Historic Sites 72

Battlefields, historic houses, forts, mining towns, railroad landmarks and lighthouses.

  • Elfreth's Alley

    Historic street · Philadelphia, Philadelphia County

    Often called the nation's oldest continuously inhabited residential street, a narrow cobbled lane of 18th-century brick rowhouses, with a small museum house open to visitors.

  • Fallingwater

    Historic house · Stewart Township, Fayette County

    Frank Lloyd Wright's famous house cantilevered over a waterfall on Bear Run, built for the Kaufmann family in the 1930s and now part of a UNESCO World Heritage listing.

  • Fort Mifflin

    Fort · Philadelphia, Philadelphia County

    On the Delaware River marshes, a stone fort whose 1777 siege held up the British fleet, with barracks, casemates and stories of later service as a Civil War prison.

  • Graeme Park

    State historic site · Horsham Township, Montgomery County

    The 1720s stone mansion of colonial governor Sir William Keith, later home of the poet Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson, with remarkably original interiors set among open fields.

  • Historic Fallsington

    Historic Site · Falls Township, Bucks County

    A village in Lower Bucks County that grew up around its Quaker meetinghouses, with buildings spanning three centuries.

  • Hope Lodge

    Historic house · Whitemarsh Township, Montgomery County

    A Georgian mansion of the 1740s, used as the army's medical headquarters during Washington's Whitemarsh encampment, and later filled by collectors with colonial and Federal furnishings.

  • Laurel Hill Cemetery

    Historic Site · Philadelphia, Philadelphia County

    A Victorian garden cemetery founded in 1836 on bluffs above the Schuylkill, with elaborate monuments, fine sculpture and river views, explored on guided tours and events.

  • Pennsylvania State Capitol

    Capitol building · Harrisburg, Dauphin County

    A grand 1906 capitol under a dome modeled on St. Peter's in Rome, its interior rich with Moravian tile floors, murals, stained glass and marble, shown on guided tours.

  • Pithole City

    Ghost town · Cornplanter Township, Venango County

    Mown paths on a quiet hillside trace the streets of an 1865 oil boomtown that swelled to thousands of people and emptied within a few years.

  • Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct

    Historic bridge · Lackawaxen Township, Pike County

    The oldest existing wire-cable suspension bridge in the country, built by John A. Roebling in the 1840s to carry a canal over the Delaware and now open to cars.

  • Wheatland

    Historic house · Lancaster Township, Lancaster County

    The Federal-style country house of James Buchanan, the only president from Pennsylvania, kept with period furnishings and shown on guided tours that tell his story.

  • Eastern State Penitentiary

    Historic Site · Philadelphia, Philadelphia County

    A vast 1829 prison, its cellblocks left in haunting ruin, where Al Capone once served time; now a museum about American justice.

  • Gobbler's Knob

    Folk landmark · Young Township, Jefferson County

    The wooded hilltop outside Punxsutawney where crowds gather before dawn every February 2 to hear whether Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow.

  • Harriton House

    Historic house · Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County

    The 1704 stone house where Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, spent his later years, now a house museum set among fields and woods.

  • Hartwood Acres

    County park and mansion · Hampton Township, Allegheny County

    A 1920s Tudor-style mansion and its stables sit amid rolling meadows and woods, with house tours, trails and summer concerts on the lawn.

  • Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites

    Historic Site · Bethlehem, Northampton County

    The 18th-century Moravian settlement at the heart of Bethlehem, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with museums and guided tours.

  • Shofuso Japanese Cultural Center

    Public Garden · Philadelphia, Philadelphia County

    A Japanese house and garden in 17th-century style, built in Japan for display at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1950s, now set beside a koi pond in Fairmount Park.

  • Valley Forge National Historical Park

    National historical park · Upper Merion Township, Montgomery County

    Where Washington's Continental Army camped through the winter of 1777-78: rolling fields, rebuilt huts, his headquarters and miles of trails.

  • Wyck Historic House, Garden, and Farm

    Historic Site · Philadelphia, Philadelphia County

    Lived in by one Quaker family for nearly three centuries, a Germantown house with an old-rose garden laid out in the 1820s and a small working farm.

  • Eckley Miners' Village

    State historic site · Foster Township, Luzerne County

    A 19th-century anthracite company town of miners' houses and churches, with a coal breaker built for the 1970 film The Molly Maguires, telling the story of mining families.

  • Erie Land Lighthouse

    Lighthouse · Erie, Erie County

    Standing on a bluff above the lake, a sandstone tower of 1867 marks the site of one of the first lighthouses on the Great Lakes, with a small park around it.

  • Monongahela Incline

    Funicular · Pittsburgh, Allegheny County

    Opened in 1870 and widely described as the country's oldest continuously operating funicular, it climbs Mount Washington from Station Square to the overlooks on Grandview Avenue.

  • French Azilum

    Historic site · Asylum Township, Bradford County

    On a quiet bend of the Susquehanna, the site of a 1790s refuge built for French exiles fleeing revolution, with the 1836 LaPorte House and a museum cabin.

  • Historic Grange Estate

    Historic Site · Haverford Township, Delaware County

    An estate whose mansion grew from an early 18th-century farmhouse into a Gothic Revival country seat, with gardens, wooded grounds and a guest list that once included George Washington.