The golden arch for the first McDonald’s in Lancaster County will be removed early next month.

Having stood for more than half a century, the large, single-arch sign outside the restaurant at 1755 Columbia Avenue will be torn down once a new one is installed.

“We’re very sad to see it go,” said Kristen Fraser, who is the franchisee for the restaurant along with her parents, Bill and Joanne Brown.

Fraser said that while the circa-1962 sign appears to be structurally sound, it is so old that they can’t be sure it is safe. Plus, replacement parts can’t be found for it anymore, she said.

And, after trying for nearly two years, Fraser said she couldn't find someone to take it. She added that if someone wanted it now, they would need to be ready immediately to take it down and haul it away themselves.

Barring someone stepping forward at the last minute, the old sign will be disposed of like any other construction waste, according to Sarah Visser, a sales representative with Persona Signs Inc., the South Dakota company doing the job.

Visser said the sign, which is around 25 feet tall and spans about 26 feet, will be taken down once the new one is installed on the other side of the entrance.

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Visser said the old sign would likely disappear sometime during the first week of April and would probably be removed in a day, although she couldn’t be sure how long it would actually take.

“Honestly, we’ve never taken down a sign like this before,” she said.

The single-arch sign reading “McDonald’s Hamburgers Drive-Thru” was put up when McDonald’s opened in 1962 in the shopping center west of Lancaster.

A drive-in, carry-out only restaurant, it was the first McDonald’s in Lancaster County, opening seven years after Ray Kroc’s original McDonald’s franchise restaurant in Illinois.

At the time, there were only 350 McDonald’s restaurants in the country. Today, McDonald’s has more than 35,000 locations worldwide.

The Columbia Avenue restaurant’s first franchise owner was Larry Arnold, who went on to open others in Lancaster County. His son Steve Arnold took over the restaurants, which he later sold.

Bill Brown purchased the Columbia Avenue restaurant in October of 1989 and he brought the original sign with him when he moved the restaurant to its current spot. The family now owns three other McDonald's restaurants in Lancaster County.