Day 24: Chocolate, Pretzels and Mushrooms in Pennsylvania

Most recently updated on March 24, 2024

Originally posted on April 12, 2021

It’s about a 2 ½ hour drive from Gettysburg to Philadelphia.

However, we’re going to stretch that out to six hours as we zig zag through southern Pennsylvania.

The first leg of today’s route takes us north on Highway 15 before we turn east on Interstate 76, a freeway that stretches from Philadelphia to Akron, Ohio.

Almost an hour after leaving Gettysburg, we reach Middletown, a quiet enclave of 9,600 people.

What brings us here today is not so much the town as the cooling towers three miles away that loom over the community.

In 1690, William Penn chose this location for a settlement along the banks of the Susquehanna River where Native American tribes had lived for centuries.

The first state road came through in 1736. The town was founded in 1755, deriving its name from the fact it was halfway between Lancaster and Carlisle.

Middletown served as a supply depot during the Revolutionary War. It grew rapidly after the construction of the Union and Pennsylvania canals, which connected Middletown with the city of Reading. Middletown emerged as the western terminus of the Union Canal, which operated from 1828 to 1884. Among other products, coal and iron were transported to and from the waterway.

Middletown, however, is best known today as the closest town to the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. The plant sits on an island in the Susquehanna River. It’s unclear if the island’s name comes from its length or how far it is from Middletown.

The facility suffered a meltdown in 1979 that abruptly put the brakes on the nuclear energy industry in this country.

The power plant, which at the time was owned by the General Public Utilities Corporation, had two separate generating units known as TMI-1 and TMI-2.

TMI-1 came on line in April 1974. It generated about 800 megawatts of electricity. TMI-2 began operations in December 1978. Its maximum generation capacity was about 900 megawatts.

At 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979, a cooling system malfunction caused severe damage to TMI-2’s reactor core. The unit was immediately shut down and 80,000 people quickly left the region to ensure their safety.

Officials estimated that 2 million people in central Pennsylvania were exposed to small amounts of radiation. The Pennsylvania Department of Health kept a registry of 30,000 people who lived within 5 miles of the plant for 18 years. It concluded there were no ill health effects from the accident.

A class action lawsuit over the nuclear accident was dismissed in 1996, although $25 million was paid out in insurance claims.

The reactor’s $973 million clean-up was finished in 1993 after 2.3 million gallons of wastewater was removed as well as 100 tons of damaged uranium fuel

The TMI-2 unit was never re-started. Its reactor core was removed and the facility was encased in concrete. The unit remains in monitored storage. However, concerns were raised in April 2020 over the ongoing disposal of contaminated material. In December 2020, the operating license for unit 2 was officially transferred to Exelon Generation, which purchased the power plant in 1998, so the company can finish decommissioning the damaged facility.

The TMI-1 unit was powered back up in 1985 and operated until September 2019 when it was shut down. Exelon officials said TMI-1 had become unprofitable and the company wasn’t successful in securing subsidies from the state.

About 300 employees remain on the site to wind down the closure. About 50 workers are expected to finish that job. That will last until at least 2029. Unit 1 still has its operating license for another 13 years, so technically it could be restarted, although that is unlikely.

The Three Mile Island incident remains the most significant accident in the history of U.S. commercial nuclear energy. However, there were no injuries or deaths officially reported and the contamination was reported by state officials to be relatively minimal.

Some of the residents of the town aren’t convinced of those findings. In the 2022 Netflix documentary, Meltdown, people who lived in town at the time say they and others they know have developed cancer in recent years. They’re convinced their illnesses were caused by their exposure to radiation after the 1979 incident at TMI-2. The documentary also details how some experts believe the plant came within 30 to 60 minutes of a catastrophic meltdown that would have killed thousands of people.

Whatever the case, the Three Mile Island incident, when compared to the fatal 1986 nuclear accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Russia, was a fender bender.

Nonetheless, it had some significant aftereffects.

The first reverberations actually involved a Hollywood film. “The China Syndrome,” starring Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas and Jack Lemmon, was the story of a meltdown and cover-up at a nuclear power plant. It opened 12 days before the Three Mile Island incident and was heavily criticized initially by the nuclear power industry. After the meltdown in central Pennsylvania, the movie took off at the box office.

The Three Mile Island incident also spurred new safety regulations as well as environmental protests. Public support for nuclear power plants dropped from 69 percent in 1977 to 46 percent in 1979.

The accident brought the industry to an abrupt halt. Only two new plants have been licensed since then. One of them, Plant Vogtle in Georgia, began initial operations in summer 2023.

Nonetheless, the United States is still the world leader in nuclear power production with 93 operating nuclear reactors producing 770,000 gigawatts of electricity per hour. France is a distant second with 56 operating reactors and China is second in production with 380,000 gigawatts per hour.

However, France is the leader from a percentage basis. Nuclear power produces 69 percent of that country’s electricity. The United States at under 20 percent isn’t in the top 15 countries.

There have been some lobbying efforts in recent years in support of nuclear plants in the wake of the climate change crisis because nuclear plants release no greenhouse gases and have zero carbon emissions.

However, nuclear power is now part of the past for Middletown.

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From Middletown we follow the Susquehanna River along Highway 230 for 20 minutes until we reach the state capital of Pennsylvania.

Harrisburg is a city of 50,000 people that is minority-majority. About 46 percent of the population is Black while 25 percent is Hispanic or Latino and another 25 percent is white.

The region was home to Native American tribes as early as 3000 B.C. They lived along the trails that led to the Delaware, Potomac and Ohio rivers.

The first European visitor was Captain John Smith, who ventured up the Susquehanna River in 1608, a year after he was reportedly saved from execution by Pocahontas. Smith met with the Susquehannock tribe and documented his findings.

The first European settler was John Harris Jr., who established a trading post in 1718 on 800 acres of land. The town was incorporated in 1791 and named state capital in 1812.

Harrisburg was an important stop in the westward migration of the 1800s. It sits in a mountain pass and has navigable river waters.

In the early 1800s, the city was an agricultural community. However, the arrival of the first railroad in 1831, the construction of the Pennsylvania Canal in 1834 and the completion of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s main line to Pittsburgh in 1847 turned Harrisburg into one of the most industrialized cities in the nation.

It became a railroad center as well as a major producer of steel and iron.

During the Civil War, Harrisburg was a training center for the Union armies. General Robert E. Lee tried in 1862 to capture the city but failed. In 1863, Lee’s planned invasion of Harrisburg was cancelled when his army changed course and headed to Gettysburg.

Today, Harrisburg is home to the National Civil War Museum, one of the country’s largest museums on the war. It opened in 2001. In a typical year, more than 40,000 people visit.

Harrisburg’s economy is now boosted by federal and state government agencies, but its heavy industries of the past have faded and the community has struggled. The median annual household income is $46,000. The poverty rate is 28 percent.

In 2011, the city’s financial difficulties caused it to be put into state receivership. That imposition was lifted in 2014 when the city’s fiscal situation stabilized.

However, in June 2019, the state filed for receivership of the Harrisburg School District. The request came less than a month after the district’s human resources manager was fired and all members of the school board members were ousted in an election. Two weeks later, a judge granted the state’s request and put the school district under receivership for three years. In March 2021, the appointed official overseeing the receivership reported progress on the district’s situation and outlined future steps. However, in June 2022, it was announced that the district will remain in receivership until at least 2025.

Despite its more industrial nature, Harrisburg is the setting for the Pennsylvania Farm Show, the largest indoor agricultural exposition in the country. It’s held in 11 buildings on 24 acres and includes 6,000 animals and 10,000 exhibits. It’s been held here every January since 1917 with 400,000 visitors in a typical year.

In 1956, the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show began a 57-year run in Harrisburg. The event showcased the latest in hunting and fishing gear with 1,200 vendors.

However, in 2013 show officials announced they would no longer allow the sale or display of military-style automatic weapons. Promoters and other sponsors pulled out. The National Rifle Association (NRA) and the National Shooting Sports Foundation withdrew their support, too.

The sports exhibition was replaced by the Great American Outdoor Show. That event, sponsored by the NRA, began in 2014. It’s the largest such show in the United States. It drew more than 200,000 spectators in 2024 with former President Donald Trump as its keynote speaker.

Among those who call Harrisburg home is former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Although he represented a district in Georgia while he was in the House of Representatives, Gingrich was born in Harrisburg.

A Sweet, Timely Ride

From Harrisburg, it’s less than a half-hour eastbound on Highway 322 to our next destination.

Hershey is a classic example of a company town.

It was founded in 1903 by Milton S. Hershey as the site of his new chocolate factory.

At age 14, Hershey had dropped out of school and begun an apprenticeship with a master confectioner in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. At age 17, he borrowed $150 from an aunt and set up his own candy shop in Philadelphia.

That business lasted for five years before Hershey had to shut it down. He joined his father in Denver and worked at another confectioner’s business. It was there he discovered the combination of fresh milk and caramel.

The young man set out again. After business failures in Chicago and New York, Hershey found success with the Lancaster Caramel Company in 1883. After attending the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, he founded the Hershey Chocolate Company.

In 1900, Hershey sold Lancaster Caramel for $1 million, a huge sum in those days.

Three years later, he began building the community that would become Hershey. The factory opened in 1905. The company was successful from the onset and boomed when Hershey developed his signature Kiss candy in 1907.

Hershey was not only a successful business owner, he was also a philanthropist.

In his town, he built schools, parks, recreational facilities and housing for his employees.

In 1909, Hershey and his wife, Catherine, who were unable to have children of their own, built the Hershey Industrial School for orphaned boys. The facility is now known as the Milton Hershey School and caters to both boys and girls. Since 1909, more than 10,000 children from low-income families have attended.

During the Great Depression in the 1930s, Hershey paid for the construction of a community center, a hotel and new offices for his company to provide jobs for local residents.

Hershey died in the town he created in 1945, but his community continued to thrive.

The original chocolate factory produced all the company’s chocolate until 1963 when a second facility was opened in Canada. A third factory went on line in California in 1965.

The original factory closed in 2012 due to high operating costs. Although some candy is still made in Hershey, hundreds of production jobs have been shipped to Mexico and other countries, a move that sparked a boycott of Hershey chocolate in some quarters.

The town of Hershey is now more of a family resort area than an industrial production center.

The local jobs are located in places such as Hersheypark, an amusement complex that features dozens of rides as well as a water park.

Hershey Chocolate World is a place to buy any brand of the company’s candy you’d like. There are also tours of the new chocolate factory.

Hersheypark Stadium has 15,000 seats and a capacity of 30,000 visitors for concerts. The stadium is also the locale for a number of sporting events, including the annual Cocoa Bean Game between the rival football teams from Hershey High and Milton S. Hershey High.

Hershey Gardens opened in 1937. It began as a showcase for roses and has blossomed into 23 acres of flowers, shrubs and trees.

The town refers to itself as “The Sweetest Place on Earth” with the intersection of Chocolate Avenue and Cocoa Avenue as the heart of downtown.

Hershey has a population of 14,000 and is quite different from nearby Harrisburg.

For starters, it’s 74 percent white. The median annual household income is $77,000, well above the $46,000 in Harrisburg. The median price for a Hershey home is more than $360,000 compared to $230,000 in Harrisburg. The poverty rate in Hershey is 8 percent, significantly lower than the 28 percent in Harrisburg.

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Just 40 minutes southeast of Hershey is another chocolate town that also has a place in snack food history.

Unlike Hershey, however, this community of 9,800 people was not founded with food in mind.

Lititz was established in 1742 by leaders of the Moravian Church, a European religion that is one of the oldest Protestant denominations in the world. The Moravians were fleeing from persecution in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. They named their new community after a town in their former country.

For the next 100 years, anyone moving into Lititz had to sign a document agreeing to a rigid code of behavior designed by the church.

During that time, the Linden Hall school for girls opened in 1746. It’s the oldest all-girls boarding school in the United States with an enrollment today of about 200 students.

During the Revolutionary War, the Moravian Brothers’ House was used as a hospital. In 1813, the town initiated a Fourth of July celebration. It’s now the oldest continuous Independence Day festival in the country.

The food industry got rolling here in 1861 with the opening of the Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery. It was the first commercial pretzel bakery in the United States. The bakery is still operating and it’s still owned by the Sturgis family. Visitors can get a tour of the bakery and learn how to twist dough into a pretzel shape.

Lititz is also home to the Wilbur Chocolate Company. The business began in Philadelphia in 1865 and moved its operations to Lititz in 1913. The company’s best known product is Wilbur Buds, which was introduced in 1894. The company’s plants still produce 240 million pounds of chocolate per year. None of that is manufactured any longer in Lititz. What is in the downtown location is a Wilbur Chocolate store that has the Candy Americana Museum inside.

One of the big non-food facilities in town is Rock Lititz. The 96-acre campus, which opened in 2014, provides a training facility for performers to practice live events. In April 2022, the owners of the complex said they were considering plans to expand.

Lititz prides itself these days on being full of small town character. It boasts about its coffee and pastry shops as well as trendy restaurants and craft beer breweries. It calls itself “America’s coolest small town,” an honor bestowed upon it in 2013 by Budget Travel.

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Our meandering path through southern Pennsylvania continues as we head south out of Lititz on Highway 501 until we’re just outside the city of Lancaster in the midst of Pennsylvania Dutch country.

From there, we turn west on Highway 30 until we reach the borough of Columbia, a town of 10,000 people that grew up on iron ore and is now the home of one of the few museums devoted to time.

This area was originally inhabited by native tribes such as the Shawnee.

It was settled in 1726 by English Quakers. It was initially called Wright’s Ferry after evangelist John Wright. In 1730, Wright set up a ferry system using canoes, rafts and flatboats to help travelers cross the Susquehanna River.

The town was renamed Columbia in 1788 in honor of Christopher Columbus in a failed attempt to become the nation’s capital, a bid that came just one vote shy of success. A few decades later, Columbia also lost its quest to be named Pennsylvania state capital.

In 1833, the town became the western terminus for the Pennsylvania Canal. The first railroad arrived a year later.

In 1863, the local citizens burned a mile-long bridge to prevent Confederate soldiers from crossing the Susquehanna on their march toward Lancaster. The bridge’s large stone pillars remain on the banks of the river.

Iron ore deposits were discovered in the mid-1800s and the iron industry quickly developed. At one point, there were 11 blast furnaces in the Columbia area.

By 1900, most of the local iron ore furnaces were closed due to competition from larger steel mills in other parts of the state.

For more than 50 years, Columbia has been home to the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors. The group was organized in 1943 by three watch collectors. Today, it has nearly 10,000 members worldwide.

The headquarters on Poplar Street include a clock tower, research center and a school for clock and watch repairers.

The complex also houses the National Watch and Clock Museum, one of the few facilities in the world focused on horology, the science of time. The museum, which opened in 1977, has displays that range from early sun dials and hour glasses to wrist watches and atomic clocks. One of the spotlighted artifacts is a German table clock from about 1570. In all, there are 13,000 items in the museum.

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There’s no time to waste as we cut back on Highway 30 and through the Lancaster area again.

A half-hour east of Lancaster we arrive at Coatesville, a town of 13,000 with a long history of steel production and strong ties to the World Trade Center in New York City.

The community is an ethnic mix with 42 percent of its residents listed as Black, 27 percent as Hispanic or Latino and 25 percent as white.

It’s been a working class town since early settlers started trading furs with local native tribes in the early 1700s.

One of the first residents was Moses Coates, who bought a log cabin from an original settler in 1787. The area’s first factory, the Federal Slitting Mill, began operations in 1793.

The Lancaster Turnpike, now Highway 30, was completed in 1795, becoming the first hard-surfaced road and the first toll road in the nation. The Coates family sold land along the roadway to help develop the town. There was a toll gate at Coatesville, making the town a natural stopping point.

Around the same time, a saw mill was converted into the Brandywine Iron Works and Nail Factory. The community grew along with the mill, which eventually became Lukens Steel.

In the 1900s, Lukens officials recruited immigrants from eastern and southern Europe as well as Black and white migrants from the South. Racial tensions rose as the competition for jobs heated up.

In 1911, Zachariah Walker, an African-American steel worker, was lynched. He had shot and killed a steel mill police officer during a scuffle. Walker said it was in self-defense, but a lynch mob disagreed. Walker shot himself as the posse closed in on him, but he was only injured and taken to a hospital. The next day, the mob snatched Walker from his hospital bed and dragged him to a large fire pit. He was thrown into the flames three different times while a crowd of thousands watched.

Authorities indicted 15 people in Walker’s murder, but all of them were acquitted in trials. It was the eighth and final lynching in Pennsylvania. The incident prompted some African-Americans in Coatesville to form protection groups. It also eventually led state legislators to adopt anti-lynching laws in 1923. A historic marker was dedicated in 2006.

Despite the racial unrest, Lukens continued to prosper. During the early 1900s, the company had the widest rolling mill in the world. The facility was put into heavy use during World War Two.

Over the decades, the plant produced steel for the St. Louis Arch and the World Trade Center. In 1969, the Lukens factory supplied 152 fork-like steel support beams for the New York City skyscraper. Many of the “steel trees” were still standing after the buildings collapsed during the 2001 terrorist attacks.

In 2010, 20 of those beams were returned to Coatesville and are now part of the National Iron and Steel Heritage Museum, which showcases the city’s steel industry history. The beams are part of the remembrance ceremonies held annually on September 11.

The Lukens mill is now owned by Cleveland-Cliffs. It employs 630 employees on 950 acres, producing steel plates from scrap metal for airlines, construction firms and the military. It’s the oldest continuously operating steel mill in the country.

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Our wandering path continues out of Coatesville as we travel south on Highway 82.

In less than half an hour, we reach Kennett Square, an upper income borough of 6,200 people near the Delaware border that’s known for its mushrooms.

The Lenape tribe inhabited this region for centuries before European settlers arrived in the 1680s. The town was formed from a square mile land grant bestowed by William Penn.

Many early settlers grew produce. They also built a toll road to Wilmington, Delaware, known as the Kennett Pike.

In 1885, florist William Swayne decided to make use of the space underneath the raised flower beds in his greenhouses. So, he brought spawn from England and experimented with mushroom cultivation.

His success led to a canning business. Other farmers joined him in growing mushrooms.

Today, all of the mushroom farms are outside of town. The nearby growers produce more than 1 million pounds of mushrooms per day, half of the nation’s crop.

The town calls itself the “Mushroom Capital of the World.” It also holds the annual Kennett Mushroom Festival in September.

With the farms outside of town, Kennett Square has morphed into a small upscale community with shops and restaurants.

The downtown area features The Mushroom Cap store as well as the Talula’s Table farm-to-table restaurant.

The median annual household income is $70,000 and the poverty rate rests at 2 percent. The median home price is about $560,000.

The demographics of the town have shifted the past two decades, mainly due to the farm laborers who live in Kennett Square. The community has gone from being 60 percent white and 28 percent Hispanic in 2000 to 54 percent white and 35 percent Hispanic or Latino today.

A city overview in 2019 for the planned addition of 762 new housing units in the borough has spotlighted a debate over the disparity among Kennett Square citizens. Only 60 of those future units were scheduled to be affordable housing. Critics say the housing blueprint highlights the difference between rich and poor in Kennett Square. The affordable housing units were made available in September 2022.

Swinging through Delaware

We continue south out of Kennett Square on Highway 82, the old Kennett Pike.

Within minutes, we cross the border into Delaware.

After a few miles, we merge onto Highway 52 south and find ourselves in the midst of what’s known as Delaware’s 12 Mile Circle.

This is a semi-circle of land that sticks up into Pennsylvania. It looks like a dome sitting atop Delaware.

The arc of property has origins dating back to 1682. We explain the anomaly more in our story on quirky geography in the United States.

Delaware prides itself on being the first colony to become a state. It did so on December 7, 1787, five days ahead of Pennsylvania and 11 days before New Jersey.

Delaware is the second smallest state in terms of area at 1,955 square miles. Only Rhode Island has less acreage.

Delaware is also 45^th in population with slightly more than 1 million residents. Nonetheless, Delaware is the sixth most densely populated state. Its median annual household income is about $79,000.

Its mean elevation is 60 feet, the lowest average of any state. Even less than Florida.

Delaware has only three counties, the least of any state. The southern two counties are more agricultural while the northern county is more industrial.

The value of Delaware’s agricultural products is about $1.3 billion per year. Chickens are the number one commodity while corn is the top crop.

Chemicals are Delaware’s primary manufacturing industry with food processing second. Finance, insurance and real estate are also important economic sectors. Delaware is ranked last among states in mineral production.

Delaware is also well known as a place where businesses like to file their incorporation papers. That’s because of the state’s corporate friendly laws that offer tax liability and legal protections.

Among the benefits are the fact one person can hold numerous executive titles. In addition, business owners don’t have to list their names on filing papers, so they can maintain a level of privacy. There’s also no minimum requirement for a bank account. Delaware also doesn’t impose a state income tax on businesses that don’t operate within the state, even if their legal papers are filed here.

There are some drawbacks. Filing fees are higher here than in most states. There is a franchise tax. And corporations still have to follow the rules of the states where they do business.

Nonetheless, 1.5 million companies have filed their corporation papers in Delaware. Among them are well-known names such as Coca-Cola and Geico, although their office headquarters are elsewhere.

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Highway 52 takes us to one of Delaware’s most industrial areas.

Wilmington is the most populous city in the state with 72,000 residents, down significantly from its peak of 112,000 in 1940. The city remains diversified with a population that is 53 percent Black, 30 percent white and 11 percent Hispanic or Latino.

It’s also the hometown of President Joe Biden, whose November 2020 election victory brought the community some notoriety.

The Lenape tribe occupied the region for centuries. In 1638, settlers from Sweden arrived and built Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in the United States.

The Dutch conquered the region in 1655 and created New Netherland. The British colonized the area in 1664. A borough charter was granted to Wilmington in 1739 and it was incorporated in 1832.

In 1802, Eleuthere Irenee du Pont established a company to produce black powder and other explosives in a factory he had built near Wilmington. His gunpowder sales rose dramatically during the War of 1812. And this was just the beginning.

The Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad arrived in 1837 and Wilmington quickly developed into an industrial town, taking advantage of the rails as well as its location along the Delaware River.

In the 1840s, the DuPont company began selling a “soda powder” that could be used in mines, quarries and other ventures. It was the nation’s first industrial explosive. It was a popular product for miners during the California Gold Rush.

During the Civil War, the city supplied ships, railroad cars, gunpowder, shoes and other war-related items to Union forces.

By 1868, Wilmington was producing more iron ships than the rest of the country combined. It was also the top producer of gunpowder.

In the 1880s, DuPont increased its product line by manufacturing nitroglycerin and dynamite. In 1907, the company was the target of an antitrust lawsuit because of its near monopoly of the explosives industry. DuPont was forced to divest some of its gunpowder operations.

In the first half of the 1900s, Wilmington flourished during both world wars with its shipyards, steel foundries and chemical plants operating 24 hours a day.

Meanwhile, the Dupont company was expanding into the chemical industry. By the 1920s, it was producing paints, acids and heavy chemicals. In 1931, DuPont introduced a synthetic rubber. In 1938, it was marketing nylon products.

Since then, the company has developed synthetic products such as Lucite, Teflon, Orlon, Mylar, Kevlar and Dacron polyester.

In 2015, DuPont merged with Dow Chemical to form DowDuPont. In 2019, the two companies agreed to a separation.

The company’s history is remembered at the Nemours Estate, the former residence of philanthropist Alfred I. duPont. The 77-room mansion, which totals 47,000 square feet, was completed in 1910. It sits on 300 acres and was designed to emulate the Versailles palace in France.

In the 1950s, the automobile, freeways and the development of suburbs caused a decline in Wilmington’s population.

In the 1980s, banking and financial operations migrated to the city due to its relaxed banking laws.

Since the 1990s, Wilmington has tried to revitalize its shipyards and aging waterfront. City leaders point to the Riverfront neighborhood as one of the successes.

Since 2017, new policing policies have helped lower the violent crime rate. City officials reported that in 2023 Wilmington saw a 22 percent decrease in murders, although car thefts significantly increased.

Two well-known actors are from Wilmington.

Aubrey Plaza, one of the stars of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” was born here as was film star Elisabeth Shue.

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To finish today’s winding path from Gettysburg, we take our old friend from our Southern travels, Interstate 95, along the Delaware River.

After 40 minutes we cross back into Pennsylvania, making it the first state we officially enter twice. In a matter of minutes, we arrive at Philadelphia.

The city now sports a population of 1.5 million, down from a high of 2 million in 1950. However, it’s still the most populous city in Pennsylvania with more than five times the population of second place Pittsburgh. Philadelphia is also the sixth most populous city in the country. It’s the most populated place we visit during our 60-day journey, edging out San Antonio, Texas, for the honor.

The population in the region is an ethnic mix with 43 percent listed as Black, 34 percent as white, 16 percent as Hispanic or Latino and 8 percent as Asian.

There is so much to talk about when it comes to Philadelphia from its place in the American Revolution to the 1918 flu pandemic to its expansive program for murals to its Boathouse Row to its cheesesteaks.

But all that can wait until tomorrow.

Philadelphia is the only two-night stay on our itinerary and we can explore the city tomorrow. That is, after we visit two nearby locations that are a big part of Revolutionary War folklore.