In 1890, the first Farmers’ Encampment was held in Mount Gretna, marking a partnership between the Cornwall & Lebanon Railroad’s officers and members of the Grange and National Farmers Alliance and Industrial Union.
Read More: Before the Pennsylvania Farm Show, there was the Mount Gretna Farmers’ Encampment
Robert H. Coleman, who owned the railroad and who had by that time developed a picnic grove and lake in Mount Gretna, built “a mammoth exhibition hall with a railroad siding for folks to bring their animals and wares to the show,” according to a history of the encampment published by the Mount Gretna Area Historical Society.
That first year, 25,000 people came to look at livestock and farm machinery, the Pittsburgh Dispatch reported.
The oldest building in Mount Gretna, that “mammoth exhibition hall” hosted the encampment — the precursor of the Pennsylvania Farm Show — every August through 1916 when it moved to Harrisburg.
Today, that hall is home to the Mount Gretna Roller Rink.
Read More: As it has for more than a century, the Mount Gretna Roller Rink keeps on rolling
Read More: Roll models: Remembering Lebanon roller rinks of decades past
For the first several years, the building was a roller rink, dance hall, and auditorium for the showing of “moving pictures.”
By the mid-1920s, the building still had a dance floor, but roller skating had taken center stage. In May 1926, an ad for the grand opening of Mount Gretna Park featured roller skating in what was now called the Coliseum Building with “300 pairs of chic roller skates, a Gents smoking room, a vast spectators’ room and Wurlitzer organ.”
In the 1930s, the Lebanon Rangers roller hockey team was based in the rink. When they left, the Mount Gretna Tigers came in, playing there until 1940.
Today, Eunice and Brian Heist own and operate the roller rink, although the building is owned by Eastern Enterprises. To the best of the Heists’ knowledge, the rink has operated continuously for skating except for three months during COVID.
“The minute it opened up, we were swamped with people,” Brian Heist said.
Commemorate a piece of Mt. Gretna history with LebTown’s Mt. Gretna Hockey Club Varsity Sweatshirt
Mt. Gretna Hockey Club Varsity Sweatshirt
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