Roadside America

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ROADSIDE AMERICA is an unforgettable panorama of life in rural United States. The exhibit spans more than two hundred years in time and lets you see, in exquisite miniature, how people lived and worked in pioneer days … through the years since then … right up to the present.
In newspapers and magazines, ROADSIDE AMERICA has been acclaimed as the greatest known miniature village—the most unique and detailed masterpiece of its kind in the world. Actually, it is not one village, but many—really the American countryside as it might be seen by a giant so huge that he could see from coast to coast.

At the turn of the century, near Reading, Pennsylvania, Laurence Gieringer, age 5, often looked out of his bedroom window at night, gazing toward nearby Neversink Mountain. Crowning the mountain was the Highland Hotel with lights that twinkled and beckoned. To little Laurence, the glittering white building looked like something from a fairy tale, small enough to pick up and carry home. One day, the boy decided to do just that. Leaving the safety of his backyard, he set off through the woods to find the mountain top and the "toy" building. The inevitable happened. Laurence became bewildered, then completely lost. After a frightening night alone in the woods, he was found by anxious searchers the next morning. Despite this experience, the boy was to retain his interest in "toy" houses for the rest of his life.

Going to work at age 16, Laurence, after a start in the printing trade, became a carpenter and painter, work which he felt gave more scope to his particular talents. Always he continued to work on his hobby of making model buildings. Skillfully, he whittled at blocks of wood, fashioning them to his dream of a miniature village … a church … bridges … a horse-drawn carriage … stables … farmhouses. He knew nothing of drawing to scale, yet arbitrarily established a size of 3/8" to the foot, which he adhered to in all his modeling.

So the years went by. Laurence had pursued his hobby for some 60 years, continually enhancing his skill and artistry. The miniature "village" had grown steadily in size and scope, and news of it began spreading through the countryside. At Christmas, 1935, Gieringer as usual set up a part of his miniature display for his children. Hearing of the splendor of the exhibit, the Reading Eagle newspaper published a feature story on it. Now interest mounted still more rapidly.

Every day through all 12 months of the year, throngs of visitors come to ROADSIDE AMERICA. The exhibit fascinates not only because of its authentic, beautifully crafted miniatures, but because of the excitement of continual movement. Swift trains glide through tunnels and over bridges … a tiny fountain bubbles in the miniature Zoo … a mountain trolley hustles through the woodland … an old-time grist mill slowly grinds grain for flour. This is only a small part of the action at ROADSIDE AMERICA.

Boys are known to have active imaginations, but never in his most optimistic dreams, could the 10-year-old Laurence Gieringer have suspected that his beloved hobby would one day become a giant exhibit of museum calibre … an exhibit that annually delights hundreds of thousands of men, women and children.
ROADSIDE AMERICA is a truly exciting treat for your children and for you.