Milestones, Inns and Taverns of the 1794 Pennsylvania (Philadelphia and Lancaster) Turnpike

 Milestone 22 - Missing?   I received this email from P. Stoltzfus on May 2, 2018. I'm not sure if the milestone is still in the basement where his grandfather lived but it's a great lead on locating it. I'm not publishing his contact information here but should you have pictures of his grandfathers shop, please contact me and I'll pass the information on to Mr. Stoltzfus. The picture taken of the Milestone in 2018 is below.

Grandpop’s garage was at 377 Lancaster Ave which is now Brogan’s Service Center. It was known as John H. Henssler Automotive Service on his business cards. He sold gas early on and did auto repairs out of that location from I think sometime in the 60’s thru the early 90’s when he retired and sold the garage. The story I got was that there was some road or utility repairs going on and the milestone was getting removed by the company doing the work. He was able to save it before it was destroyed and it sat in his basement ever since. No one knew the history or significance of this stone till yesterday when I did some research and found your site. I’m guessing from your website you were in contact with someone who researched these markers in the 50’s? I would love to find someone who has photos of the garage he owned. We have a few but they are never of the whole building and most are from the 80’s after he stopped selling gas. Any contacts you may have that would possibly have photos of the garage either while he owned it or even before I would love to get in touch with.

The General Wayne Inn is found at about the 22 1/3 Mile point. The Inn's door was on the receiving end of many games of "Crack the Whip" where drivers demonstrated who had the greatest strength and cutting power with their whips. The Inn is now also known as Linden Hall after a group of Linden Trees that used to grow in front of it. In 2009 the old building had become quite overgrown on its back side and numerous attempts to open a business in the location had fallen through.

The milestone was there in the 1950's. Since the location given was pretty specific, I attempted to contact the owner of the business in the area but was unable to track him down. I was hoping to probe the area where it was to determine if it had simply fallen over and become covered. The stone location was described as 1/8 mile East of the Presbyterian Church which would put it near present day Beechwood Avenue or just West of it.

A map with the salmon colored stickpin showing the general location of missing Milestone 22. In 1952 it was described as 1/8 mile East of the Presbyterian church shown on the map.