Peach Bottom Slate quarries 1969 1VCFE00020052

Peach Bottom is an unincorporated village in Fulton Township, Lancaster County, in the state of

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

in the United States. It lies on the east bank of the

Susquehanna River The Susquehanna River (; Lenape: Siskëwahane) is a major river located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, overlapping between the lower Northeast and the Upland South. At long, it is the longest river on the East Coast of the ...

. The original town of Peach Bottom was located across the river in York County. With the construction of the

Columbia and Port Deposit Railroad The Columbia and Port Deposit Railroad (C&PD) was a railroad that operated in Pennsylvania and Maryland in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It operated a main line between Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Port Deposit, Maryland, generally along the ...

up the east side of the Susquehanna (1866-1868), a station was built on the Lancaster County side, near the mouth of Peters Creek, from which Peach Bottom could be reached by ferry. This was known as Peach Bottom Station. The

Peach Bottom Railway The Peach Bottom Railway was a 19th-century narrow gauge railroad in Pennsylvania, designed to haul coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with ...

had terminals at both Peach Bottom and Peach Bottom Station; a planned bridge to connect them was never built. The line on the east side became the Lancaster, Oxford and Southern Railroad and on the west side, the

Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad The Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad , familiarly known as the "Ma and Pa", was an American short-line railroad between York and Hanover, Pennsylvania, formerly operating passenger and freight trains on its original line between York and Balt ...

. When the

Conowingo Dam The Conowingo Dam (also Conowingo Hydroelectric Plant, Conowingo Hydroelectric Station) is a large hydroelectric dam in the lower Susquehanna River near the town of Conowingo, Maryland. The medium-height, masonry gravity dam is one of the large ...

was built (1926-1928), the Columbia and Port Deposit was relocated higher up the hillside, and both Peach Bottom and Peach Bottom Station were submerged. The present village was built a short distance southeast of the site of Peach Bottom Station. The post office for the area (ZIP code 17563) is named "Peach Bottom" but is located on

Pennsylvania Route 272 Pennsylvania Route 272 (PA 272) is a highway in southeastern Pennsylvania, in the Lancaster area. The southern terminus of the route is at the Mason–Dixon line southeast of Nottingham, where the road continues into Maryland as Maryland Rou ...

just north of

Wakefield Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 99,251 in the 2011 census.https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks101ew Census 2011 table KS101EW Usual resident population, ...

. The

Peach Bottom Nuclear Generating Station Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station, a nuclear power plant, is located southeast of Harrisburg in Peach Bottom Township, York County, Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River three miles north of the Maryland border. The Philadelphia Electric Comp ...

lies across the river, on the site of the original town. In 2016, the

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. Established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the NRC began operat ...

(NRC) estimated that a major fire at the spent fuel pool at the Peach Bottom Nuclear Generating Station would displace an estimated 3.46 million people from 31,000 square kilometers of contaminated land, while a study conducted at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

suggested that the number of displaced people could go as high as 18.1 million people. An earlier study from 1975 assessed the nuclear station's ecological impact on fish fauna along the Susquehanna River.

Notable residents

Bryan Cutler Bryan Dean Cutler (born April 2, 1975) is an American politician who is the Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. A Republican, Cutler represents the 100th legislative district of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. He w ...

, State Speaker, Pennsylvania House Representatives *

Christopher McDougall Christopher McDougall (born 1962) is an American author and journalist. He is best known for his 2009 book '' Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen''. He has also written for ''Esquire'', ''Th ...

, writer and journalist, author of '' Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen'' (2009)

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Unincorporated communities in Pennsylvania