Transportation and Natural Resources

Economic expansion in Perry County after the Civil War depended on improved transportation and the use of timber as the county's primary natural resource. In 1877 at Marysville, the Pennsylvania Railroad replaced its single-track wooden bridge across the Susquehanna with a double-track iron bridge, and in 1902 Italian stonemasons completed the four-track stone arch Rockville Bridge, then the longest in the world. Between 1889 and 1983, business leaders in New Bloomfield and Duncannon financed the standard-gauge Perry County Railroad from Duncannon through New Bloomfield to Landisburg, while Newport investors led by David Gring built the narrow-gauge Newport and Sherman's Valley Railroad from Newport to New Germantown between 1890 and 1892. These rail lines carried passengers, lumber, bark, livestock, grain, and produce to Duncannon and Newport and brought back passengers, farm machinery, and commercial goods. Before the Civil War, local people used timber for houses, barns, taverns, and mills and used oak bark for tanning leather, but after the war lumber and bark were shipped to river towns and beyond the county, and farmers sold timber to pay mortgages and buy equipment. Large-scale lumbering developed in western Perry County, where before 1890 oxen and horses hauled lumber and bark by wagon to Newport and Cumberland County, and after 1890 some companies ran private narrow-gauge rail lines in the forests while the Oak Extract Company floated logs down Laurel Run. The Perry County Railroad and the Newport and Sherman's Valley Railroad then moved the wood to Duncannon and Newport for transfer to the Pennsylvania Railroad. As timber supplies were exhausted in the early 1900s, lumbering declined sharply.

Pennsylvania · United States