John Studebaker

East Berlin, PA · est. 1970

Built around 1790 by David Studebaker—a carpenter, farmer, and minister—this early Pennsylvania home stands connected to one of America's great manufacturing dynasties. The Studebaker family to which he was related would go on to build the wagons that carried settlers west and, later, automobiles. Today the house is privately kept as a museum.

Monroe Township, PA · est. 1980

In the decades after the Civil War, farmers organized into the Grange movement to fight railroad monopolies and share knowledge, and Williams Grove became one of its great gathering places. Founded in 1874 by Robert H. Thomas of the Pennsylvania State Grange, the Great Grangers' Interstate Picnic Exhibition drew crowds estimated at 100,000 or more in a single week by the 1890s. The nearby John Williams House, built around 1799, anchored the site to an earlier era of rural Pennsylvania life.

Hamiltonban Township, PA · est. 1967

In 1836, as Pennsylvania threw itself into a canal-and-railroad building spree, the state chartered a rail line through the rugged Adams County countryside, pushed hard by the young Gettysburg lawyer and future Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens. Critics mocked its winding route through the hills as the "Tapeworm," and the project—never finished as planned—was put up for sale by 1842. Its abandoned granite viaduct still stands nearby as a monument to an overambitious age of internal improvements.

Butler Township, PA · est. 2021

Established in 1918 to help Pennsylvania's orchardists tackle mounting problems in the field, the Fruit Research and Extension Center began in Arendtsville before moving to this Adams County site in 1971. Set in the heart of the state's apple and peach country, the center pioneered work on fruit production and disease and helped develop integrated pest management, a smarter approach to controlling insects. Its research has shaped how fruit is grown and marketed far beyond Pennsylvania.