New Freedom: First Stop on Northern Soil
Near York, Pennsylvania
New Freedom sits on the old Northern Central Railroad between Baltimore and York, just above the Mason-Dixon Line. The railroad ran freight and passengers through the York County hills, and its position just north of the Maryland line made the borough an early stop on northern soil for travelers coming up the line.
The borough was incorporated in the eighteen seventies. Its name most likely comes not from any symbolic meaning but from the Free family, early prominent residents of the area. It was first called simply Freedom, but another town already had that name, so it became New Freedom. The first settlers arrived in seventeen eighty-three, German, English, and Scotch-Irish farmers working fertile ground. A second railroad, the Stewartstown line, arrived in eighteen eighty-five and hauled perishable produce from the surrounding farms. Summers Canning Company operated in town for years before it was sold to Hanover Foods in nineteen eighty-four. The disused rail corridor was later converted into the York County Heritage Rail Trail, a crushed-stone path that now runs from New Freedom north through the county. The main Northern Central line did not survive Hurricane Agnes in nineteen seventy-two, which destroyed much of it and its bridges across York County. New Freedom had three hundred twenty-four residents in eighteen eighty and about four thousand eight hundred seventy-seven in twenty twenty, mostly commuters.
