Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Pennsylvania/Selected article/June 2014

Pennsylvania Route 39 (PA 39) is an east–west state highway in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, in the United States, established in 1937. Extending 17.68 miles (28.45 km), it starts at North Front Street, north of Harrisburg, and ends at U.S. Route 322 and U.S. Route 422 near Hummelstown and Hershey. PA 39 is known as Linglestown Road west of Interstate 81 (I-81), as Hershey Road from I-81 to Hersheypark Drive, and as Hersheypark Drive south of Hershey Road. The route passes through the northern and eastern suburbs of Harrisburg and passes by Hersheypark and Giant Center, as well as the primary production factory for The Hershey Company.

Little is known about the creation of PA 39 as a route because it was not designated in any legislative bill from the Pennsylvania General Assembly. It was designated by the forerunner to PennDOT, the Pennsylvania Department of Highways, at their discresion. PA 39, in the 1920s, had previously been designated as a route in northeastern Pennsylvania, but that designation was deleted when it was renumbered US 11. As a result, PA 39 is one of a few routes which has a set of child routes which are no where near the primary route.

The Linglestown–Manada Hill portion of PA 39 was originally part of Legislative Route 140, one of hundreds of unsigned legislative routes created by the Sproul Road Bill in 1911. LR 140 was later rerouted to bypass Linglestown to the south, and the Paxtonia–Lower Paxton Township portion of its former routing became LR 140A. This legislative route was initially signed solely as PA 894. PA 39 was assigned in the 1930s to the portion of LR 140A east of Linglestown—overlapping PA 894—and also to LR 22006 between the Susquehanna River and Manadahill. The PA 894 designation was later removed.

PA 39 was extended southward to the vicinity of Hummelstown in two stages. The first extension during the 1940s shifted PA 39's eastern terminus to the junction of Hershey Road and Allentown Boulevard (U.S. Route 22) south of Manadahill. Its terminus was moved to its present location in the early 1960s. Only local realignments and improvements have occurred since.