Landmark Bus Tour: Cumberland County Sites and Landmarks

1230 North 3rd Street,Harrisburg PA 17102

02 October, 2022

Description

The Historic Harrisburg Association will be conducting a special bus tour of historic sites and landmarks in Cumberland County, from Fort Couch in Lemoyne to King’s Gap Mansion in Mt. Holly Springs, on Sunday, October 2, from 10 AM to 3 PM. The cost is $50, or $40 for Historic Harrisburg members, includes transportation, lunch, on-board snacks, a tote bag, and all admission fees. Riding on the success of its 2021 bus tour in Dauphin County, Historic Harrisburg’s Education Committee has devised this all-new multi-stop tour featuring some of the important, but often overlooked, historic sites and landmarks extending across Cumberland County from Harrisburg’s West Shore. The tour will begin and end at the Historic Harrisburg Resource Center, 1230 N. Third Street. The Resource Center will feature Historic Harrisburg’s newest exhibit, “Remembering Harrisburg’s Vanished African American Neighborhoods.” Doors will be open at 9 AM and close at 4 PM, enabling tourgoers to view the exhibit before or after the bus tour. The first stops will be Lemoyne’s Negley Park, and nearby Fort Couch, a Civil War fortification built to protect Harrisburg from Confederate invasion had Lee’s army not been stopped at Gettysburg. Civil War historian Jim Schmick will provide commentary. Various sites and landmarks in Camp Hill and Mechanicsburg will be pointed out and discussed as the bus travels westward to the quaint rural Borough of Mt. Holly Springs. Here, the tour will stop to explore the historic Mt. Tabor African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, which had an active black congregation, including former slaves and their descendants from about 1870 to 1970. The church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2021. The nearby Mt. Tabor Cemetery, with graves of former slaves and African American community leaders, also will be toured. The tour group will then travel to nearby King’s Gap Mansion, the spectacular mountaintop summer retreat of James McCormick Cameron, descended from two of Harrisburg’s most illustrious families, where lunch will be served. Hon. Michael Walsh, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Conservation & Natural Resources, and past president of Historic Harrisburg Association, will host the luncheon visit to King’s Gap Mansion. The final stop on the Cumberland County tour will be the Dickinson College campus in Carlisle. Its acclaimed “Dickinson and Slavery Walking Tour,” highlighting locations, persons and events surrounding Dickinson’s African American history, will be interpreted by faculty and students in Dickinson’s Africana Studies Program. The 2022 Cumberland County Tour is cosponsored by The Foundation for Enhancing Communities (TFEC) and by HHA Board Member Chrissie Kelly, owner of Lowee’s Group Tours, LLC.