Town · Mount Gretna, Lebanon County
Mount Gretna
A cottage colony in the woods, born of a Chautauqua and a camp meeting, where gingerbread cottages line narrow lanes and summers bring a playhouse, music, an art show and a swimming lake.
Mount Gretna is a village of summer cottages tucked into the woods of southern Lebanon County, with winding lanes, deep porches and tall trees everywhere. It began in the 1880s as a picnic ground on Robert Coleman's Cornwall and Lebanon Railroad, and in 1892 a Chautauqua and a church camp meeting settled here side by side; their gingerbread cottages, close together under the oaks, are still there.
Summer is the season. Concerts and plays fill the open-air Playhouse, the lake's sandy beach draws swimmers, and an outdoor art show takes over the woods each August. The Lebanon Valley Rail Trail runs past the edge of the village, and the Cornwall Iron Furnace, which made the Coleman family's fortune, is a short drive or bike ride away.
Make a day of it
In and around Mount Gretna
Rail trail · South Londonderry Township, Lebanon County
Lebanon Valley Rail Trail
A mostly crushed-stone rail trail through farmland and woods, climbing gently from Cornwall's old iron country to the cottage colony of Mount Gretna and linking with the Conewago Trail toward Elizabethtown.
State historic site · Cornwall, Lebanon County
Cornwall Iron Furnace
A charcoal-fired ironworks that ran from 1742 to 1883 and survives almost intact, with its stone furnace stack, a giant steam-driven blowing engine and Gothic Revival buildings.
Photo: Wherring at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Botanical garden · Derry Township, Dauphin County
Hershey Gardens
Milton Hershey's 1937 rose garden has grown into a hilltop botanical garden with seasonal displays, a children's garden and a glassed-in atrium aflutter with tropical butterflies.
Photo: Kris Bradley, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Also nearby
Nearby
-
Lebanon Valley Rail Trail
A mostly crushed-stone rail trail through farmland and woods, climbing gently from Cornwall's old iron country to the cottage colony of Mount Gretna and linking with the Conewago Trail toward Elizabethtown.
-
Cornwall Iron Furnace
A charcoal-fired ironworks that ran from 1742 to 1883 and survives almost intact, with its stone furnace stack, a giant steam-driven blowing engine and Gothic Revival buildings.
-
ZooAmerica
An 11-acre zoo devoted to North American wildlife, from black bears and gray wolves to river otters, with animals grouped by region, right next to Hersheypark.
-
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.
-
Hersheypark
Chocolate Town's big amusement park, with more than a dozen roller coasters, a water park, a vintage carousel among the classic rides, and the ZooAmerica wildlife park next door.
-
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.
