73 places
Amish farmland, Gettysburg and a town built on chocolate
Photo: David Dugan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
South-central Pennsylvania is some of the richest farmland in the East, and in Lancaster County much of it is still worked by Amish and Mennonite families, with horse-drawn buggies on the back roads and farm stands at the ends of long lanes. Old towns such as Lititz and Strasburg are made for a slow afternoon, and at Strasburg a steam train runs out through the fields, across the road from the state's railroad museum. Nearby, the steep-roofed buildings of Ephrata Cloister recall an eighteenth-century community of celibate brothers and sisters.
The region's other great stories are close at hand. At Gettysburg, the battle of July 1–3, 1863, was the bloodiest of the Civil War, and Lincoln came that November to give his famous address. Hershey, the town Milton Hershey built around his chocolate factory, adds an amusement park, gardens and a zoo, and in Harrisburg the green dome of the State Capitol rises above the Susquehanna.
Highlights
National military park · Cumberland Township, Adams County
The fields, ridges and woods of the Civil War's bloodiest battle, fought in July 1863, with more than 1,300 monuments, the great cyclorama painting and the cemetery where Lincoln spoke.
Photo: David Dugan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amusement park · Derry Township, Dauphin County
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.
Heritage railroad · Strasburg Township, Lancaster County
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.
Town · Lititz, Lancaster County
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.
State historic site · Ephrata, Lancaster County
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.
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.
Photo: Kumar Appaiah, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The full list
Art, natural science and ancient civilizations under one roof, plus a planetarium and an arboretum with paths winding around the museum's landscaped grounds.
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.
Art, natural science and ancient civilizations under one roof, plus a planetarium and an arboretum with paths winding around the museum's landscaped grounds.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Changing exhibitions of regional and contemporary art in an 1840s Greek Revival mansion in downtown Lancaster.
Harrisburg's art museum, with changing exhibitions of regional and contemporary art in Midtown, a few blocks from the river.
Hands-on science galleries, a giant-screen cinema and a performing-arts theater under one roof in downtown Harrisburg.
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.
A family-sized natural history and science museum with fossils, live animals and a planetarium, a short walk from Franklin & Marshall College.
The fields, ridges and woods of the Civil War's bloodiest battle, fought in July 1863, with more than 1,300 monuments, the great cyclorama painting and the cemetery where Lincoln spoke.
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.
The farm of Conrad Weiser, the colonial interpreter who brokered Pennsylvania's dealings with the Iroquois, with his 18th-century stone house and grave in a park landscaped by the Olmsted Brothers.
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.
Frontiersman Daniel Boone was born here in 1734; the farm keeps the stone Boone house, a log house, barn, smithy and sawmill, with trails around a small lake.
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.
A Federal-style stone mansion on the site of a French and Indian War fort, set in riverside parkland along the Susquehanna with traces of the Pennsylvania Canal and a rebuilt covered bridge.
Built by Mennonite settlers in 1719 and thought to be the oldest building in Lancaster County, a stout stone farmhouse with exhibits on early Mennonite life and a re-created Native longhouse.
Deep in the woods next to French Creek State Park, a restored 19th-century iron-making village with a charcoal blast furnace, the ironmaster's mansion and workers' houses.
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.
Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower's farm beside the Gettysburg battlefield, the only home they ever owned, where Ike relaxed, raised Angus cattle and entertained world leaders.
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.
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.
A handsome Cumberland Valley county seat of limestone and brick, home to Dickinson College, the Army War College and its Army Heritage museum, and big classic-car shows at the fairgrounds.
A brick-and-clapboard crossroads town wrapped by the battlefield, with Lincoln Square, the house where Lincoln stayed the night before his famous address, a college campus and orchard country close by.
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.
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.
A small town amid Amish farmland that is a magnet for train lovers, with a steam heritage railroad, the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania and a toy train museum on its doorstep.
Near the Appalachian Trail's halfway point, with an old iron furnace, the Appalachian Trail Museum, swimming in Fuller Lake, a flooded ore pit, and a second, larger lake with a beach and boating.
The core of the Hopewell Big Woods, an unbroken sweep of forest with two lakes, rocky trails for hikers and mountain bikers, and the restored iron village of Hopewell Furnace right next door.
Sailboats and fishing boats ply Lake Marburg's many coves, a resting place for migrating ducks and geese, in rolling farm country near the Maryland line, with bridle trails, a pool and a campground.
A lake named for the conservationist governor is the centerpiece here, popular with sailors, paddlers and anglers, with a swimming beach, cabins and a lakeside campground.
A restored 1800s gristmill, a covered bridge and the old Blue Ball Tavern cluster near Holman Lake, with a big swimming pool and a trail along the bed of a narrow-gauge railroad.
Between two ridges, Swatara Creek winds through fields and woods, followed by a flat rail trail past old canal remnants and crossed by the Appalachian Trail on a relocated 1890 iron truss bridge.
Set in Doubling Gap, where Blue Mountain folds back on itself in an S-curve, with a small swimming lake and a steep trail up to Flat Rock's broad view over the Cumberland Valley.
A hosiery magnate's stone mansion and the pines and spruces he planted in the early 1900s anchor these woods, threaded with trails and streams and kept as a center for nature education.
The rebuilt stack of Thaddeus Stevens' iron furnace, burned by Confederate troops on the road to Gettysburg, anchors this South Mountain park, with the Appalachian Trail, a big pool and summer theater.
From clifftop overlooks such as Hawk Point, the Susquehanna spreads wide below, dotted with wooded islands where bald eagles are often seen, and trails drop through steep ravines toward the river.
Rustic campsites line a mountain run in this narrow hollow, a trail hub where hikers, riders and mountain bikers head off into the Tuscarora State Forest.
At the foot of Blue Mountain, a small, quiet lake circled by a woodland footpath, with electric-motor boating, good fishing and the National Guard's Fort Indiantown Gap as its neighbor.
A stone mansion from the early 1900s crowns South Mountain and looks out across the Cumberland Valley, while miles of year-round trails wind down through the oak forest around it.
A grassy ridgetop with long views over the Susquehanna River valley and the farmland around it, a breezy spot for kite flying, picnics and watching the sunset.
Under tall evergreens in a narrow mountain gap, a stone pyramid marks where James Buchanan, the 15th president, was born in a log cabin, beside a clear brook-trout stream.
The fields, ridges and woods of the Civil War's bloodiest battle, fought in July 1863, with more than 1,300 monuments, the great cyclorama painting and the cemetery where Lincoln spoke.
The longest-serving park in Pennsylvania's state system began as a railroad excursion ground in 1875, and its domed dance pavilion, picnic grove and trout stream still make for a gentle afternoon.
Outsized trees of many species shade the slopes of Blue Mountain here, alive with warblers in spring, while a hillside meadow fills with butterfly weed and butterflies in midsummer.
Tall hardwoods blanket Peters Mountain here, and quiet trails wind up through warbler-filled woods to join the Appalachian Trail along the crest.
Hikers on the blue-blazed Mason-Dixon Trail climb to rocky lookouts above the Susquehanna in this riverside woodland at the mouth of Codorus Creek.
A Federal-style stone mansion on the site of a French and Indian War fort, set in riverside parkland along the Susquehanna with traces of the Pennsylvania Canal and a rebuilt covered bridge.
South Mountain's big working forest, where Pennsylvania's first forestry school took root, crossed by the Appalachian Trail and dotted with rocky overlooks and charcoal hearths from the old iron-furnace days.
Parallel ridges and narrow valleys of the Ridge and Valley country, with the Tuscarora Trail, mountaintop vistas and backcountry that includes a natural area of towering old-growth hemlocks.
A railroad tunnel bored into the mountain and then abandoned unfinished lies at the end of a short walk from this shady picnic spot, also a trailhead for the long Iron Horse Trail.
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.
A quartzite cliff rising about 200 feet above the Susquehanna, reached by a short woodland walk, with the Northwest River Trail running along the shore below for cyclists and walkers.
The Maine-to-Georgia footpath crosses about 230 rocky miles of Pennsylvania; at Pine Grove Furnace, near its halfway point, an old gristmill houses the Appalachian Trail Museum.
A quartzite cliff rising about 200 feet above the Susquehanna, reached by a short woodland walk, with the Northwest River Trail running along the shore below for cyclists and walkers.
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.
Following the old Northern Central Railway from York to the Maryland line, this crushed-stone trail passes the 1838 Howard Tunnel and the Hanover Junction station, where Lincoln changed trains en route to Gettysburg.
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.
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.
Entered through a storybook castle, an amusement park built for young children, with gentle rides, a family-sized wooden coaster and splash areas for hot days.
Open-air safari buses carry visitors through fields where bison, elk and deer wander right up to the vehicle, plus walk-through animal exhibits and a petting zoo.
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.
Quarrymen broke into this cave in 1871, and visitors have toured it since the following year, making it one of the oldest show caves in the country; guided walks wind past glittering calcite formations.
Guided walks lead through limestone chambers and past an underground lake in a cave beside Swatara Creek, where the hermit William Wilson lived alone for nearly 20 years in the early 1800s.
