Thomas Holme (1624-1695)

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2012

Built about 1697 where a Lenape trail forded Pennypack Creek, this modest triple-arched stone span is reckoned the oldest roadway bridge in continuous use in the United States. It carried the King's Highway, one of colonial America's great overland routes, and in 1781 bore the tramp of American and French troops marching south with Rochambeau toward the decisive siege of Yorktown. Widened only once, in 1893, its upstream face looks much as it did when William Penn's colony was young.

Bryn Athyn, PA

In the 1880s, when railroads were reshaping how Americans spent their leisure time, the Alnwick Grove picnic grounds opened along the banks of Pennypack Creek. It was a shrewd bit of promotion: the newly built Philadelphia to Newtown line needed weekend passengers, and a shady grove within an easy train ride gave city dwellers a reason to buy a ticket. Excursion parks like this one turned a stretch of countryside into a destination, and the clatter of holiday-bound trains became a familiar summer sound.

Bristol Township, PA · est. 1949

Laid out in 1697 as Buckingham and chartered in 1720, Bristol grew up as a river port on the Delaware, one of the oldest boroughs in Pennsylvania. For a time in the early 1700s it served as the seat of Bucks County, and for two centuries it thrived as a hub of travel and trade. Its wharves and roads tied the farms of the interior to the wider Atlantic economy.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2008

When it rose in the 1850s, the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion was a showpiece of Victorian taste—Gothic points and a Second Empire mansard roof announcing the fashions of a prosperous new age. It stood in the Tulpehocken Station district, one of the country's earliest railroad suburbs, where trains let city dwellers build homes beyond Philadelphia's crowded core. A grassroots preservation effort in the 1950s and 60s saved the house just as Americans were beginning to value Victorian architecture.