Roadside America, World's Greatest Indoor Miniature Village
Near Reading, Pennsylvania
Just off the highway in Shartlesville, Pennsylvania stood one of the most eccentric roadside attractions in America. Laurence Gieringer spent his entire life building a miniature world, starting in nineteen thirty-five in his home in Hamburg. Local newspaper stories drew crowds.
He moved the display to an amusement park, and finally in nineteen fifty-three to a former dance hall in Shartlesville. At its height Roadside America covered eight thousand square feet, with dozens of trains and trolleys running constantly, oil wells bobbing up and down at the push of a button, and tiny figures going about their miniature lives. Gieringer and his family tended it for eighty-five years.
COVID closed it in twenty twenty, and the lights went out for the last time.
