Bomberger's Distillery

In Schaefferstown, Lebanon County, a Swiss Mennonite farmer named John Shenk began distilling rye whiskey in seventeen fifty-three. That makes this site the oldest documented distillery location in the United States. Abraham Bomberger bought the works around eighteen sixty and his name stuck.

The surviving stone stillhouse, warehouse, and jug house date from the eighteen forties and still stand. The distillery was declared a National Historic Landmark in nineteen eighty. It operated almost continuously for more than two hundred years until it closed in bankruptcy in nineteen eighty-nine.

Later revived under the Michter's label, the brand found new life elsewhere, but the original Lebanon County stone buildings remain as a monument to Pennsylvania's deep whiskey-making roots.