Back in 1976, when the nation was celebrating its Bicentennial, Lansdale was right in the thick of things.

It was one of the stops on the Bicentennial Wagon Train Pilgrimage, with the wagons pulling in July 2 at what was then Penndale Junior High School before heading to Valley Forge National Historical Park on July 3.


According to The Reporter archives, then Mayor Richard B. Bitner and Councilman Allen F. Yeagle Jr., dressed in colonial costumes and on horseback, rode out to meet the wagons at the borough line on Broad Street, as they made their way from a stop at Quakertown.


“The officials, and members of the Lansdale Historical Society, also dressed in colonial costumes, led the wagons along Main Street and down Church Road to Penndale Junior High, where the wagons circled for a last time.”

The Reporter file photo featured today, taken by then chief photographer Willard Krieble, shows the train crossing the Main and Broad streets intersection in Lansdale.

Another photo, submitted by Janet Miner of Lansdale, shows the Pennsylvania wagon with horses grazing near it, while camped at Penndale.

There were 33 wagons here in Lansdale, making up the Great Lakes train. All branches of the wagon train then met at Valley Forge, where 50 official state wagons, five Pennsylvania wagons, five official chuck wagons, more than 200 private wagons and about 2,000 people on horseback passed in review near Valley Forge’s Memorial Arch.

Some of those from the West Coast had left their areas a year before as part of the Bicentennial project.