Quentin, PA

Quentin is an unincorporated community and CDP in the northeast corner of West Cornwall Township in Lebanon County. It sits just west of Cornwall along Quentin Road, the local name for Pennsylvania Route 72. That road has been a north-south route through Lebanon County since the early nineteenth century, so Quentin’s position still reads as a crossroads between farms, Cornwall, and Lebanon. The community was originally called Bismarck before its name changed in 1918 to honor Quentin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’s youngest son.

The name change has a paper trail in the Lebanon County Historical Society: a cup kept by the local Lions Club and a letter from Theodore Roosevelt both preserve the 1918 decision. Quentin’s present-day services are tied to the surrounding township and school systems, while Route 72 continues to carry the traffic that gives the place its shape. It is a small inland community with a very specific name, a long transportation route, and a history that survives in local objects as much as in official maps.