Life is Sweet in Hershey, PA

Elizabethtown, PA June 8-10, 2020, Elizabethtown KOA

Mom told me we lucked into better weather this morning than anticipated. Hope our weather holds because our first rest stop had lovely, green grass and clover. There were so many great smells, I almost forgot to go… I’m hoping it will be a bit cooler as we head North, but as dad says, “It is what it is”. We keep seeing entrance signs for the Shenandoah National Park, but dad said we just passed the northern one at Front Royal. 

Right about the time we entered West Virginia, we started getting dive bombed by the cicadas. Disgusting! They make a big splash on dad’s clean windows. UGH!

It seems like we blinked and we crossed into W VA and then MD, before entering PA. 

We have passed so many pretty farms with lush looking fields all day long. Ran into showers as we got near our next campground, cleaning off the cicada crud. YEAH!!!

A Elizabethtown, PA Farm

After arriving at this really well appointed KOA: fishing, mini golf, cool pool, fishing pond, incredible playground, volleyball, basketball, a well appointed store and a fabulously strong internet!!!  

Mom took me to play in the dog park close to our trailer. After feeding me, they decided to go into Lancaster to Whole Foods and pick up dinner and some supplies. Boring!

M & D dropped me off at the Playful Pup Retreat after breakfast. 

It turns out they went to Hershey’s Chocolate World, another no dogs allowed place. Really???

Chocolate World turned out to by by the Hershey Stadium and in front of the Amusement Park...I guess parents sugared up their kids first, then hit the park???

                         Like Disney there was NO DOUBT where we were

Hershey\"s Chocolate World Entrance

Coming into this place is one massive commercial, just like Disney World

Hershey’s Unwrapped presentation.

Over 600 flavors of chocolate associated with 6 flavors. Hershey’s chocolate uses fresh liquid milk from local dairy farms not powdered milk. Their dark chocolate has 45% cocoa. 

“The history of chocolate began in Mesoamerica. Fermented beverages made from chocolate date back to 450 BC. The Mexica believed that cacao seeds were the gift of Quetzalcoatl, the god of wisdom, and the seeds once had so much value that they were used as a form of currency.”Theobroma cacao trees produce pods which hold the beans for chocolate. 

Before the 4D Chocolate Movie M & D were given some kind of special glasses. 

Mom said it was incredible to see people packing the special shopping carts with piles of candy and merchandise!!! This place is its own chocolate gold mine!!! WOW!  (Four million people go through Chocolate World each year… WOW! )

The World of Chocolate Tour did a great job of explaining how their chocolate candy is made...

Mike thought I was nuts taking all these photos, but I didn't know anything about any of this information

Along with all the information on processing cacao beans to produce a candy bar. I was absolutely charmed by the old enlarged advertising posters and Milton Hershey's motto...

We even rode a Willy Wonka like "bean mobiles" to see the processing machines up close, but safely behind glass...

Create your Own Chocolate Bar

With each event except the Chocolate Tour, you had a timed ticket. We had about 45 minutes for lunch. Our loaded baked potatoes turned out to be delicious, but as with everything here, not inexpensive. 

We are first given hair cover and an apron which turns out to be overkill, since all the procedures are behind glass. 

But, it was hilarious to see us all looking so funny...even the bearded men had to cover that hair as well...Add that to those not vaccinated wearing masks...WOW!

We got to choose our base chocolate for the bar, three additions we wanted to add over it, with our last choice sprinkles or not...they went over the milk chocolate covering...and no we haven't tried ours yet...

In this collage, you see some of the machines, their explanation of them, our candybar ticket, our own candy bar design for our package that covered the tin for our bar and even one of our bars on the conveyor belt...it was really interesting and fun to do...

The Trolley Tour takes us around town with an excellent “Townie” as our tour guide. In 1826 Milton Hershey’s grandfather moved up here from Lancaster, PA. Milton is born in 1857 loses his sister early to yellow fever. 

His mom, Fanny is a devout Mennonite; honest, trustworthy and frugal. His dad is initially a farmer, but he tires of that life. He becomes an entrepreneur that fails as much as he succeeds. They never divorce, but live separately for most of their later years. Milton definitely acquires the best qualities of both of them. Like his dad, he decides to try to be his own boss. So in 1876, he starts his own candy business at 19, after an apprenticeship in another candy shop. It’s just one of many candy businesses he tried and lost while he moved around the country. He returns to Lancaster. After a caramel candy apprenticeship, once again Milton starts his own company with help from his family. 

The Lancaster Caramel Company becomes a huge success thanks to the British market enthusiasm. He sells it for his first million dollars and is able to pay off his family members and invest in his next great endeavor. 

He recognizes that chocolate is going to be the next big deal.

In 1903 Milton Hershey decided to return to his home. It made perfect sense to him since there was plenty of cheap land, wonderful dairies, fresh water, train transportation, and hard working people (the Scots, Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch.)

 

Even before he started his chocolate business, he expanded and further developed Derry Church, his hometown (now called Hershey.) He built homes for the workers, his managers and executives that included electricity, and indoor plumbing. HIs workers were given the homes for what he paid for them. He brought in trolleys for transportation. Hershey wanted his company people to love it here,  Trolleys were used inside town since few had cars back then. The town even had a milk and school trolley. 

Obviously, these trolleys are reproductions of the originals

Milton included recreational places in town like Spring Creek Park that started with nice pavilions, ballfields, a band stand, a pool that included a beach,...

playgrounds, and a few simple rides. (Zoo America was started across the street as well, with a few exotic animals.) 

Since he loved to play golf he added a golf course close to his factories and across from his house.

                                 The Hershey Golf Course now

Spring Creek has now grown into Hershey Park with a stadium for concerts, and a very large amusement complex.

Milton Hershey is the first in the USA to introduce milk chocolate in 1905. The original kisses were wrapped by hand and the women are paid by the pound. Eventually, he adopted Henry Ford’s assembly methods and reinvented them for candy production. 

The original name for Kisses was “Sweethearts”.The flag protruding from Hershey Kisses is patented and it’s called “the Plume” to distinguish it from competitors. (He changed the name to Kisses because of the sound the kiss machine produced. Milton decided it sounded like a kiss.)

He marries Kitty, a New York Irish Catholic, but they can’t have kids. In the early 1900’s they established an orphans industrial school, the Hershey Industrial School, now the Milton Hershey School 

It started with 10 and now has over 2100 students with residential homes for all the students. The students here are from one parent low income homes. They pay nothing. 

When the students outgrew Milton\"s original home, they had to start building more residential homes...

One of the newer residential student homes. The students live in small homes with adults; some who might be older alumni.

                                Founders Hall is the Visitors Center. 

Their team mascot is a Spartan. They have a big rivalry with the local, public school which Hershey built as well; they are the Trojans. This is the 2019 game when the Trojans won.

Their football game is called the Cacao Bowl. This is the coveted trophy.

He and Kitty want the Hershey Industrial School students to have a stable home environment, to have rigorous academics, learn both agriculture and a trade, live by the Ten Commandments and have a much better life than he did...Never having to worry about money for anything…

They pay nothing while there are in school here. Many go on to college afterwards or directly into their trades. When each one graduates high school, they get a suitcase, trade or business clothing and $100. Many are offered huge scholarships to cover their University costs as well. His trust was set up to pay all of the Milton Hershey Schools & the Catherine Hershey School expenses through the sale of his products; that continues to this day. The schools take no government money. His dream was for his boys (and later girls) to run his company, town and school someday. 

After he dies, his dream happens more than once and continues today...

While Catherine, (Kitty) is alive and they live at Highpoint, each Sat they have students for brunch, so they could maintain a closeness to them. 

Highpoint is a grand mansion for central PA, but with Milton’s frugal nature, it only had 22 rooms and many of the objects were purchased through catalogs or from local PA craftsman rather than shipping most items from Europe like his rich contemporaries. 

Sadly, Kitty came down with a neuromuscular disease that they thought was climate related, so they kept moving to try to help her. It didn\"t work and she passes on in 1915. He never marries again. Highpoint is now the home of his Hershey Trust (he set the Hershey Trust up in 1917 with app. 6 million dollars….the trust now is valued at $16 billion dollars.)

You can do tours through the Hershey Chocolate Museum. Highpoint houses many of their original furnishings and art.

Fanny, hIs mother encouraged him to go to Cuba to buy up sugar plantations, so he would always have enough sugar. Milton goes to Cuba and does buys up sugar plantations and mills while starting another company town with all the amenities he created in Hershey; calling it Hershey; as well. 

During the Great Depression, Milton doesn’t lose money like his contemporaries. He keeps his candy prices low and his people employed by building the town Community Center, The Hershey Industrial School 

and the Hershey Hotel and other places. As I mentioned, Milton built all the public schools in the town too. The Community Center,"...houses a large theater, the Hershey Theatre (51,525 square feet) and small theater (5,535 square feet), along with a variety of recreational facilities including a gymnasium, swimming pool, game rooms, locker rooms, and showers. The building also houses a library (6,640 square feet) and dormitories (15,970 square feet)"  (Our townie guide remembers using these facilities; when he was growing up.. He 

related his personal history of his mom working at the Hershey factory. She could eat all the chocolate she wanted, but she couldn't take it home.)

 

H.B. Reese\"s used this family picture with these words: "Sixteen reasons to love Reeses" He had 13 surviving children living in a medium size downtown house.

Milton helps Reese succeed, as he is getting his new candy bar started. (From Wikipedia:..."By 1928, H.B. and Blanche had 16 children. That same year, Reese invented Reese\"s Peanut Butter Cups after one of his customers in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania reported supply problems with another confectioner who made a candy consisting of peanut butter covered with chocolate.^[4] Reese developed an automated manufacturing process and the candy became part of his assorted chocolate line.^[9] Soon the company was packaging 120 individually wrapped pieces per box that sold for a penny per cup. Each candy wrapper prominently displaying the slogan: "Made in Chocolate Town, So They Must Be Good". Sales of the penny peanut butter cup helped Reese pay off the mortgages on both his house and factory by 1935. This was especially noteworthy since the United States was still in the grip of the Great Depression and chocolate was considered a luxury." Hershey’s company eventually buys Reese’s Company when Reese\"s children decide to sell. 

More from Wikipedia: "Reese\"s generates more than $2 billion in annual sales for the Hershey Company, and Reese\"s Peanut Butter Cups are number one on the list of top-selling candy brands."

In 1945 Milton dies at 88 and is buried behind his hilltop Milton Hershey School along with Kitty and his parents. Here is his family\"s memorial at Hershey Cemetery.

As you can see from all this information and the older images, mom and dad loved this tour and their half a day Hershey experience. 

(Mom enjoyed finding the older images and more information thanks to Google.) 

Corny, as it was Hershey’s made it entertaining and certainly sweet enough with all the free candy samples…I saw mom put a bunch of candy into our refrigerator. 

I came home exhausted from my day at Playful Pup, so all in, it was a good day for me too!

We enjoyed talking to Bek later. Today, for her hospital job she went to the Indy 500 track researching the premise for a big fundraiser later in the fall. 

We ended the day relaxing in Sleeping Around while thunderstorms went through.

Tomorrow we are off to the Hyde Park area of NY, so we can enjoy seeing the Hudson River once again.