D. Lowell Nissley, author of Lincoln Highway: The Road My Father Traveled, will be replanting one of the rare Lancaster Turnpike mile markers in eastern Pennsylvania this summer. The ceremony is set for Friday, August 8, 2008, subject to change. Location will be the Deerfield Corporate Center on US 30 in Frazer, at the first traffic west of Route 401. The Lincoln Highway follows much of the 200+ year old pike from Philadelphia west to Lancaster.
Lowell explains, “About 40 years ago the property where my wife grew up was sold with a very uncertain future. There was a 1795 marker (21 M to P) on their property so I rescued it and it has served a as bench outside our front door all these years. Now things at the property have stabilized enough for the replanting of this marker.”
The ceremony will commemorate the Lancaster Turnpike, the families who lived on the milestone property, and East Whiteland Township’s role in the revolutionary and transportation history of the United States.
This simple granite milestone once stood at the edge of the Lincoln Highway on the old Brackbill/ Haldeman/ Malin farm, which is now the Deerfield Corporate Center. Marking 21 miles to/from Philadelphia, it was placed along the road soon after the Lancaster to Philadelphia Turnpike opened in 1794, the first hard-surfaced road in America. There were once 64 of these stones, one per mile, but no more than a third of them remain, and not a single one between Berwyn and Downingtown.
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