[pct-l] New AT Museum (Long)

[David Ellzey]

The Central Penn Business Journal reported that in June 2010, Cumberland County will become home to the Appalachian Trail Museum, which most people involved in its planning consider to be the nation's first historical depository dedicated to hiking.

The prospect has the Cumberland Valley Visitors Bureau excited that the county can offer outdoors enthusiasts another destination. The Carlisle-based bureau also expects the museum will help drive its tourism efforts, including attracting people who will visit businesses.

"The Appalachian Trail, that's a landmark, something everyone knows," said Valerie Copenhaver, marketing manager for the visitors bureau. "So the fact that we're going to have the first museum in the country dedicated to hiking is a cool draw."

The Appalachian Trail, stretching nearly 2,200 miles from Maine to Georgia, is America's first national scenic trail, started in 1921 and completed in 1937. It's overseen by the National Park Service, the Appalachian Trail Conservatory and maintained by various local trail clubs.

The park service estimates that 4 million people hike some part of the trail every year. Pennsylvania hosts 229 miles of the trail, including stretches in Cumberland and Dauphin counties.

The museum gives the visitors bureau an opportunity to market to all of its target groups, including single people, educational organizations, all age groups, couples, outdoors people and history buffs, she said. The bureau already is promoting the museum to travel writers, she said.

The visitors bureau has been marketing Cumberland County as a place of natural beauty with its state parks, forests, trout streams and the Appalachian Trail, she said.

The museum is scheduled to open June 5 in a 200-year-old stone mill at Pine Grove Furnace State Park in Cooke Township, Cumberland County. Volunteers cleaned out the mill Oct. 31, readying it for renovations planned to start in January. The museum will be across the street from Pine Grove Furnace General Store, the unofficial half-way point on the Appalachian Trail.

The museum is within two miles of the trail's halfway mark, said Larry Luxenberg, president of the Appalachian Trail Museum Society, which will operate the museum. Hikers on the trail will be principal visitors, but it's expected to attract more than just dedicated trail enthusiasts, he said.

"There are about a million people within a 45-minute drive of the museum," Luxenberg said. "It's also a short drive from Washington and Baltimore, which have many active hiking clubs. This was all part of our thinking."

York-based architectural firm LSC Design Inc. is working on the museum's renovations. The firm is doing the work pro bono, President Rob Kinsley said. LSC also worked on a new museum exhibit in Gettysburg and The Hershey Story at Hersheypark in Derry Township, Dauphin County.

"I think the expectations for this museum are just right," he said. "On the one hand, it's a place for through hikers; but they also want to take advantage of the traffic that comes to Pine Grove Furnace and then capture some regional groups."

Kinsley said he expects designs to be ready soon and renovations beginning by early 2010. Exhibits from the Appalachian Trail Conservancy in Harpers Ferry, W.V., will be moved to Cumberland County, he said. It's also a possibility that the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., could loan some of its trail exhibits to the museum, he said.

Although the museum will be interesting and is considered important, the crowds are likely to be modest, Kinsley said. It's unlikely people will drive four or five hours to see it, he said.

Pine Grove Furnace had about 300,000 visitors in 2008, said park manager Jason Zimmerman. Many future visitors will stop at the museum, same as they walk the trails and visit the iron furnace ruins at the park, he said.