Mount Gretna and Governor Dick Tower

Mount Gretna grew up in the 1880s and 1890s along a narrow-gauge railroad, first as a picnic ground and resort and then as the site of a Pennsylvania Chautauqua, part of a national movement that brought lectures, concerts, and adult education to summer communities across the country. Families built modest woodland cottages, many still standing, and gathered in open-air halls to hear speakers and music.

That heritage still shapes the place. The community keeps up its summer programs of arts, theater, and Chautauqua-style talks, and the compact village of narrow lanes and Victorian cottages has been carefully preserved. The Lebanon Valley was part of the ancestral homeland of the Susquehannock and, along the wider region, the Lenape, whose descendant nations continue elsewhere today. Long before the resort, iron furnaces worked these hills, and the tower's namesake ridge is tied to that early industrial past.

On the forested height of Governor Dick Hill stands the observation tower that draws hikers up from the village. Built of concrete in the mid-1900s on land given for a public park, it rises well above the treetops, and inside a sequence of stairs and ladders leads to a viewing level at the top.

From that height the reward is a sweeping panorama, the wooded ridges of the Lebanon Valley rolling away in every direction, patchworked with farm fields and, on a clear day, distant landmarks. The tower sits within the Clarence Schock Memorial Park, a large tract of forest laced with trails, so the walk to and from the tower is as much of the outing as the view itself.

Part of Mount Gretna's charm is how little it has changed. The lanes are lined with tall trees and characterful cottages, and at the center sits the Jigger Shop, a beloved open-air ice cream parlor and soda fountain that has served the community for generations. There is a small lake for swimming and boating, an outdoor theater, and a scattering of shops and galleries.

The pace here is deliberately slow. People come to walk the shaded streets, sit with an ice cream, take in a summer concert or play, and feel the unhurried rhythm of a Victorian resort that never quite modernized. It is the kind of place that rewards wandering rather than a checklist.

Summer is Mount Gretna's high season, when the cottages fill, the theater and Chautauqua programs run, and the annual arts festival draws crowds to the wooded village. The tower hike is popular then too, with the deep green forest offering welcome shade.

Fall brings color to the ridges and a fine, crisp view from the tower, along with quieter streets. Winter and early spring are hushed, the cottages mostly still, though the trails and the tower remain open to those who want a bracing walk and a bare-branch view across the valley.

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