Walk the Footsteps of America's Past
Most heritage road-trippers point their cars at Philadelphia and never look north, but Erie holds the flagship that won the Battle of Lake Erie and a museum ship still sailing under steam. Here's how to spend two days at Pennsylvania's only ocean-touching port.
Everyone knows Valley Forge and Gettysburg, but the war that set America's fate in motion started in the thickets of southwestern Pennsylvania. This two-day loop through the Laurel Highlands follows a 22-year-old George Washington from his first ambush to his first surrender — and almost nobody else is there.
Long before Pittsburgh's smokestacks, rural Pennsylvania's stone cold-blast furnaces turned forest and ore into the iron that armed the Union and built American railroads. This two-day itinerary leads you to restored stacks, trailside ruins, and small-town museums where the first American industrial empire still smolders in memory.
While the Continental Army marched and suffered, Pennsylvania's women ran the farms, fed the troops, and occasionally spied on the British. This two-day driving loop through Bucks and Chester counties puts their stories on the map — with farmstands, covered bridges, and pie stops along the way.
Everyone points you to Lancaster, but Pennsylvania's wilder religious experiments happened elsewhere. This three-day loop runs from the Delaware's old Swedish landing spots to the Ephrata Cloister to the Welsh Quaker meetinghouses of the Main Line — with good meals and comfy beds along the way.
The industrial titans of the 19th century built their summer escape route straight up the Delaware River, and you can drive it in a weekend. From Torresdale to Milford, here's how to tour the great houses, hear the scandalous backstories, and eat like you've got a coal fortune.
In the fall of 1794, George Washington personally led the largest army America would field until the Civil War into the mountains of western Pennsylvania. This three-day drive follows his route from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, through the towns where the federal government first proved it had teeth.
Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Lititz form America's newest UNESCO World Heritage site, and they're an easy weekend from Philadelphia or New York. Here's how to spend 48 hours among 1740s stone buildings, a bakery older than the nation, and the longest-running music festival in the country.
Dams, reservoirs, and quarries swallowed whole communities across Pennsylvania, and most travelers paddle right over them without a clue. Here's where to go to stand — or float — directly above the lost villages of the Susquehanna watershed and beyond.
The Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor stitches together 165 miles of canal towpath, company towns, and coal-country history into one of the best multi-day rides on the East Coast. Here's how to break it into four days your legs and your curiosity will both thank you for.
Colonial taverns weren't just places to eat — they were post offices, courthouses, and rumor mills where the Revolution got organized over tankards of ale. A handful of Pennsylvania's originals are still pouring, and you can still get a plate at every one of them.
The best seat for Pennsylvania's fall foliage isn't on the highway — it's in a vintage railcar. Here's why the state's heritage railroads outshine every overcrowded overlook, plus how to build a weekend around them.
Follow the most famous boundary in American history, one limestone marker at a time. This two-day itinerary traces the Mason-Dixon Line through farm country, border towns, and the surveying story most people never learned in school.
You can tour Independence Hall in forty minutes or you can spend a whole weekend inside Philadelphia's history — including the night. These five historic hotels and inns put you within a stone's throw of the founding era, and we rate whether the history justifies the bill.
Pennsylvania has more blue-and-gold historical markers than any state in the union, and some of them are flat-out weird. We built a two-day scavenger-hunt route past seven of the strangest, from a marker about a flying... thing to the ones that got it wrong — or left somebody out entirely.
Want your history with a pillow and a hot breakfast? These seven Pennsylvania inns and taverns hosted Washington, quartered soldiers, or watched the Continental Army march past — and every one of them has a bed you can sleep in tonight.
The colonial story gets the textbooks, but the Gilded Age built the country — and Pennsylvania was its engine room. This four-day itinerary follows anthracite, canals, and steel through Scranton, Eckley, and the Alleghenies before more of it disappears.
Gettysburg gets the crowds, but the Revolution is where America was actually argued into existence — and Pennsylvania holds the proof. Seven under-visited sites, each perfect for a day trip, from winter encampments to the bloodiest hour of the war's Philadelphia campaign.
Forget the textbook version of the Underground Railroad — Pennsylvania lets you stand inside the story. This three-day driving route links Philadelphia's free Black churches with farmhouse hideaways in Chester and Bucks counties, where freedom seekers found refuge on their way north.