Witmer's Tavern: A Surviving Colonial Waypoint
Near Intercourse, Pennsylvania
Taverns were the internet of early America. News traveled by word of mouth at places like this one, where travelers rested, deals were struck, and roads were planned. The original east end of this building is traditionally dated to around seventeen twenty-five, built by Benjamin Witmer, an agent for the London Land Company.
His son John ran it as a proper tavern. Henry Witmer expanded it in seventeen seventy-three. The family then shaped some of the earliest transportation infrastructure in Pennsylvania: they were involved in the Philadelphia to Lancaster Turnpike in seventeen ninety-two, a bridge over the Conestoga in eighteen hundred, and the first Columbia to Wrightsville bridge in eighteen twelve.
That is a family threading themselves through every major road and bridge project of their era. The tavern still stands, one of the best-surviving structures of its colonial type.
