The first villages in Lower Macungie developed as crossroads settlements shown on an 1876 map, often beginning with just one public building such as an inn that offered food, rooms, and stables. Before shopping centers, each village had at least one general store, and villages grew gradually and haphazardly as people created needed services until they became centers for goods, services, some housing, sometimes a school or church, and a post office. In the earliest decades of settlement, bartering goods and services and sharing expenses for things such as a pastor or schoolteacher were common, while cash purchases were not. General stores that opened here in the 1800s stocked local farm produce and also sold items that could not be grown or made locally, with store owners arranging for local farmers to supply eggs and butter and for local butchers and bakers to supply meats and bread. Farm families could keep fresh food in a spring house, but most other people depended on frequent trips to the store. Wescosville began with an inn built in 1797 at the northwestern corner of the intersection of the King's Highway, now Hamilton Boulevard, and Water Street, now Brookside Road, and a general store was built at the northeastern corner in 1828. It was not yet a major commercial center, but when a post office was established in 1844 the village was named for Israel Wesco, who ran the hotel and became the first postmaster. Rapid growth began after a trolley line came through in 1898, turning Wescosville into a trolley suburb whose residents could commute to work in Allentown, and houses spread along Hamilton Boulevard and Brookside Road as it became the largest village in Lower Macungie. Village life also included community institutions such as general stores and baseball teams; Jacob C. Wasser advertised a wide variety of goods in his East Macungie store, photographed with his daughter in 1912, and the Wescosville baseball team played in the Tri-County League until the 1950s and won the league championship in 1948. Many roads in Lower Macungie were later realigned because of mining in the late 1800s and the construction of the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.