William Lightfoot Price (1861-1916)

Nether Providence Township, PA · est. 1955

Built in 1809-10 by Thomas Leiper and surveyed by John Thomson, the Leiper Railway ran about three-quarters of a mile to haul stone from quarries on Crum Creek down to a landing on Ridley Creek. It is remembered as the first railway in Pennsylvania and the first in America to be laid out by survey. Horses drew the loaded cars along its wooden rails decades before the steam locomotive age.

Middletown Township, PA · est. 1993

A Civil War veteran and Philadelphia attorney, Joshua Pusey turned an inventor's mind to an everyday problem and in 1892 patented the paper matchbook. He sold the patent to the Diamond Match Company three years later, and soon millions of the little folders were rolling out each year to light stoves, lamps, and cigarettes across the country. One of nearly forty patents in his lifetime, it was the work of a man from an old Quaker family who lived here at his home "Maple Linden."

Clifton Heights, PA · est. 2019

A coiled steel spring that could "walk" down stairs became one of the twentieth century's most beloved toys — and it was made right here. Richard James stumbled onto the idea in 1943, his wife Betty gave it the name Slinky, and James Industries manufactured it in Clifton Heights for decades. When Richard walked away in 1960 and left a nearly bankrupt firm to Betty, she rebuilt it into a multimillion-dollar enterprise, later earning a place in the Toy Industry Hall of Fame.

Marcus Hook, PA · est. 2002

At Marcus Hook, the American Viscose Company became the first firm in North America to manufacture rayon, the pioneering artificial fiber, on a commercial scale. To house its workforce — many of them women — the company built Viscose Village between 1912 and 1915, a planned community in the English Domestic Revival style designed by the Philadelphia firm of Ballinger and Perrot. The plant's fibers went on to serve countless military uses in both World Wars.