Travelers began stopping at the old inn on the Portage-Columbiana stage road, now Tallmadge Road, in 1832, when two major stage lines linking Cleveland with Wellsville and Pittsburgh passed through Palmyra. Built at first as a simple two-story Greek Revival-style building, it gained a third story in 1888 when it became a lodge for the Knights of Pythias, then served as a private residence and store for most of the 20th century, and the Palmyra Center Hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The wider Palmyra area was settled by New Englanders in 1799, organized as Palmyra Township in 1810, and though it lay in the original Connecticut Western Reserve, its culture was shaped largely by Welsh immigrants who began arriving around 1830. Welsh farmers found a rare cash market for their produce at the inn, later Welsh immigrants worked in local coal mines from the 1870s until the 1920s, and for many years the annual May Fair celebrated the community's Welsh heritage. Palmyra lost much of its vitality after nearby Interstate Highway 76 bypassed it in the 1960s.