Glen Rock, Pennsylvania: A Wee Valley Glowing in the Embers of the Industrial Revolution

Photos by: Phil Grout

Glen Rock, Pennsylvania has been enchanting outsiders for more than 170 years, first by its verdant hills and valleys, then with its industrial potential and lately with nearby gatherings of those original enchanters, “the wee folk.”

The industrial base of Glen Rock is as allusive as a fairie in the glade.

Factories have closed and whole industries have moved to far off lands. The entire downtown business district was flooded out during Hurricane Agnes in 1972, and a number of businesses never reopened. However, on high ground at the end of Cottage Ave., Coax is one company which has met the demand for specialty cables in the aerospace industry. It occupies a building where fine furniture was crafted in the early to mid 20th Century.

Today Glen Rock still resembles a quaint village of Victorian homes that could have been plucked from the north of England or the West Highlands of Scotland and dropped into a lush river valley. Gone are the busy factories and the heavy mercantile traffic of the 19th century. It is a quite place to which people come home after a day’s work in York, Hanover or even Towson.

In the 1830s and ’40s many pioneers were pulled west by the promise of land and the prospect of gold. But it was the lure of a natural power source in the southern York County valley, with Codorus Creek slicing throughit, that prompted a handful of young British industrialists to carve out a home here, reminiscent of their beloved Cheshire in the English Midlands.

The craftsmen were woolen weavers, rope makers, flour millers and carriage builders. Some were even ice cream churners and furniture carvers. And when Glen Rock’s manufacturing impetus was fading by the end of the 20th century, one visionary entrepreneur planted a fine country inn in the remains of the town’s industrial roots: a woolen mill.

In the beginning, It was a sawmill operated by the first resident of the valley, Simon Koller, a farmer who cleared his farmland and turned the trees into lumber with waterpower from Codorus Creek.

But Koller was quickly pulled west to Ohio to take up farming with his relatives. He was also given an extra shove in that direction when he learned that his valley was going to be filled with sooty smoke from the Baltimore & Susquehanna Railroad.

On March 31, 1837, the day before the first rail was to be laid for that 56-mile stretch between Baltimore and York, Koller sold his farm, including the sawmill, to William Heathcote, the founder of Glen Rock.

Heathcote and his brother, John, had successfully operated a woolen mill for 10 years near Philadelphia. But with the death of his wife and the absence of his brother, who had moved to Ohio, William searched for a new home.

His travels took him to southern Pennsylvania, where he met the disenchanted Simon Koller. They settled on a selling price of $3,425 for the 93-acre tract.

Around the same time, Heathcote married Koller’s daughter, Sarah. Within a year the sawmill was disassembled and Heathcote was joined by his brothers, John from Ohio, and Mark from Chester County with some necessary mill machinery. By 1840 the new woolen mill was erected, using local chestnut beams and brick fired in Heathcote’s new brickyard.

The original farm was gradually divided into parcels and sold off. The village of “Heathcote’s Station” began growing with the woolen mill as its hub. Farmers from as far away as Hanover brought their wool to the mill to be processed into cloth, and the railroad carried the cloth to markets in Baltimore and Philadelphia. It was a flourishing enterprise.

When the hamlet acquired its own post office in 1843, it was William Heathcote who suggested that the village be named Glen Rock. The name was inspired by a large rock outcropping that railroad construction had uncovered in the valley (read “glen”). Today a “rail trail” runs along the original railroad bed, providing a scenic path for cyclists and joggers between York and Cockeysville 25 miles south in Maryland.

In the 19th century, Glen Rock was fully involved in the Industrial Revolution. But it also had a cultural life that continues to this day.

By 1848, Heathcote’s brothers, Mark and James, had joined the family woolen business. Two nephews, Charles Heathcote and Mark Radcliff, and their friend, George Shaw, arrived with their skills as rope makers to satisfy the growing demand for rope and twine.

But the men set aside their work long enough to step out into cold night air of Christmas Eve to sing carols they had learned as boys in their native Cheshire. By then, there were six families in town and each were visited by the carolers who sang, accompanied by the elder James Heathcote, 61, on the bassoon.

Today, the Glen Rock Carolers Association has grown to 50 members and has a national reputation. The carolers will make their 160th trek through town this year singing old and new carols from the stroke of midnight until sunrise Christmas day.

During the second half of the 19th century, Glen Rock’s industrial base expanded and its population rose to more than 1,000. William Heathcote built a larger mill to accommodate the production of wool felts used in making paper. His old mill was converted to a flour mill, which until the mid 1980s, was the oldest continuous business in Glen Rock. It had a regional reputation for its fine quality flour.

Radcliff and Shaw’s rope factory grew from turning out 30 pounds in 1848 to 1,200 pounds in 1891 or about 18 million feet of rope a year.

An iron foundry and machine shop soon added to the economic base of the community, employing nearly 100 workers in producing iron castings and railroad cars until the recession of the 1870’s.

The pendulum swung and the Glen Rock Coach Works stepped in to produce carriages and hearses for several decades until the “horseless carriage” closed the Coach Works. The employment gap was filled by a clothing factory, several furniture makers, and even a cigar plant and an ice cream factory that shipped vanilla and orange ice cream throughout the region (oysters in the winter).

In 1897 someone purchased a “graphascope” and showed the first moving pictures. Glen Rock still has the Glen, its vintage movie theater, which has been owned since 1975 by Fred and Carol Strausbaugh, who saved the theater from a planned conversion to apartments.

The Strausbaughs still screen first-run films every Friday and Saturday night-always one showing at 7 p.m.-always offering buttered pop corn.

On the subject of entertainment in the late 1800s, one Pennsylvania newspaper editor felt compelled to comment on the state of baseball in Glen Rock: “We feel confident,” he wrote in 1884, “that the base ball craze has ruined more young people for business usefulness than any other pastime brought to the notice of the public for years.” (One can only speculate as to the amount of the industrial decay brought on by the Philadelphia Phillies and the Pittsburgh Pirates.)

And then there are the “wee folk” who gather every May Day just up Route 216 West at Spoutwood Farm for the annual Fairie Festival. For 16 years Rob and Lucy Wood have hosted the festival “to celebrate the Spirit of Nature” and the beginning of spring when “all the Nature Spirits return to the Warm World.” Families from across the region converge on the farm for whimsical dress-up, lively performances and spirited fun.

The contemporary industrial base of Glen Rock is as elusive as a fairie in the glade. Factories have closed and whole industries have moved to far off lands. The entire downtown business district was flooded out during Hurricane Agnes in 1972, and a number of businesses never reopened. However, on high ground at the end of Cottage Ave., Coax Inc. is one company that has met the demand for specialty cables in the aerospace industry. It occupies a building where fine furniture was crafted in the early to mid 20th century.

In the end, there is one visionary in town whose industrious nature would probably have won the respect of William Heathcote. Cecil Artrip resurrected the deteriorating remains of Heathcote’s first mill at Main and Water Streets and transformed it into a country inn and bed and breakfast. The Glen Rock Mill Inn has won glowing reviews and acquired a national reputation.

Unfortunately, Artrip suffered a series of illnesses that forced him to set aside the innkeeping business and sell the Mill. The inn has changed hands several times and is currently closed for business and up for sale.

Despite the economic dips and turns Glen Rock has gone through, there is still something hauntingly beautiful about this place where a young man once looked down into this valley and envisioned a good life spreading out before him like so many green woolen blankets.