These Small Towns in Pennsylvania Come Alive in Summer
Jim Thorpe's outfitters check the Lehigh River gauge three times a day in May. The spring melt and the upstream dam releases conspire to either deliver a perfect Class II run or pin a raft against a midstream boulder, and there is no in-between. Mt. Gretna's Playhouse season opens around the same time, in a building that has been throwing summer plays since 1927 and still doesn't have a proper green room. Eagles Mere's August Water Carnival, going since 1908, is the kind of small-town tradition where cottage families spend July building floats out of plywood and Christmas lights for one night on the lake. Nine Pennsylvania towns below, each with a summer reason worth showing up for.
Jim Thorpe
You come off the Lehigh wet and shaking and find that the Victorian downtown is right there waiting, two blocks of brick and mansard roofs steaming in the afternoon sun. The town wraps a river gorge so steep that the 1820s funicular hauling coal up the mountain ran cable-and-pulley because no horse could climb it. Whitewater season runs May into October. Dam-release weekends, when the upstream Francis E. Walter Reservoir lets extra flow downstream, are when the trips get serious. Pocono Biking on Susquehanna Street shuttles riders to Rockport or White Haven for the 25-mile downhill back along the Lehigh Gorge Trail, an old rail bed that still feels like one. The Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway makes a 16-mile round trip from the restored 1888 Central Railroad of New Jersey station, and the Asa Packer Mansion at the top of Packer Hill (built in 1861 for the founder of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and Lehigh University, sealed shut since the family closed it in 1912) opens for guided tours through the warm months. The interior has not been modernized. The Packers' last Christmas tree is still on the parlor table where they left it.
Mt. Gretna
Three working summer institutions and almost nothing else. That is the entire point. The Playhouse has run a professional summer season since 1927, in a building that goes back to 1892, when the Pennsylvania Chautauqua Society first set up here to lecture and stage plays for self-improving Victorian families. New show every week. Comedies one week, musicals the next. The open-air Tabernacle, all rough wooden pews and a band shell, fills with summer concerts and lectures in that same Chautauqua tradition. The lake and beach is a private swimming association. Memorial Day through Labor Day, members and day-passes only. which is exactly why the water stays clean and the crowd stays sane. The Mt. Gretna Bike Trail follows an old narrow-gauge rail bed through state forest for a couple of slow miles, perfect for a loop after the Playhouse lets out at ten and the night air smells like white pine.
Eagles Mere
Population 120 in winter. A few thousand in summer, and most of them are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of people who've been coming here since their own grandchildren were children. The lake is the entire reason: clear, spring-fed, with a sandy swim area you wade out into until the cold makes you laugh. The Water Carnival, on a Saturday in August every year since 1908 (with maybe two pandemic-year exceptions), is what holds the place together. Cottage families spend July building themed floats out of plywood and Christmas lights, paddle them around the lake at dusk to a sound system rigged on a dock, and a small panel of locals picks winners. The Eagles Mere Inn on Mary Avenue runs travelers through at a pace that lets you nap before dinner. Hunters Lake five miles south is the spillover option when the main lake feels crowded. The main lake almost never does.
Wellsboro
People in this part of the country call Pine Creek Gorge the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania, and the comparison happens to be earned. The gorge runs about 47 miles through Tioga and Lycoming counties, with the most-photographed overlooks at Leonard Harrison State Park on the east rim and Colton Point on the west, both about 10 miles from town. The Pine Creek Rail Trail runs 62 miles along the gorge floor. The busiest section is the 17 miles between Ansonia and Blackwell that drops most of the elevation, and the outfitters in town shuttle riders to the top so you can coast back without earning it. Hills Creek State Park's lake holds the calmer swimming for the day after. The Wellsboro Diner on Main Street has served the same diner-counter rotation since the late 1930s. pancakes, coffee, and a meatloaf plate that hasn't needed updating. Penn Wells Hotel a few doors down keeps gas lamps lit along the sidewalk after dark, a holdover from when the town ran a working gaslight system in the 1890s and the engineers apparently liked it enough to keep some lit.
Somerset
The Whiskey Rebellion. That's Somerset's claim, and it mostly gets skipped in school textbooks. From 1791 to 1794, southwestern Pennsylvania farmers refused to pay the federal whiskey tax (small distillers were getting taxed harder than big distillers. yes, lobbyist-tax-policy was already a thing). It became the first real test of federal authority under the new Constitution. President Washington personally led 13,000 troops west to put it down. The army marched right through Somerset. Uptown Somerset's historic district still carries that period in its brick architecture, with the Somerset County Courthouse anchoring the square. Kooser State Park nine miles southwest holds a trout-stocked lake and a CCC-era picnic grove from the 1930s. go in June, when the laurel is in bloom along the shoreline. The Somerset Historical Center on Route 985 traces rural southwestern Pennsylvania life from the 18th century forward. And fifteen minutes east, the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville is the other reason people stop here. The two stops together do a strange thing: they remind you that this corner of the state has been a witness to American history in moments separated by 207 years and a kind of weight that doesn't quite fit anywhere else.
Renovo
About 1,200 year-round residents, and a population that swells with people who come for the trails, the river, and the kind of small Pennsylvania town that hasn't been rediscovered yet. Renovo runs along the West Branch Susquehanna River in Clinton County. Bucktail State Park Natural Area wraps the corridor and gives the area its mountain-canyon feel. narrow road, no shoulder, deer on the road at dusk. Hyner View State Park six miles east is the regional anchor for hang gliding. A wooden launch ramp sits on a cliff overlooking the river roughly 1,300 feet below. Pilots come from across the eastern US when the wind sits right out of the south, and on a good Saturday in July you can stand at the overlook and count a dozen gliders working the ridge thermals. The Flaming Foliage Festival each October pulls the biggest single crowd of the year. But the summer fly-fishing on the West Branch and its tributaries is what brings the quiet repeat traffic. Local guides will take you out, sell you flies you didn't know you needed, and leave you on a stretch where you won't see anyone else for hours.
New Hope
New Hope sits on the Delaware River in Bucks County, with Lambertville, New Jersey, on the opposite bank. A small steel bridge connects them, and pedestrians, cyclists, and car traffic all share it. The two towns together work as one weekend split by water. you cross for breakfast, cross back for dinner, and nobody really tracks which side they're on. Delaware Canal State Park follows about 60 miles of towpath along the old canal that carried 19th-century coal barges down to tidewater. The trail runs the length of downtown New Hope and is a good post-lunch walk when the heat lifts. Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve a couple of miles south covers 134 acres of native plant exhibits, with peak bloom April into June. The Bucks County Playhouse operates in a converted 1790 grist mill on South Main Street and runs a serious summer professional theater season. actor sightings in the cafes are part of the deal, and locals have learned to keep their phones in their pockets. The New Hope and Ivyland Railroad runs summer steam-train excursions from the 1891 station downtown.
Ridgway
The lumber boom built Main Street, and the lumber boom's leftovers still walk the streets. The lumber kings of the late 1800s built the Victorians along the stretch known locally as Millionaires Row. money made cutting white pine and hemlock out of the surrounding hills, spent on cupolas and turreted porches. The Clarion River south of town runs Class I-II paddling water that suits canoes and kayaks. Outfitters run shuttles to put-ins and pick you up downstream. The bigger story: Elk County holds Pennsylvania's only wild free-roaming elk herd. The elk were extirpated from the state in 1867 and reintroduced in 1913 with stock shipped in from Yellowstone, which is the kind of conservation story that nobody outside Pennsylvania knows. Today the Elk Country Visitor Center at Benezette, 30 miles west, runs viewing platforms and timing tips for the bugle in September. Bring binoculars if you go at sunrise. You will need them. And if you've never heard a bull elk bugle from a half-mile away in the cold pre-dawn. it sounds like a saxophone being played by something the size of a small truck.
Zelienople
Detmar Basse, a Prussian immigrant, founded Zelienople in 1802 and named it for his daughter Zelie. He thought he was building a New World aristocratic colony. Things did not go to plan. Two centuries later the borough is a 30-mile drive north of Pittsburgh with a Main Street that still carries a 19th-century streetscape and the 1914 Strand Theater as its centerpiece. The Strand was rescued by a community nonprofit in the early 2000s and now books touring music acts and films year-round, with outdoor courtyard programming on summer Saturdays. sit outside on a July evening with a paper plate of food and hear a band you actually came to hear. Connoquenessing Creek runs along the south edge of town for fishing access. Brush Creek Park covers 350 acres of trails and picnic grounds. The Zelienople Historical Society preserves the 1805 Buhl House, the boyhood home of Henry Buhl Jr., whose 20th-century philanthropic legacy through the Buhl Foundation still pays the house's bills.
A Summer Worth Planning
Pick the weekend by what you actually want to do. Whitewater in early May at Jim Thorpe. Opening night at the Mt. Gretna Playhouse. The Water Carnival at Eagles Mere on a Saturday in August (and book the cottage by April. they go fast). The Pine Creek Gorge overlooks at Wellsboro in any month. The September elk bugle at Benezette outside Ridgway. The hang-glider lineup at Hyner View on a clear July afternoon. The summer band on the Strand courtyard at Zelienople. Each of these nine towns gives you one specific reason to drive, and a downtown holding something worth eating, sleeping in, and walking through when the day's main event is over.
