Concept

Rose Valley, Pennsylvania

Summary
Rose Valley is a small, historic borough in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. Its area is , and the population was 913 at the 2010 census. The area was settled by Quaker farmers in 1682, and later water mills along Ridley Creek drove manufacturing in the nineteenth century. In 1901, Rose Valley was founded as an Arts and Crafts community by architect Will Price, who bought of land around the former Rose Valley textile mill. Price was a follower of Henry George's economics (Georgism). Price also co-founded Arden, Delaware, a utopian single tax community based on Henry George's economic model. Nevertheless, the Georgist single-tax ideal was never implemented in Rose Valley. Crafts works soon foundered, leaving a legacy of impressive architecture, a preserved landscape, and a regional theatre, the Hedgerow Theatre (founded in 1923), as well as an artistic community that includes writers, painters, and architects. As a former mayor said, "Rose Valley is an island of non-conformity." The Rose Valley Historic District, covering essentially all of the borough, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010. Native Americans of the Leni Lenape or Delaware tribe lived in the area when Europeans began arriving. A major trade route, the Great Minquas Path, passed through the site of the present borough, along Long Point, a hairpin turn in Ridley Creek, and then across the creek and through the center of the borough. Furs were carried along the path from Native Americans on the Susquehanna River to European traders on the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers. Soon after William Penn received his charter for the Colony of Pennsylvania, three brothers, Thomas, Robert, and Randall Vernon, received land grants from Penn to settle over in the present borough of Rose Valley and Nether Providence Township. The brothers arrived in Pennsylvania in 1682 and began farming the area, about north of Chester, which was then the largest settlement in the colony.
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