Roadside America, Shartlesville, Pa

What lies within this building, located just off exit 23 of Route I-78 in Shartlesville, is the product of the lifelong obsessions of one man.

Scale model of the Highland Hotel

At the turn of the last century, a young Laurence Gieringer, age 5,  gazed out his bedroom window at what appeared to him as a miniature building atop Neversink Mountain, near Reading, Pa.









One fateful night the youngster crept out of his home into the darkness, convinced that the Highland Hotel was actually a doll house with twinkling lights inside.  Quickly he became lost in the woods, and was not found until the next day by frantic searchers.

Despite his frightening experience, or perhaps because of it, Mr. Gieringer spent the next 60 years constructing buildings, railways, bridges, and whole cities as small as what he had imagined that hotel to be.

The displays are arranged in one huge room into a cross-section of rural America featuring farmland, small villages and towns, industrial areas, and wilderness.

Rivers, streams, and waterfalls traverse the little lands.  Koi fish in one pond take on the appearance of sea monsters, due to their size in relation to a neighboring building.

Pleasant villages dot the landscape, all built precisely to a scale of 3/8ths of an inch to one foot.

Trolleys and trains provide transportation to the little people.  Many of these trains can be controlled by visitors via buttons located at various points along the hand rail.

Downtown features a movie theater and a furniture store, the windows of which display the latest in home decor for people who are only 20mm tall.

Even really small people need a place to work, and industrial areas, such as this coal breaker and railway line, provide much needed employment to the folks in neighboring villages.

Periodically the staff will ask visitors to be seated while they take the display from day to duck, to night, to dawn, and back to day again.  A musical tribute to God and Country accompanies the darkest part of the night in this land, while biplane patrols in circles over the town, its navigational lights twinkling in the sky.





Pennsylvania Dutch Gift Haus

 

 While Roadside America has its own gift shop, it is recommended that patrons also visit the Pennsylvania Dutch Gift Haus located next door.

Here you'll find Amish dolls, cook books, folk art, and traditional foodstuffs such as bacon dressing, chow chow, jams, and apple butter.

Hex signs of every size and purpose are available, including the all-powerful "Daddy of 'Em All" and the much coveted double distelfink.









More info is available at the Roadside America and Pennsylvania Dutch Gift Haus websites.