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Wright's Ferry was a Pennsylvania Colony settlement established by John Wright in 1726, that grew up around the site of an important Inn and Pub anchoring the eastern end of a popular animal powered ferry (1730–1901) and now a historic part of Columbia, Pennsylvania. The complex was important in settling the lands west of the cranky Susquehanna, for without resorting to water craft, the ferry was the first (and for many years, the only) means of crossing the wide watercourse of the relatively shallow Susquehanna River for settlers with a cargo in the southern part of Pennsylvania—which is very wide from Middletown, Dauphin County southerly past Wright's Ferry and grows steadily wider as it nears its mouth at the Chesapeake Bay, and whose banks are steep enough to prevent easy cargo handling from small boats.
As Pennsylvanian settlers started to move into the area, ownership conflicts arose between the English colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania due to sloppy grants and inaccurate surveys creating conflict with Lord Baltimore of Maryland, who thought his land grant covered this area. William Penn's charter and Lord Baltimore's were in conflict.
Lord Baltimore used a thug named Thomas Cresap in the area to try to prevent settlers from Pennsylvania from creating homesteads. During the 1730s this aggression triggered a series of armed confrontations known as Cresap's War, as Cresap ran off settlers and gave their land to his followers. This long border dispute was finally settled in 1767 when both colonies accepted the Mason–Dixon line as a revised boundary when ordered by the King.
The ferry infrastructure was built in 1730 to transport goods, animals, and people across the Susquehanna River in south central Pennsylvania, between present-day Lancaster and York counties. The ferry was particularly valuable to those new settlers seeking to homestead the west bank of the Susquehanna, which activities drew the interest of Lord Baltimore's agents.
Settlement in this area was recent, as immigrants arrived from Europe for the religious freedom promised by William Penn, or because reports of a fruitful land where one could own instead of rent had reached relatives back in Europe, and others—time enough having passed since the colony was founded for over two generations to grow—moved into the lush region from other areas. For a time, Lord Baltimore used Cresap to run off settlers from the Pennsylvania side, as the two provinces argued over the boundary between them. The ferry was sited just north of the mid-river islands of the Conejohela Flats region, since flooded by a lake created by a dam on the river. Their ownership was disputed due to a mistake in the charter of the Province of Pennsylvania.
The river came to be the political boundary between the unsettled lands of the two counties. Development of the ferry led to the growth of towns around both landings: present-day Columbia (first called Wright's Ferry by pioneers in the area) on the eastern shore and Wrightsville on the western. In Columbia, the ferry landing was located immediately south of the present-day Columbia-Wrightsville Veterans Memorial Bridge. Route 462, the Lincoln Highway, now passes through this area.