Bedford, Pennsylvania

Bedford is a crossroads town in south-central Pennsylvania that has been strategically important since before the United States existed. Fort Bedford was built here in seventeen fifty-eight to support General John Forbes's campaign against the French at Fort Duquesne. The settlement that grew around it became Bedford County's seat in seventeen seventy-one.

George Washington passed through multiple times, including in seventeen ninety-four to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion, using Bedford as a staging ground. The town also sat on the National Pike and later the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental road, so travelers heading west through the Alleghenies have stopped here for more than two centuries. Bedford's mineral springs drew resort visitors in the nineteenth century, and the Bedford Springs Hotel, dating to eighteen o-six, hosted a string of United States presidents.

James Buchanan used it as a summer White House in the eighteen fifties.