The printer of the Declaration
John Dunlap and Gray's Printing Press
John Dunlap was born in Strabane around 1746-47 and apprenticed as a printer here - almost certainly at the press at 49 Main Street, now known as Gray's Printing Press. He emigrated to Philadelphia, took over his uncle's printing business, and by 1776 had become the official printer for the Continental Congress. On the night of 4 July 1776, John Hancock commissioned Dunlap to print copies of the declaration the Congress had just adopted. Dunlap worked through the night, setting type and running the press. The resulting broadsides - called Dunlap Broadsides - were the first published versions of the American Declaration of Independence. Of perhaps 200 printed, 26 are known to survive today, and each has been valued at millions of dollars. The press where Dunlap learned the trade is still there, now managed by the National Trust. It opens by guided tour on a limited schedule - call ahead before visiting.
A playwright shaped by this ground
Brian Friel and the borderland imagination
Brian Friel, the most significant Irish playwright of the 20th century, was born near Omagh in 1929. His mother, Mary McLoone, grew up in Glenties, County Donegal - she came to Strabane as a young woman to work and married here. Friel spent his early years in this northwest borderland before his family moved to Derry when he was ten. The landscape of the Foyle valley, the twin towns, the border, and the tangle of Irish and Ulster-Scots identity in this corner of Tyrone all fed directly into the world he called Ballybeg - the fictional village that stands behind Translations, Dancing at Lughnasa, Philadelphia Here I Come, and most of his major work. The borderland is not decorative in Friel; it is the subject. His Ballybeg is everywhere and nowhere, which is exactly what this border has always been.
Partition, checkpoint, crossing
The border at Strabane
When Ireland was partitioned in 1921, Strabane became a border town. The River Foyle - specifically the Lifford Bridge - became the official crossing point between County Tyrone and County Donegal, between the new Northern Ireland and the Free State. For decades the crossing was managed, checked, and sometimes closed. During the Troubles it was one of the most fortified crossings in Europe, flanked by watchtowers and army checkpoints. The bridge between Strabane and Lifford was a daily transit for thousands of people who worked on one side and lived on the other, who had family on both banks, who bought groceries where prices were cheaper. The Good Friday Agreement removed the infrastructure; the political reality of a land border between EU and non-EU territory returned as a live question after Brexit. The bridge is now open and unguarded, but it is still the place where two states begin and end.
What the town lived through
The Troubles in Strabane
Strabane was among the most heavily damaged towns in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The IRA was strongly active here from the early 1970s, and the town's border position made it strategically significant on multiple sides. Strabane Town Hall was destroyed by a bomb in 1972. Commercial premises were repeatedly targeted with car bombs and incendiary devices; for stretches of the early-to-mid 1970s, incidents occurred nearly daily. The British Army and RUC maintained heavily fortified bases that were themselves subjects of sustained attack. In February 1985, three IRA members were shot dead by the SAS in what became known as the Strabane ambush - an incident that remains contested. Civilians, security forces personnel, and paramilitaries all died here. The town rebuilt slowly. Some streets were reconstructed so thoroughly that little pre-1970 fabric survives. That absence is part of the fabric now.