The Liberty Bell Trail is a regionally important trail proposed for Montgomery County. During preparation of the County’s 1996 open space plan, various corridors that had the potential for trail development were identified. Former railroads, for example, were considered. A former trolley line known as the Liberty Bell Route was subsequently identified and incorporated as a recommended trail corridor in the adopted plan.
The Liberty Bell Route was an interurban trolley, or electric streetcar, that ran from Philadelphia to Allentown from around 1900 to 1951. The Lehigh Valley Transit Company that operated the trolley named it the Liberty Bell Route because a branch of the trolley tracks followed Bethlehem Pike, which was the route used to transport the Liberty Bell to a safe place in Allentown in 1777 during the British occupation of Philadelphia. Therefore, the namesakes for the trail are both the Liberty Bell and the Liberty Bell Route trolley. The historical significance of the Liberty Bell Route is coupled by the fact that it was one of the most popular and successful systems during the era of electric streetcar operation.
Like other inter-urban trolleys, the Liberty Bell Route was comprised of two types of trackage. Segments in the urban centers basically shared the streets, as the tracks were laid in the streets themselves. Where the trolley passed through the countryside between the urban centers, the tracks used independent rights-of-way.
Segments of the Liberty Bell Route right-of-way still exist. In some cases, the corridor is still intact as a separate parcel. In other areas, the corridor is now part and parcel of adjacent properties. Stretches of the corridor also still remain as a swath of linear open space, an ad-hoc greenway suitable for trail use. Where the trolley ran within or alongside public streets, there is largely no visible remnant of the former alignment. Other structural vestiges of the trolley infrastructure, such as generator houses, substations, bridges and their abutments and train stations, still exist.
