Walk the Footsteps of America's Past
Philadelphia's medical past is hiding in plain sight, a few blocks from the Liberty Bell crowds. This compact drive-and-walk loop links the nation's first hospital, its first medical society, the yellow-fever wards of 1793, and the uneasy teaching collections that still shape how Americans think about doctors.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike once squeezed through Rays Hill and Sideling Hill. In 1968, a new alignment left 13 miles behind. Today you can bike or hike the old road—tunnels, cracked pavement, and all—for a day trip that feels like walking through a retired superhighway.
Long before asphalt, Pennsylvania’s plank roads and turnpikes were wooden ribbons of commerce, dotted with tollhouses and mile markers. This back-roads itinerary hunts the surviving traces—and explains how the tollgate economy quietly decided which towns grew and which ones withered.
Every third old inn in Pennsylvania claims a president once slept under its roof. Some of those claims come with rent receipts, newspaper accounts, and a National Park Service ranger; others come with a hand-lettered sign and a hopeful smile. This three-day drive visits both kinds and hands you a field guide for telling them apart.
Skip the same old battlefield loop this Thanksgiving and follow your appetite through Pennsylvania's living-history kitchens, German-market towns, and Moravian baking traditions. This long-weekend drive pairs colonial hearth cooking with modern bakeries, country markets, and the stories behind the dishes that still show up on American holiday tables.
The 1889 Johnstown Flood gets the headlines, but Pennsylvania is dotted with dam ruins, high-water plaques, and small museums that tell quieter stories of survival. This three-day drive links Austin, Lock Haven, Williamsport, and Johnstown, pairing engineering relics with the cemeteries and storefronts where communities rebuilt.
Nine out of every ten Pennsylvania state forest trees were planted by young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps — and their fire towers, lodges, and stone picnic shelters still crown the ridgelines. This day trip route takes you to the lookouts you can still climb and the camps that quietly disappeared into the woods.
Hollywood has been borrowing Pennsylvania's historic backdrops for a century, and most travelers drive right past them. This itinerary pairs famous filming locations with the real stories that happened on the ground — so you can snap the photo and walk away knowing what the cameras left out.
Pennsylvania built warships on two bodies of water — the Delaware and the Lake Erie shore — and you can still trace the whole story on a long-weekend loop. Here's how to drive it, what's left to see, and where the shipyard story refuses to sink.
Eckley is a museum, Skyline View is a neighborhood, and hundreds of rows of company houses in between are just... home to somebody. This Coal Region loop through Carbon, Luzerne, and Schuylkill counties shows you how to tell the difference — and how to visit like a neighbor instead of a tourist.
Swap colonial cobblestones for concrete silos on a two-day drive through Pennsylvania's Cold War leftovers — abandoned Nike missile bases, the birthplace of commercial nuclear power, and radar posts that once watched the sky for Soviet bombers. It's the strangest history road trip the state has to offer, and much of it is disappearing fast.
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.
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.
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.