Witness: When Hollywood Came to the Crossroads

In the spring of nineteen eighty-four, Hollywood came to Intercourse. The film was Witness, a thriller starring Harrison Ford as a big city detective who hides out among the Amish after a young Amish boy witnesses a murder. Directed by Peter Weir, it was shot on location in Philadelphia and in the Lancaster County towns of Intercourse, Lancaster, Strasburg, and Parkesburg, with principal photography running from late April into June of nineteen eighty-four.

One of the film's most memorable scenes was shot right here in town. In the summer of nineteen eighty-four, cameras rolled outside the Zimmerman and Sons store on Route Three Forty, capturing the moment Ford's character loses his temper and strikes a tourist who has been taunting the Amish. The Lapp family farm where Ford's character recovers was a real working farm near Strasburg.

Witness earned eight Academy Award nominations and won two, for its original screenplay and its film editing. The Amish themselves largely declined to appear in the movie and generally disapproved of the attention, but for the wider world the film painted an unforgettable portrait of Lancaster County, and it still draws curious visitors to these crossroads four decades later.