The ‘road district:’ Pennsylvania’s long-forgotten municipality

POTTER COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — Pennsylvania has a menagerie of local municipality types: boroughs, cities, townships and Bloomsburg, the only town.

Well, if you ignore the Borough of Greenville in western Pennsylvania attempting to adopt the “town” moniker through a home rule charter about five years ago.

Anyways, until 2004, there was another one-off municipality type in the Keystone State: the “road district.”

In 1869, the state legislature carved out part of what was then Abbott, Eulalia, Stewardson and Wharton townships as the East Fork Road District, southeast of Coudersport in Potter County.

The purpose of the municipality, according to its enabling legislation, was to levy and collect taxes to open and repair roads in the district. Two commissioners were appointed to run the district. Otherwise, it was considered a part of Eulalia Township.

Aptly-named East Fork Road cuts through what was the district set inside a valley between Wharton and Cherry Springs State Park. The vast majority of land in the district is state forest land, part of the Susquehannock State Forest.

As of the 2000 census, there were only 14 people in living in the district.

It’s existence wasn’t always popular. In 1911, the Potter Enterprise newspaper lamented the district, calling for state legislators to repeal the act that created it.

“For more than fifty years, this act has caused the people of that section more or less trouble and a great deal of unnecessary expense and annoyance,” alleging that “both children and animals have figured in the time sheet.”

The editorial board of the newspaper would get their wish just over nine decades later, when voters approved the merger of East Fork Road District and Wharton Township in a referendum. It was effective Jan. 1, 2004.