Hersheypark

Breathe in for a moment. On many days, a faint sweetness hangs in the air here, warm and a little roasted, like cocoa drifting in from somewhere you cannot quite see. Underfoot, the paths are smooth and wide. Somewhere ahead, a wooden roller coaster rattles and roars, and a wave of screams rises and fades. This is Hersheypark, in the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania. It is a park that grew out of a chocolate factory, not the other way around.

To understand this place, start with one man. Milton Hershey was a candy maker who had failed more than once before he finally succeeded with caramels. Then he turned to milk chocolate. At the start of the twentieth century, he chose this patch of Pennsylvania dairy country for a new factory. The region had plenty of fresh milk, open land, and good rail links. Around that factory, he planned a whole town for his workers.

Here is the first surprise. Hersheypark opened in 1907, and it was not built as a thrill park at all. It began as a quiet picnic ground and leisure park for the people who worked in the chocolate factory and lived in the new town. There were shady lawns, walking paths, and boating on Spring Creek. The same year, Hershey's Kisses chocolates first appeared. The park and that famous little candy share a birth year.

Milton Hershey believed that workers deserved more than wages. His town had schools, a trolley line, gardens, and places for music and rest. The park was part of that vision. Over the following decades, it added a bandstand, a swimming pool, rides, and a small zoo. Slowly, a company picnic ground turned into a destination. Families began to travel here from far beyond the town itself.

As you walk, notice Spring Creek. This small stream still runs through the park, and it shaped the layout from the beginning. Rides, bridges, and footpaths follow its curves through the valley. The ground rises and falls, so coasters here often dive into ravines and climb back out along the slopes. Look up from a bridge, and you may see track threading over the water and between the trees.

One of the oldest thrill rides here is the Comet, a wooden roller coaster that opened in the 1940s. Wooden coasters feel different from steel ones. They shake, they creak, and they seem almost alive as the train races along. The Comet's long white structure is a link to the park's mid-century years. Many local families have ridden it across three or four generations.

The park also keeps an antique carousel from the early twentieth century. Its hand-carved horses rise and fall to organ music, with painted manes and polished brass poles. It is worth watching even if you do not ride. Look closely at the carving on the horses, and at the wear on the stirrups. That wear comes from decades of small hands and feet climbing aboard.

In more recent decades, Hersheypark has built a large collection of modern coasters. Lightning Racer is a wooden coaster with two trains that race side by side, and the riders often reach out to each other as the tracks cross. Steel coasters such as Fahrenheit and Skyrush offer steep drops. Candymonium, painted in the colours of Hershey's sweets, opened in 2020. Nearby, an older wooden coaster called Wildcat was rebuilt as a new hybrid ride, Wildcat's Revenge.

The chocolate theme runs through everything here — and it is not only for show. Rides and areas take their names from Hershey products, and the colour scheme leans toward deep browns, silver, and candy-wrapper reds. Outside the park, on Chocolate Avenue, the streetlights are shaped like Hershey's Kisses. Some are wrapped in silver, others left bare like unwrapped chocolate. Few towns turn a single product into part of the street furniture.

Here is the second surprise, and it reaches far beyond the rides. Milton Hershey and his wife, Catherine, had no children of their own. In 1909, they founded a school for orphaned boys, now called the Milton Hershey School. Later, Milton Hershey placed much of his fortune in a trust to support it. That trust still holds a major stake in the Hershey business. In a real sense, the chocolate and the park are tied to the school's mission.

Just beside the park stands Hershey's Chocolate World, a visitor centre with a ride that shows how chocolate is made, from cacao bean to wrapped bar. Next to it is ZooAmerica, a small wildlife park focused on North American animals. Together they show how the old idea of a company leisure ground has grown. Today the whole area works as one large place for a day out.

The park also changes with the seasons. In autumn, it often hosts a Halloween event, with dim lights and costumes after dark. In winter, it turns into a Christmas celebration, with thousands of lights on the trees and paths. The rides look very different under strings of coloured bulbs. On cold evenings, the smell of hot chocolate mixes with the crisp air.

Before you move on, pause somewhere near the creek or under the trees. Listen to the clack of a lift hill, the hum of the crowd, and the splash of a water ride. More than a century ago, factory families spread picnic blankets on lawns in this same valley. The screams are louder now, and the rides are far taller. But the idea is the same — a place to rest and play, close to where the chocolate is made. As you walk away, breathe in once more, and see if that sweetness is still in the air.