. Not to be outdone, Newport investors, led by David Gring, constructed the narrow-gauge Newport and Sherman's Valley Railroad (N&SVRR) from Newport to New Germantown between 1890 and 1892. The trains took passengers, lumber, bark, livestock, grain, and produce to Duncannon and Newport and returned with passengers, farm machinery, and commercial goods., Lumbering the Forests , The County's Primary Natural Resource , Prior to the Civil War, locals used timber to build houses, barns, taverns and mills and oak bark to tan leather., Following the war, they shipped their lumber and bark to the river towns and outside the county. Farmers converted timber to cash to pay off mortgages and buy new equipment., Large scale lumbering occurred in the western part of the county. Before 1890, oxen and horses pulled wagons loaded with lumber and bark to Newport and Cumberland County. After 1890, several of the companies operated their own, private, narrow-gauge rail lines within the western forests, while the Oak Extract Company floated logs down Laurel Run. The PCRR and the N&SVRR hauled the wood to Duncannon and Newport for transfer to the PRR. As the timber was exhausted in the early 1900s, lumbering dramatically declined., [Captions:] , Building the Rockville Bridge, 1902. Used by permission of the author Dan Cupper, Rockville Bridge: Rails across the Susquehanna, (2002), p. 46., Map showing the Perry County Railroad and the Newport and Sherman's Valley Railroad, taken from A History of Perry County Railroads by Roy F. Chandler (1970), p. 67., East Waterford and Kansas Valley Railroad, ca. 1895, taken from Pitch Pine and Prop Timber: The Logging Railroad of South-Central Pennsylvania by Benjamin F. G. Kline, Jr. (1971), p. 172., The Perry County Democrat, 11 December 1893 advertised sawmills and engines manufactured in York by two cousins from Perry County.