Town · Lititz, Lancaster County
Lititz
A Moravian town founded in the 1750s, with a stately church square, a spring-fed park and a lively main street long associated with pretzels and chocolate.
Lititz was founded by Moravians in the 1750s, and the church square at its heart, with the Moravian church, old brick and stone houses and the Linden Hall school for girls, still feels like the planned religious community it once was. Main Street is lined with shops and cafes, and Lititz Springs Park follows a clear, spring-fed stream right through town. Every Fourth of July the stream is lined with candles, a tradition that goes back to the nineteenth century.
John Sutter, on whose California land gold was found in 1848, spent his last years here and is buried in the Moravian cemetery. Lititz makes a good base for northern Lancaster County: the Ephrata Cloister, home of an eighteenth-century religious community, is a few miles away, and so are the Landis Valley farm museum and Middle Creek, where tens of thousands of snow geese stop each March.
Make a day of it
In and around Lititz
State historic site · Ephrata, Lancaster County
Ephrata Cloister
Home of a celibate religious community founded in 1732, whose steep-roofed, medieval-looking wooden buildings, narrow halls and plank beds recall a life of devotion, music and ornate calligraphy.
Living history museum · Manheim Township, Lancaster County
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.
Photo: Smallbones, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Wildlife management area · Clay Township, Lancaster County
Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area
Each late winter, tens of thousands of snow geese and tundra swans crowd the lake here on their way north, a spectacle that draws birders from across the region to the visitor center and trails.
Also nearby
Nearby
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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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Ephrata Cloister
Home of a celibate religious community founded in 1732, whose steep-roofed, medieval-looking wooden buildings, narrow halls and plank beds recall a life of devotion, music and ornate calligraphy.
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Horse-Shoe Trail
A yellow-blazed path for hikers and horseback riders, running about 140 miles from Valley Forge to the Appalachian Trail over wooded ridges and through farm valleys and old iron-furnace country.
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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.
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Wheatland
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.
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Lancaster Museum of Art
Changing exhibitions of regional and contemporary art in an 1840s Greek Revival mansion in downtown Lancaster.
