Upper Aquetong Valley Historic District

Set in the western part of Solebury Township, the Upper Aquetong Valley is a rural district of about 1,300 acres made up of dispersed farmsteads along Meetinghouse Road and the upper Aquetong Creek. Most of its buildings are random fieldstone houses, bank barns, springhouses and smokehouses from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and most farm parcels keep the boundaries shown on nineteenth century county maps. The district is significant as an example of the dispersed settlement pattern that Quaker families established in southeastern Pennsylvania, with houses set back among fields and tree lines rather than gathered in a village. Its agriculture combined grain and livestock, and lime quarrying and kilns, along with a tannery, supplied a second source of income. The Solebury Meeting House, built in 1806, and the Federal-style John Blackfan House of about 1836 are the most formal buildings in the valley. The surrounding land has changed little, which keeps the historic settlement pattern readable.