How did Limeport, Pennsylvania in Bucks County get its name? This page provides a brief history about the naming of Limeport, Pennsylvania, the people who settled it, and the industry rising within it.
Limeport is an old village and shipping station in Solebury Township near the pipeline pumping station of the Atlantic Refining Company between Phillips Mill and Centre Bridge on the Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Canal and on the River Road (Route P6). As this was a shipping point for vast quantities of lime, it was appropriately named.
Around 1900, a large limestone quarry and several kilns were operated here, giving employment to a number of hands. For a half century after the opening of the canal it was the centre of much activity. An ample well-built wharf was much used by other shippers besides limeburners. It is known from recitals in old deeds that the pioneer settlers of Buckingham and Solebury knew about the value of lime beneath the soil they were clearing for cultivation.
In a deed made in 1703 by Lawrence Pearson granting to his brother Enoch a tract of land in Buckingham Township, the grantor reserves and excepts “the privilege to get limestone from the within granted premises for the use of said Lawrence and his children, their heirs and assigns forever.”
Limeport marks the eastern extremity of a narrow belt of limestone rock extending from Delaware River for six miles to a point beyond Buckingham, where it disappears beneath the overlapping red shale. At one time almost this whole belt was worked, and for the greater part of the nineteenth century quarrying and burning lime was a profitable industry. Lime was extensively used for agricultural purposes, and, mixed with sand, for making mortar for masonry and bricklaying in building operations. When the cement age dawned, lime took a back seat. A great deal of fine quality lime was also once used for whitewashing farm buildings, fences, cellar walls and spring houses, but today little work of that kind is done.
In 1883 Mark Wilson, of Quakertown, invented a mechanical lime-spreader, which for a short time was the means of stimulating the use of lime on farms. Today the old-time business activity of Limeport, the quarry, kilns and wharf are only a memory.