The Perkasie Park Camp-Meeting was the town’s first excursion attraction. Henry G. Moyer and John Schwartz led the effort to acquire the 15-acre property from Joseph Hendricks for $2,60 in July 1882. Plans for the first cottages at Perkasie Park were approved in 1886, and multiple cottages were built starting in 1887.
The Perkasie Central News said in July 1886 that an “immense auditorium” had been built at the park with 1,000 sofa chairs for the year’s camp-meeting and that the preacher’s cottage and speakers’ platform had been remodeled. Eventually, 65 cottages would be built in the park.
The largest attendance at the Perkasie Park camp meeting was in 1890, the last year local Evangelical Association members gathered together until the early 1920s. Superintendent John Schwartz also said 2,000 teams of horses passed through the park’s gates. In all, 40,000 people may have attended the 10-day camp meeting.
