The Lincoln Highway Across Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh to Philadelphia on the old road rather than the turnpike — a UFO acorn, a coffee pot, a giant quarter, a shoe you can sleep in, and the gates of hell.
11 stops · 3 days · Pennsylvania · roughly 238 miles point to point
See the whole route and everything odd beside it
OddWay draws your route first, then plots every stop that falls inside the detour you're willing to make. No hunting through a list to work out what is actually on the way.
Loading the map…
Every one of the 11 places in the index. Plan a route and the map narrows to what's actually near it.
The Lincoln Highway was the first road built to cross America, opened in 1913, and the Pennsylvania stretch became the template for everything that followed: a two-lane road, small towns strung along it, and businesses that had to make you stop.
Most of what survives here exists because of that road. The turnpike opened in 1940 and took the traffic; the buildings stayed.
What that produced
The Bedford Coffee Pot is the clearest example. Bert Koontz built an eighteen-foot coffee pot in 1927 to pull motorists into the service station next door. It is an advertisement in the shape of the thing being advertised, and there is a whole vocabulary of these buildings along the old road.
The Haines Shoe House at Hellam is the other, built in 1948 by a shoe magnate as a guesthouse and a billboard at once. It is a short-term rental now, so photograph it from the roadside, which the owners explicitly invite.
The Giant Quarter at Everett and Mister Ed's Elephant Museum — twelve thousand elephants and a candy counter — are the same instinct in later decades.
The darker middle
Kecksburg starts the route: the acorn behind the fire station, built as a prop for an Unsolved Mysteries episode in 1990 and kept.
The Seven Gates of Hell on Trout Run Road is a legend about an asylum that never existed, attached to land that is private. Stay on the public road.
The Albatwitch at Chickies Rock is Lancaster County's apple-stealing cryptid, four feet tall and reportedly a poor sport about being watched.
Ending in Philadelphia
Eastern State and the Mütter in one day is a lot, and worth it. One is the prison that invented solitary confinement; the other is a nineteenth-century medical teaching collection that has never pretended to be anything else.
Practical
Three days at a genuine Lincoln Highway pace. US-30 is slower than the turnpike by design — that is the entire point, and rushing it defeats the exercise.
The Gettysburg stretch in summer is busy. Go early or go midweek.
The Route
Kecksburg UFO Monument
Kecksburg, Pennsylvania
Something came down in the woods here on the evening of 9 December 1965, seen across several states. Astronomers called it a meteor; witnesses described an acorn-shaped object and a military convoy. The village settled the matter its own way: the large acorn outside the volunteer fire department is a prop built for an Unsolved Mysteries episode in 1990, and it has stood there ever since.
Jenny Globe
Somerset, Pennsylvania
A huge rotating fiberglass globe has stood outside Jenny Products since the late 1960s, built to celebrate the company's growth as a maker of pressure-washing equipment. It resembles a water tower but is actually a giant spinning advertisement, with parking available at the business for visitors who want a closer look.
Gravity Hill
New Paris, Pennsylvania
Put the car in neutral at the marked spot on Gravity Hill Road and it rolls, slowly, in the wrong direction. The surrounding hills hide the true horizon well enough that your eyes lose the argument with the road. Bring a bottle of water to pour out and watch. There are two such stretches in the area.
Bedford Coffee Pot
Bedford Township, Pennsylvania
Bert Koontz built this 18-foot coffee-pot-shaped building in 1927 to lure Lincoln Highway motorists into his adjacent service station and lunch business. Saved from demolition, it was moved to the Bedford County Fairgrounds and restored in 2003–04; the exterior and historical marker are always the attraction, while the interior has no dependable regular public hours.
Giant Quarter
Everett, Pennsylvania
Students at Bedford County Technical Center built this roughly 20-foot-wide quarter as a tribute to George Washington's connections to Bedford County. The nearly one-ton coin stands near Down River Golf Course and makes an easy oversized-object photo stop from the public-facing area.
Mister Ed's Elephant Museum & Candy Emporium
Orrtanna, Pennsylvania
Ed and Pat Gotwalt opened the original Mister Ed's roadside store in 1975, and its later incarnation turned Ed's growing elephant collection into an entire museum-and-candy-store destination. Visitors now find roughly 12,000 elephant objects, a teapot museum, whimsical gardens and a huge candy selection, with free museum admission.
Haines Shoe House
Hellam Township, Pennsylvania
Shoe magnate Mahlon Haines built this five-level work-boot-shaped house in 1948–49 as an enormous advertisement and promotional guesthouse for his shoe business. It is now a short-term rental rather than a public museum: **only registered guests may enter**, although the owners explicitly welcome photographs from the public roadside.
Seven Gates of Hell — Trout Run Road
Hellam Township, Pennsylvania
York County's Seven Gates of Hell legend claims that a chain of gates hidden around Hellam Township leads eventually to an entrance to hell, with versions involving either a burned asylum or an eccentric doctor. The alleged asylum never existed and the land connected to the story is private property; this is strictly a **public-road folklore stop, not an invitation to search the woods**.
Albatwitch — Chickies Rock
West Hempfield Township, Pennsylvania
Lancaster County folklore places the Albatwitch—a roughly four-foot hairy "apple-snitch" sometimes described as a miniature Bigfoot—in the woods surrounding Chickies Rock, where stories say it stole apples and threw the cores back at picnickers. The legend has been recorded in the area for generations and now has its own annual celebration; travelers can visit its traditional territory by hiking to the public Chickies Rock Overlook.
Eastern State Penitentiary
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Eastern State Penitentiary is a preserved 19th-century prison where visitors can explore cell blocks, prison yards and exhibits about incarceration, including Al Capone's restored cell. The historic site operates as a museum, while separate Halloween programming adds large-scale haunted attractions during the fall.
Mütter Museum
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Mütter began with surgeon Thomas Dent Mütter's 1859 donation of 1,700 objects and money to establish a permanent medical teaching collection. It has grown to more than 25,000 objects covering medical history, anatomical specimens and pathology, with ticketed public galleries at the College of Physicians.