The First Pinchot Road

In nineteen thirty-one, Governor Gifford Pinchot stood on this ground and broke the earth for the road from here to Rossville. It was a symbolic act that launched one of the most ambitious rural infrastructure programs in Pennsylvania history.

Pinchot's goal, stated plainly, was to get the farmer out of the mud. Under a nineteen thirty-one law, Pennsylvania's Department of Highways undertook a sweeping improvement of rural roads, connecting isolated farm communities to markets and services. Pinchot, already famous as the first chief of the United States Forest Service and a close ally of Theodore Roosevelt, brought the same conservation-era zeal to roads that he had brought to forests: practical investment in the long-term strength of the land and the people who worked it.