![]() ![]() Within days, 140,000 people had left the area. The Unit #2 reactor at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant suffered a partial meltdown in 1979, causing then Pennsylvania governor Dick Thornburgh to order the evacuation of pregnant women and pre-school children from the area. Middletown is located 3 miles (5 km) north of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant. The orphanage eventually closed, and the final location, on Red Hill, has become the Frey Village Retirement Community, a Diakon Lutheran senior living facility. The trust was founded to operate the Frey Orphanage and did so for many years, in three locations in Middletown. The George Everhart (Frey) Trust, named for a citizen of Middletown from the 1800s, still manages leases on much of the land in and around Middletown. It is the oldest incorporated community in Dauphin County and is located within a rich agricultural area forming the western edge of Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Middletown was selected as the western terminus of the Union Canal, and it was named from its location halfway between Lancaster and Carlisle, where an ascent exists to a low pass allowing easier (wagon era) travel among the barrier mountains of the Ridge-and-valley Appalachians giving access into north-central Maryland and the valley of the Potomac River. In 1824, Pennsylvania's statelegislature authorized and funded the canal construction as part of the broad sweeping commercial initiative called the Main Line of Public Works a forward looking project designing to connect Philadelphia to Pittsburgh by canals and river navigations which projects would continue to allow Philadelphia to challenge New York City (and its Erie Canal) for emerging mid-western markets beyond the Allegheny Mountains. ![]() Middletown was founded in 1755 along the left bank of the Susquehanna River and was incorporated as a borough in 1828 after a sudden boom in development and population occurred as a result of the construction of the Union Canal, connecting Lancaster to Middletown. It is part of the Harrisburg– Carlisle Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 9,550. Middletown is a borough in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River, 10 miles (16 km) southeast of Harrisburg. ![]()
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