Founding year: Wikidata. First post office: 1868.The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Bradford Township’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Bradford Township is more historic than 53% of U.S. towns, #705 of 1,035 in Pennsylvania. Its age holds the grade up; its National Register listings pull it down.
B−
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Bradford Township’s overall grade.
Pennsylvania towns list about as much on the Register as the country (a typical Pennsylvania town has 2.1 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Bradford Township’s 0.0 sits below most of its state (25% of Pennsylvania towns have fewer) while its 0 listings outnumber those of 23% of U.S. towns.
NoteThe founding year comes from Wikidata alone; no second source gives 1823.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from C to B+. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±4.5 points).
Founding year: Wikidata (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Bradford Township’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Settled in 1823, Bradford was chartered as a city in 1837 and emerged as a wild oil boomtown in the Pennsylvania oil rush in the late 19th century. The area's Pennsylvania Grade crude oil has superior qualities and is free of asphaltic constituents, contains only trace amounts of sulfur and nitrogen, and has excellent characteristics for refining into lubricants. The Bradford & Foster Brook Railway was built in 1876 as one of, if not the first, monorails in America, when Bradford was a booming oil town. World-famous Kendall racing oils were produced in Bradford.
Every edition of the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Bradford Township. Tap a year, or press play to watch the town change.
1924Bradford sheet · 1:62,500
U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Bradford Township.
Then & now
Stand where they stood
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.
Retake this viewCongress Park, Bradford, Pa. (View down a street lined with row houses, oil derrick at the end of the street.), from Ro…, c. 1860
Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on Bradford Township’s page.
In 1823, according to Wikidata. Bradford Township’s post office opened in 1868, and the census of 1880 counted 9,197 people here.
How does Bradford Township rank for history?
Bradford Township is more historic than 53% of U.S. towns, #705 of 1,035 in Pennsylvania. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
How old are the homes in Bradford Township?
13% of Bradford Township’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±4.5 points), against a typical 18% for a Pennsylvania town; the median home was built in 1957.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
From Wikimedia Commons (6), Wikipedia, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock) and the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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