Tuesday, July 28, 2009

As I am sure you are all aware, our Museum is located in Hershey, PA--which is not only noted for the located of our Museum and the AACA Automobile Museum but is famous in its own right as the home of Hershey Chocolate.

Another Arcadia Publishing book carried in our Gift Shop highlights the development of the town of Hershey. It is entitled Hershey and is by Mary Davidoff Houts and Pamela Cassidy Whitenack. Authors Mary Davidoff Houts, associate director of the Hershey Museum, and Pamela Cassidy Whitenack, archivist of the Hershey Community Archives, have been researching and teaching about Hershey for many years. They have compiled a fascinating history of this important man, town, company, and legend.

In 1903, successful candy maker Milton Hershey began a new enterprise that many people thought was doomed. He planned to build the biggest chocolate factory in the world, and a town to house its employees. The location he chose, near his birthplace in rural Derry Township, Pennsylvania, was most unlike the traditional urban factory settings of the era. Hershey is the pictorial history of what happened next. Through period photographs, many of them in print for the first time, and engaging narrative, Hershey reveals how the place, the people, the industrial age, and Milton Hershey himself contributed to the success of his scheme. Hershey includes an introduction to the history of Derry Township, tracing it from Milton Hershey’s birth in 1857 to his return in the early 1900s. The book follows the intertwining stories of Milton Hershey’s life, the growth of his chocolate company, the development of the school for needy boys that he endowed with his entire fortune, and the evolution of his model company town. The transformation of Hershey into a tourist destination and its survival after the death of its founder in 1945 conclude this chronicle of an American dream come true.

This has been one of our most popular books in the Gift Shop and is on its second printing. It sells for $21.99 and can be picked up at the Gift Shop or ordered here by paying through PayPal (http://www.paypal.com/) and using our email address (thebusmuseum@yahoo.com). Please be sure you indicate the book title and include $4.00 for shipping (for a total of $25.99).