One day each year, Bucks County’s most unique National Historic District is open for public tours. In 2024, that day is Saturday, June 29, when the Victorian-age Perkasie Park Camp-Meeting holds its annual Founders Day celebration.
The Perkasie Park Historical Foundation, a 501(c)3, will offer self-guided tours of selected cottages and the Park’s outdoor auditorium on 21 acres tucked away on Perkasie’s Ninth Street. The privately owned Park’s Victorian architecture and unique landscape never fail to give visitors a sense of stepping back to a simpler time.
Today, this National Historic District isn’t widely known outside of the Pennridge region, and even many local residents don’t know that 60 cottages and an acoustically perfect outdoor auditorium sit across from the Perkasie police station and Penn Community Bank on Ninth Street. But in 1882, the annual Perkasie Park assembly started bringing thousands of people to its rolling grounds. In Bucks County during the late 1880s, its attendance was only surpassed by the annual Bucks County fair.
Perkasie Park in 1887
The Park first opened in August 1882 as a privately owned facility that hosted family reunions, Sunday school picnics, and “moral gatherings” such as the Evangelical Association’s annual camp meeting. The Evangelical Association had Pennsylvania German origins and shared beliefs with the Methodist Church. But non-members were allowed at the summer camp meetings, with a letter from an approving pastor, and soon thousands of people started showing up in Perkasie each July and August to escape the city heat or take part in outdoor services that had plenty of singing.
Early use of tents on the camp ground
At first, visitors stayed in tents, but in 1886, the Park’s owners met with architect Milton Bean to design a setting with an impressive outdoor auditorium and a ringed layout of wooden Carpenter Gothic cottages.
On its busiest Sunday in August 1890, an estimated 20,000 people attended six services at Perkasie Park. Numerous trains and 2,000 teams of horses brought the throng to a town that normally had 458 residents. The visitors joined a population in cottages and tents that came from Philadelphia, Allentown, Bethlehem, Reading, and other locations to enjoy the cool park confines with its fresh spring water.
The Park held camp meetings until 1924, and it also hosted important public events as high school graduations and Perkasie’s annual Memorial Day ceremony. And into the 1960s, church-related and public activities dominated the community’s life. Since then, the Park’s shareholders have funded and managed a nondenominational, well-preserved facility that mostly resembles what a visitor experienced in 1919.
Early cottages used trees for shade and kept some designs from the tents once used in the park
Only recently has the Park allowed visitors to tour the full camp-meeting grounds and go inside certain Victorian cottages – for one day each year. That is why the Park’s annual Founder’s Day event each year has grown in popularity. Its combination of architecture, community, and planning transports the first-time visitor to a time when a horse-drawn carriage, railroad train or a trolley car brought campers to the quaint cottages or tents.
For more information about the event, go to www.perkasiepark.com. Or just decide to visit Perkasie Park at 200 Ninth Street, Perkasie, PA between 12 p.m. and 4 p.m. on June 29, 2024. The event is free with a suggested goodwill offering.
I have talked to hundreds of visitors for the past five years at the Founder’s Day event, and they all have the same reaction – that Perkasie Park is timeless. In my opinion, it is also the best way in Bucks County to experience popular life in the Victorian era. We all hope to see you at the Park on June 29!
Scott Bomboy
Chairman
Perkasie Park Founders Day Committee, 2024
