Conestoga, PA

At the 2020 census, Conestoga was a Lancaster County census-designated place of 1,163 in the space between the Conestoga River, Pequea Creek, and the Susquehanna. The name comes from the Susquehannock people, whose last town was near present-day Conestoga; the river, township, and community all carry that older name. European settlement later layered in Conestoga Manor, William Penn’s large land tract north of the river, plus farms, roads, and the river traffic that tied the interior to the Susquehanna.

Today, the Susquehanna-side park below town is the local landmark that gives the geography a destination. The park sits about three miles west of Conestoga on River Road, with fishing, a walking path, pavilions, and access to the Susquehanna River Water Trail. The National Park Service’s Conestoga River Water Trail runs 33 miles from Brownstown to the Susquehanna junction, passing wooded banks, farmland, and the places where Lancaster County’s Indigenous, agricultural, industrial, and transportation histories overlap. Conestoga is an unincorporated community, but it is not an empty name on the way to the river: it is the hinge between two waterways and several centuries of people moving through the valley.