Initially the coaches were merely farm wagons with boards attached for seating passengers.
New Hope was the midpoint of that arduous journey. The first stagecoaches departed from Philadelphia for the two-day trip to New York in 1769. Much of the road followed an old Lenni-Lenape trail used for hunting and traveling between New Hope and Philadelphia.Įven after Old York Road opened, travel on foot or on horseback was the only way to go. Old York Road opened to New Hope in 1741.įour years after the road opened, Benjamin Canby, one of Thomas’s 17 children, avenged his father’s failure to obtain the tavern and ferry rights, purchasing them from Wells’ heirs, and the town became known as Canby’s Ferry. Route 263 (the original route) posed a severe challenge to those otherwise reliable animals purveying travelers and goods from New York and New Jersey as it climbed the steep hill from the flat road at Dilley’s Corner to Lahaska. Most probably, Wells was influential in having the direction of Old York Road changed to favor his venue, but certainly the horses had a lot to do with it as well. He obtained a license to operate a tavern - now the Logan Inn on West Ferry Street in New Hope - in 1727 and a ferry. John Wells, a carpenter from Lower Dublin Township (now part of Northeast Philadelphia), outwitted a clever, powerful politician and entrepreneur - Thomas Canby, of Solebury Township - in purchasing the Ferry Tract from Richard Heath’s heirs. So, when the original direction of Old York Road was changed, making New Hope (Wells Ferry) - and not Centre Bridge (Reading’s Landing) - the new midpoint of the journey from Philadelphia to New York, the small village along the Delaware River was changed forever.
Throughout history new roads have been catalysts driving the economic and social development of towns and cities around the world.
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