11 Friendliest Towns to Visit in Pennsylvania
Exploring a town you have never been to is fun, but meeting locals who are welcoming creates a sense of comfort that genuinely improves a trip. Pennsylvania is one such state, with friendly towns alongside 124 state parks, a long list of historic landmarks, and a good number of lakeside communities. These are eleven of the friendliest towns in the state.
Hershey
Sweeten up your adventure in the chocolate capital of America. Milton Hershey founded his company here in 1894 and built the town around it, and Hershey is still organised around the confectionery that made it. Hershey's Chocolate World offers a factory tour ride, a make-your-own-chocolate workshop, and a run of shops. Hersheypark next door is among the most visited theme parks in the country, with a large waterpark alongside the rides.
After the park, ZooAmerica is an easy walk rather than a drive: the 11-acre zoo is connected to Hersheypark by a bridge, and admission is included with a park ticket during the season. It holds mountain lions, owls, deer, and around 200 animals from five regions of North America.
Doylestown
Like museums? Doylestown has eight of them, and three were built by the same man. Henry Chapman Mercer poured Fonthill Castle between 1908 and 1912 out of reinforced concrete, by hand, with no architectural plans, and the result has 44 rooms, 18 fireplaces, and over 200 windows, almost no two alike. It is open Tuesday to Sunday.
Mercer also built the adjacent Moravian Pottery and Tile Works and the Mercer Museum, a concrete castle holding some 50,000 pre-industrial American tools hung from the walls and ceilings of a six-storey central court. For something stranger, the VAMPA Vampire and Paranormal Museum covers the supernatural through art and exhibits.
Outside town, Peace Valley Park surrounds a 365-acre lake good for fishing, boating, and walking. Hellerick's Adventure Farm has a 35-foot silo climbing wall and an aerial adventure course.
Gettysburg
Residents of Gettysburg are about as proud and patriotic as they come. Gettysburg National Military Park preserves the site of the largest battle ever fought in North America, where more than 51,000 men became casualties across three days in July 1863. More than 1,300 monuments and markers stand across roughly 6,000 acres, and the museum holds the restored Cyclorama, a 377-foot painting of Pickett's Charge completed in 1883.
That history is also why the town trades heavily on being one of America's most haunted. Ghost City Tours, Mark Nesbitt's Ghosts of Gettysburg Candlelight Walking Tours, and Haunted Gettysburg Ghost Tours all run evening walks. For food afterwards, Gettysburg Family Restaurant and Food 101 both do dine-in and takeout.
Wellsboro
Wellsboro still lights its Main Street with gas lamps, which is the first thing most visitors notice. It is also the gateway to Pine Creek Gorge, known as the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania, a roughly 47-mile gorge reaching depths near 1,450 feet inside the 160,000-acre Tioga State Forest.
Leonard Harrison and Colton Point State Parks sit on opposite rims with the best overlooks, and the Barbour Rock Trail is a short walk to a panorama over the whole thing. The Pine Creek Rail Trail runs 62 miles along the canyon floor on an old railbed, flat the entire way.
Back in town, the Wellsboro Diner has been serving out of a 1939 Sterling dining car since it was hauled here, and the Gmeiner Art and Cultural Center is the town's gallery, showing local and regional work with events most months.
Bedford
Dunkle's Gulf has been pumping fuel on the Lincoln Highway since 1933, out of an Art Deco service station that still has the original terrazzo floor and still washes your windscreen. The Lincoln Highway was the first transcontinental road in America, and Bedford is one of the few towns along it where that era is still standing rather than commemorated.
A town of about 2,700 and the county seat, Bedford grew around a British supply fort built in 1758 during the French and Indian War, covered now by the Fort Bedford Museum. The Omni Bedford Springs Resort opened around its mineral springs in 1806 and served as James Buchanan's summer White House.
Old Bedford Village runs a living-history site north of town, Bedford County holds fourteen covered bridges, and the Coffee Pot, an 18-foot roadside building put up in 1927 and since restored, sits beside the fairgrounds. Few places this size have this much to point at.
New Hope
New Hope has been an artists' town since the Pennsylvania Impressionists set up along the river in the early 1900s, and it has spent the century since being one of the most openly welcoming small towns in the state, with a long-established LGBTQ community that shaped the place. For an article about friendliness, that counts for more than most.
The borough sits on the Delaware River in Bucks County, with a footbridge across to Lambertville in New Jersey that people walk for dinner. Bucks County Playhouse has staged work since 1939 inside a 1790 grist mill on the water, and the New Hope and Ivyland Railroad runs excursions out of the 1891 station.
The Delaware Canal State Park towpath runs 60 miles along the old canal and passes directly through town, flat the whole way. Washington Crossing Historic Park, where the Continental Army crossed the river on Christmas night in 1776, is about seven miles south.
Lewisburg
Lewisburg was laid out in 1785 on the West Branch of the Susquehanna, and its downtown historic district runs to Federal and Victorian brick along Market Street. Bucknell University, founded here in 1846, gives a town of about 5,500 a concert and lecture calendar well beyond its size.
The Samek Art Museum sits on the Bucknell campus and is free. The Union County Historical Society covers the local past, and the Lewisburg Children's Museum handles younger visitors. The Bucknell Greenhouse is open to the public and worth a detour in February.
The Campus Theatre, built in 1941, is one of the better surviving Art Deco cinemas in the state and still screens films nightly. Soldier's Park and the Lewisburg Area Recreation Park both give access to the river.
Lititz
Moravian settlers founded Lititz in 1756 and named it after Litice in Bohemia, and for nearly a century only members of the church could live here. Linden Hall, founded in 1746, is the oldest continuously operating girls' boarding school in the country.
The Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery opened in 1861 and is recognised as the first commercial pretzel bakery in America. It still operates, still run by Sturgis descendants, inside a 1784 stone house on the National Register, and visitors can twist their own.
A correction worth knowing before you plan: the Wilbur Chocolate factory closed in 2016 when Cargill moved production out, and the building is now a hotel. The Wilbur Chocolate store and museum across Broad Street is still open and still sells Wilbur Buds, which predate the Hershey Kiss. The Lititz Outdoor Fine Art Show fills Lititz Springs Park each summer with work from well over a hundred artists.
Kennett Square
Chocolate is not the only thing Pennsylvanians grow famous for. Kennett Square calls itself the Mushroom Capital of the World, and the claim rests on real numbers: Pennsylvania produces around 60 percent of all mushrooms grown in the United States, and this corner of Chester County is the centre of it. The Kennett Square Mushroom Festival each September draws tens of thousands.
Longwood Gardens is the other draw and arguably the better one, covering more than 1,100 acres with a four-acre conservatory holding twenty indoor gardens under glass. Pierre S. du Pont bought the property in 1906 to save its trees from a timber sale. The Main Fountain Garden runs shows with jets reaching 175 feet, and the Festival of Fountains runs from May into October. Timed tickets are required.
Anson B. Nixon Park handles the rest, with a dog park, picnic pavilions, and sports pitches.
Jim Thorpe
This town was called Mauch Chunk until 1954, when it bought the remains of an athlete who had never set foot here. Jim Thorpe, the Olympic gold medallist and professional footballer, died in 1953, and after Oklahoma declined to fund a memorial his widow struck a deal with two struggling Pennsylvania boroughs: they would merge, take his name, and build the tomb. They did.
The setting is the reason it works. Jim Thorpe sits in a steep gorge in the Poconos, which earned it the nickname the Switzerland of America, with Victorian row houses stacked up the hillsides. Race Street, often called Stone Row, is a line of 1848 houses built by the railroad magnate Asa Packer for his engineers.
The Old Jail Museum, built in 1871, held the Molly Maguires before several were hanged there, and a handprint on the wall of cell 17 is said to have been left by a condemned man protesting his innocence. The Asa Packer Mansion is preserved largely as the family left it, the Mauch Chunk Opera House has booked acts since 1881, and the Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway runs down the river.
York
The York Fair dates to 1765, which makes it older than the country, and it is generally recognised as the oldest fair in America. It runs annually as a multi-day event of music, food, and rides, though the dates have shifted in recent years, so check before travelling.
York was also briefly the seat of the Continental Congress, from September 1777 to June 1778, while the British held Philadelphia, and the Articles of Confederation were adopted here. The York County History Center, the Agricultural and Industrial Museum, and the Colonial Complex all cover that ground.
Springettsbury Park gives 51 acres with an amphitheatre, tennis, and a sand volleyball court. Downtown holds the galleries, the restaurants, and the First Friday art walk each month.
Making The Trip Work
These eleven are scattered across the state, so pick a corner rather than a circuit. Lititz, Kennett Square, Hershey, and York sit in the south-central and southeastern belt within a couple of hours of each other, and Doylestown is a short run further east. New Hope and Jim Thorpe sit east and north respectively, the first on the Delaware and the second in the Pocono gorges.
Wellsboro and Lewisburg are the northern stops and the furthest from anything, while Bedford and Gettysburg anchor the west and the south. Two practical notes: several of the museums here run on seasonal hours, and Longwood Gardens needs timed tickets booked ahead, particularly during the Festival of Fountains and the Christmas display.
