(Editor’s note: In a column last week about the Yorktowne Hotel, I wrote about how the symbolic heart of York County moved about 1970 from the pedestrian-friendly Continental Square in York to the cloverleaf, designed for motorists, where the Route 30 bypass crosses under Interstate 83 in Manchester Township. This week, I tie this car culture to two land-use controversies roiling York County.)
There’s a picture showing Loucks Road running through the farm fields north of York not that long ago. It had the familiar look of a two-lane country road.
That would change in the 1960s, fostered by a major 1950s event: Interstate 83.
As York County’s census numbers — particularly its automobile-dependent suburban population — grew in the post-World War II years, the idea of a north/south bypass around York dovetailed with the Eisenhower administration’s plans for a national…
