 Elizabethtown became a borough in 1827, and a railroad was built through the area in the 1830s.The town was primarily agricultural until the early 1900s, when the Klein Chocolate Company (now part of Mars, Inc.) and several shoe factories (the last of which closed in 1979) opened.Elizabethtown College was established in 1899, and the Masonic Homes (now the Masonic Village) followed in 1910.