Quote Me
“I thought it might be a good move to get into a beauty contest so I tried for Miss Pennsylvania and won. I think that helped me get noticed, at least by the people of Pennsylvania.”
—Sharon Stone
Uncle John wondered . . . what Pennsylvania city is older than New York, but newer than England’s (Old) York?
Town: York
Location: York County
Founding: 1741
Population (2008): 41,000
Size: 5.3 square miles
County seat: Yes
Settlers who moved out of Philadelphia started the town and named it after York, England, where many of them were from originally.
•The York Peppermint Pattie, now manufactured by Hershey (more about that on page 284), was invented in York in 1940.
•The Continental Congress met in York from September 1777 to June 1778.
•During the Civil War, Penn Park in downtown York was the site of the York U.S. Army Hospital. Between July 1862, when the hospital opened, and the end of the war in 1865, more than 14,000 Union soldiers were treated there, including 2,500 from Gettysburg alone.
•In 1777, George Washington was having little success in his military campaigns. So a group of disgruntled soldiers, led by Brigadier General Thomas Conway, met in York’s Golden Plough Tavern and cooked up a plot to oust Washington from his position as the head of the Revolutionary army. (They failed.) The tavern still stands today, and is the oldest building in the city.
•In the early 1900s, the York Motor Car Company built an automobile called the Pullman, a luxury car that cost between $1,500 and $3,000. (A Model T, the most popular car at the time, cost about $500.) The York company went bankrupt in 1917, but not before it launched a publicity campaign to show how durable their automobile was: in 1908, an employee drove a Pullman from York to San Francisco, California, and back. It took him a month.
•York is nicknamed “Muscletown” because, in 1932, bodybuilder and fitness advocate Bob Hoffman started the York Barbell Corporation there. He went on to become an Olympic weightlifting coach. York is now home to the USA Weightlifting Hall of Fame.
•York’s biggest employer: a Harley-Davidson motorcycle plant. Half of all Harley employees work there.
“I thought it might be a good move to get into a beauty contest so I tried for Miss Pennsylvania and won. I think that helped me get noticed, at least by the people of Pennsylvania.”
—Sharon Stone