Idlewild and SoakZone

Idlewild began in 1878 not as an amusement park but as a picnic ground, laid out by the Ligonier Valley Rail Road along the Loyalhanna Creek to give city families a wooded place to spend a summer day, reached by train. The railroad's owner, Judge Thomas Mellon, saw the value in a pretty destination at the end of the line, and the grove drew crowds from Pittsburgh and the mill towns for outings and gatherings. Over the decades it added a lake, a carousel, and rides, growing slowly into a full amusement park while keeping its shaded, gentle feeling, and in the middle of the twentieth century it added Story Book Forest, a walk-through world of fairy-tale scenes, and later the trolley ride through Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, cementing its identity as a park built for the youngest visitors.

Now among the oldest continuously operating amusement parks in the country, Idlewild has been run for generations and has repeatedly been named one of the best parks for families with young children. Its endurance owes much to what it has refused to become, for it never traded its trees and its tenderness for a race toward taller and faster rides.

The park's signature attraction grew out of a genuine Pittsburgh institution. Fred Rogers created Mister Rogers' Neighborhood at WQED in Pittsburgh, and for decades it taught American children patience, kindness, and how to name their feelings. The show's imaginary land, the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, was reached by a small trolley, and at Idlewild that trolley became real.

Riders board a trolley and roll slowly through recreated scenes from the show, past King Friday's castle, the clock of Daniel Striped Tiger, and the other landmarks and characters of the Neighborhood, with narration drawn from the program. For families across western Pennsylvania and beyond, the ride is a tender bit of childhood made touchable, and it draws visitors who grew up on the show back with children of their own.

Idlewild sits in the Laurel Highlands, a region of forested ridges, rivers, and historic towns in southwestern Pennsylvania. Nearby Ligonier is a handsome old town built around a diamond-shaped town square, with a reconstructed colonial fort that recalls the French and Indian War, when this frontier country was bitterly contested.

The land was long the homeland of Native peoples, including the Lenape, the Shawnee, and the Haudenosaunee nations who lived and traveled through these Allegheny ridges before displacement in the colonial and early national eras. None are federally recognized in Pennsylvania today, and descendant nations continue elsewhere. The wooded grove that became Idlewild is a small green pocket of that older forested country.

Idlewild is a warm-weather park, opening for the summer season and closing before the cold sets in. Late spring and early summer bring pleasant weather and lighter crowds, a fine time to enjoy the rides and the shaded grounds before the peak of the season.

Midsummer is the busiest, when the SoakZone water park is the big draw on hot days and families fill the grounds, so an early arrival helps. Toward the end of the season the park runs a fall event with a lighter, family-friendly Halloween theme, a gentle way to close out the year among the turning leaves of the Laurel Highlands.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.