Canal Collector’s Office, Lancaster Pike & Valley Roads, Paoli, 1888
Description: This image takes us back to the Philadelphia and Columbia Railway, the predecessor of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In the mid-1820s, investors were considering building a canal to carry goods and passengers from Philadelphia west across the Alleghany Mountains to Pittsburgh. But as railroad technology was developing, the use of trains rather than canal boats was instead chosen from Philadelphia to Columbia. The Commonwealth, however was unfamiliar with the management of railroads while well experienced with canals. So “Canal Commissioners” were established to manage and collect revenues from the new system. Paoli was chosen to have the first Canal Collector’s Office west of Philadelphia. At a meeting of the Canal Commissioners held at Harrisburg, March 12, 1834, it was announced: “Enoch Davis was unanimously appointed collector upon the Columbia railway at the Paoli; allowed fifty dollars per month as compensation for his services; (and will) perform the duties of weigh master to weigh all burden cars using said railway” and become the toll collector. This Office, which stood until the construction of the “new” Paoli railroad station in 1952, was located directly south of the station and east of Lancaster Avenue’s intersection with Valley Road. Behind the picket fence surrounding the Collector‘s House in this image is Valley Road, which leads upward toward the bridge passing across the railroad tracks. This structure stood on what is in 2014 a portion of the parking lot for the Paoli Railroad Station. - Herb Fry and Roger Thorne
