Roads: So Important, So Confussing

I spent a good portion of today once again researching roads in the oley valley in the eighteenth century. Jim gave me a map towards the end of the day which was very helpful, because I had been trying to understand roads that everyone reffered to with different names, and I could not for the life of me orient myself with all of them. It doesn't help that I'm not very familiar with the Oley Valley to begin with. Basically I have learned this:

There was a road called the Great Road to Philadelphia, or the King's Road, or now the Old Philadelphia Pike, that ran from Philadelphia to Reading. This was the most important road for the area for reasons I talked about in the past blog. This road forked at Amityville, then called New Store, and the other road, sometimes called the High Road, or the OleyPike ran from Moselem to Oley. This is Route 662 today, which I drive to work everyday! Daniel Boone Road, or Weavertown road at that time was just a little trail.

I know this road stuff is really riveting.

Besides that at the end of the day I really did get to do something fun. I drove to Wilmilsdorf's paper mill with Jim. It's just outside of Amityville on the Manatawny creek. The mill no longer exists, but the person who owned with was the father of the person that Wilmilsdorf is named after. There were a lot of beautiful old stone houses along the way, but as usual I didn't bring my camera.