Museums in Dutch Country Roads 22
Art, history, science, railroad and children's museums.
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Reading Public Museum
Art, natural science and ancient civilizations under one roof, plus a planetarium and an arboretum with paths winding around the museum's landscaped grounds.
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Amish Farm and House
A Lancaster County farm presented as an Amish homestead, with guided tours of an 1805 farmhouse, a one-room schoolhouse, barnyard animals, and bus tours of the surrounding countryside.
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Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum
Pennsylvania German rural life, shown in a village of historic homes, shops and farm buildings where costumed interpreters demonstrate old crafts and tend heirloom gardens and livestock.
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State Museum of Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania's story from dinosaurs to the industrial age, told beside the Capitol, with Peter Rothermel's enormous painting of Pickett's Charge and a planetarium.
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U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center
Army history from the Revolution to today, told in a Soldier Experience Gallery and along an outdoor trail lined with re-created trenches, barracks and fortifications.
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AACA Museum
Vintage cars from the horseless-carriage era to the muscle-car years fill the Antique Automobile Club of America's museum, which also holds a gallery of rare Tucker sedans and a museum of buses.
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Appalachian Trail Museum
Set in an old stone mill at Pine Grove Furnace, close to the trail's halfway point, this small museum honors hikers such as Earl Shaffer, who made the first recorded thru-hike in 1948.
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Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles
Horse-drawn carriages, sleighs and early motor vehicles made in southeastern Pennsylvania, shown in a former truck-body factory beside the 1872 carriage shop where that company got its start.
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Demuth Museum
The home and studio of early modernist painter Charles Demuth, where changing shows of his watercolors and paintings hang steps from the garden that inspired his flower pictures.
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Hershey's Chocolate World
A whimsical ride through a simulated chocolate factory, make-your-own candy bar sessions, tastings and an enormous candy shop make the chocolate maker's visitor center a sweet family stop.
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Mid-Atlantic Air Museum
Volunteers restore and display vintage military and civilian aircraft at this airport museum, whose hangars hold rarities such as a World War II P-61 Black Widow night fighter.
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National Civil War Museum
Set in Reservoir Park, this museum tells the whole story of the Civil War, from its causes to its aftermath, through artifacts, letters and dioramas that give both Union and Confederate perspectives.
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National Toy Train Museum
The Train Collectors Association's museum, packed with toy trains from the 1800s to today and big operating layouts where push buttons set tiny scenes in motion.
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Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania
More than 100 historic locomotives and railcars, many gleaming under one vast roof, trace the story of railroading in Pennsylvania, across the road from a working steam railroad.
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Seminary Ridge Museum
This seminary building served as a Union lookout and field hospital on the battle's first day; today it's a museum of that fighting and its wounded, with guided climbs into the historic cupola.
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Strasburg Rail Road
Chartered in 1832, this short line still pulls passengers behind steam locomotives through Amish farmland, in open cars, a dining car or a plush first-class parlor car.
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The Hershey Story
Hands-on exhibits trace Milton Hershey's life and the company town he built, and a chocolate lab lets visitors make their own treats and taste chocolates from around the world.
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Lancaster Museum of Art
Changing exhibitions of regional and contemporary art in an 1840s Greek Revival mansion in downtown Lancaster.
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Susquehanna Art Museum
Harrisburg's art museum, with changing exhibitions of regional and contemporary art in Midtown, a few blocks from the river.
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Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts
Hands-on science galleries, a giant-screen cinema and a performing-arts theater under one roof in downtown Harrisburg.
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National Watch & Clock Museum
Thousands of timepieces, from tower clocks and grandfather clocks to pocket watches and early electric clocks, gathered by the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors.
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North Museum of Nature and Science
A family-sized natural history and science museum with fossils, live animals and a planetarium, a short walk from Franklin & Marshall College.
