Pierceville Run Agricultural Historic District

Fourteen historic farms make up this agricultural district of roughly 1,000 acres in southwestern Codorus Township, York County, bounded on three sides by Pierceville Run. The district contains 76 contributing buildings, mostly farmhouses in the Pennsylvania farmhouse form, forebay bank barns dating from the mid-19th to early 20th century, springhouses, summer kitchens, poultry houses and corncribs. Contributing sites include cultivated fields, woodlots and ponds, and the fields are strip cropped and contour plowed. Its significance lies in how well it records regional farming from 1830 to 1960. Early farms were small and diversified. By 1927 Codorus Township was among the state's leading poultry townships, and the Reibald/Fair farm alone held about 1,400 chickens. Truck crops for canneries and swine production also expanded. The district is also regarded as representative of Pennsylvania German building traditions and of the kinship, labor and land exchange ties that bound its families together.