Wrightsville Historic District

Wrightsville sits on a limestone valley above the Susquehanna River, laid out as two villages in 1811 to 1813 and incorporated as a borough in 1834. Its residential core is made up largely of two-and-a-half-storey frame workers' houses built for foundry, sawmill, canal, railroad, limekiln and quarry employees, many with rear shed-roofed extensions and central chimneys. Along Front, Hellam and Locust Streets stand larger brick and stone houses, including Georgian and Federal townhouses and Italianate examples with bracketed cornices and corbelled window hoods. The waterfront industrial area developed after the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal and the York and Wrightsville Railroad opened in 1840, and lumber, metals and limeburning were its early mainstays. In June 1863 a Pennsylvania Militia unit skirmished with Confederate troops here and burned the bridge, making Wrightsville the farthest eastern point the Confederates reached during the war.