7 Offbeat Pennsylvania Towns To Visit
Most towns are content with a nice main street and a tasteful welcome sign. A handful of Pennsylvania towns decided that was for cowards. One employs a groundhog as its official meteorologist and pays him in celery. One freezes a sledding hill onto a lake on purpose, every single year. One keeps a flag stained with Lincoln's blood behind glass, and another somehow mass-produced seven governors out of a single hillside. Civic branding has rarely been this committed, and the towns below are all the more lovable for it.
Bellefonte
Seven men who once walked these streets went on to run an entire state, which is a frankly absurd hit rate for a hillside this size. Five governed Pennsylvania, one wound up governor of California, and one ran Kansas, earning the Victorian town its half-bragging nickname: the home of governors. The 19th-century iron-and-lumber money that bankrolled all that ambition still shows in the ornate facades downtown. The Bellefonte Historical Railroad rolls out of the restored Pennsylvania Railroad station, and the Bellefonte Art Museum for Centre County tells the iron story from inside the historic Linn House.
Talleyrand Park runs along Spring Creek with picnic spots, a rebuilt Victorian waterfront, and the yearly Bellefonte Arts and Crafts Fair. For dinner, the historic Gamble Mill plates locally sourced meals inside a former gristmill, while Bonfatto's Italian Market and Corner Cafe handles the everyday sandwich-and-coffee run.
Eagles Mere
Most towns wait out winter indoors. Eagles Mere waits for the lake to freeze solid, then has residents and volunteers build a working toboggan slide directly onto the ice, a tradition almost no other American town is reckless enough to attempt. High in the Endless Mountains, the town has clung to its 19th-century summer-resort character, and the lake belongs to borough residents and their guests, which is the polite explanation for why the water stays so clear.
The Eagles Mere Museum traces the town's shift from farm country to vacation getaway, while the neighboring Air Museum and Auto Museum show off restored vintage planes and cars. When the sledding is done, The Barn is the local pick for comfort food.
Harmony
A German religious sect built Harmony from nothing in 1804 as a working utopian commune, achieved utopia, apparently got bored of it, and relocated the whole operation to Indiana ten years later. What they left behind still stands: the Harmony Historic District in Butler County protects the original Harmony Society buildings, and the Harmony Museum tells the story of the group's short, intense peak.
The Harmony Inn occupies an 1856 building and serves dinner with a generous side of ghost stories. Connoquenessing Creek winds through town for kayaking and fishing, the Bottlebrush Gallery and Center for the Arts spotlights local artists and live music, and the German Christmas Market revives the founders' heritage every December.
Punxsutawney
Somewhere along the way, this town handed its weather forecasting over to a groundhog, and the arrangement has held for well over a century. Every February 2, thousands pack Gobbler's Knob to watch Punxsutawney Phil rule on the length of winter, a Pennsylvania Dutch custom the town has staged since 1887. Phil clocks one official appearance a year and spends the other 364 days immortalized in painted statues, themed shops, and dedicated landmarks.
The Punxsutawney Weather Discovery Center is a hands-on meteorology museum with Phil's folklore woven through the exhibits, and the real Phil lives with his companions in a climate-controlled habitat at the Punxsutawney Memorial Library. The Burrow Brewing Company pours house beers and American classics downtown, and Barclay Square throws the yearly Groundhog Festival with crafts, food, and music.
Ligonier
In the middle of Ligonier sits a reconstructed 1758 British fort. Fort Ligonier served as the staging base for the Forbes Expedition, the campaign that captured Fort Duquesne and opened the road to what became Pittsburgh. Every October, Fort Ligonier Days floods the Laurel Highlands town with reenactors, vendors, and festivities, and the rest of the year the Ligonier Diamond wraps four blocks of shops around a central gazebo.
The Fort Ligonier museum holds artifacts from the fort and the wider 18th-century conflicts. The Kitchen On Main serves local fare in a historic storefront, the Ligonier Creamery scoops homemade ice cream a few doors down, and just outside town, Idlewild and SoakZone ranks among the oldest amusement parks in the country, dating to 1878.
Milford
Milford calls itself the birthplace of the American conservation movement, and it has the pedigree to back it up. The claim traces to Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, whose family estate, Grey Towers, now operates as a National Historic Site and conservation education center. The surrounding Pike County streets keep their 19th-century buildings inside a designated Historic District.
The Columns Museum guards the town's strangest treasure: the Lincoln Flag, said to have cradled the dying president's head the night he was shot, and still stained with what the museum identifies as his blood. For dinner, Bar Louis at the Hotel Fauchere serves contemporary plates in a room lined with historical photos, one of them a well-known shot of Andy Warhol. The Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area is close enough for a day of hiking, kayaking, and wildlife watching.
New Hope
Painters and playwrights turned New Hope into a working arts colony more than a century ago, and the creative streak never faded. The town is also widely embraced as a haven for the LGBTQ+ community, having become the first borough in Pennsylvania to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Bucks County Playhouse has staged productions since 1939, and the New Hope Arts Center hands gallery space to local and regional talent.
The Parry Mansion Museum, an elegant 1784 stone home, shows off period furnishings and the town's early history. A few blocks away, Oldestone Steakhouse fills an 1872 former Methodist church, plating steak and seafood alongside a handful of Creole dishes carried over from Marsha Brown's, the longtime restaurant that held the space before. The towpath along the Delaware Canal traces the edge of town for an easy walk or ride.
Where Pennsylvania Gets Wonderfully Weird
What ties these towns together is a stubborn refusal to be ordinary. Harmony grew out of a utopian experiment and still throws a German market every December. Ligonier guards a French and Indian War fort and one of the country's oldest amusement parks. New Hope turned a quiet riverbank into an arts colony that never quit. Bellefonte runs its own heritage railroad through a valley of governors' mansions. Each one picked its single strangest idea, committed with a straight face, and never once looked back. That is the whole appeal.
