A museum-quality road trip across Pennsylvania

Monets to Warhols, Sendak to the Spirit of St. Louis – there is no shortage of historic highlights to be found in Pennsylvania’s best-known museums – but connoisseurs know the commonwealth is also home to numerous quirkier attractions, showcasing everything from medical oddities to the history of quilting. For a distinctly curious summer road trip, we’ve put together an east-to-west itinerary that highlights some of the state’s most distinctively Pennsylvanian collection destinations.

Stoogeum, Ambler 

The Stoogeum, in suburban Philadelphia, is not only the world’s biggest museum dedicated to Larry, Moe and Curly – it also hosts one of the world’s largest fan clubs, uniting some 2,000 worldwide members and hosting an annual Three Stooges fanfest. Visitors can explore 10,000 square feet of exhibits devoted to the legendary comedians, who got their start in the vaudeville era and went on to make an impressive 190 short films together.

VAMPA, Doylestown

With “The Art of the Kill” as its permanent exhibition, VAMPA is not your typical Sunday-afternoon-at-the-museum fare. Devoted to “the intersection of the supernatural, folklore, myth and faith through the ages as expressed through art,” the novel Bucks County attraction features centuries-old gauntlets, crucifixes and busts of Dracula – but also a children’s dinosaur park, live peacocks and a Zen garden, making it family-friendly.

National Canal Museum, Easton

Beginning in the 1790s, canals facilitated the fledgling nation’s commerce across America’s fast-expanding territory. Fittingly, the National Canal Museum is in Easton, where the early-1800s construction of the Lehigh and Delaware canals connected Philadelphia and New York City. The museum – part of the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor – showcases miles of restored waterways and a vintage canal boat in a park where families can rent bikes, canoes, paddleboats and kayaks.

Swigart Museum, Huntingdon

One hundred and five years ago – just a quarter-century after the introduction of motor vehicles – America’s first automobile museum opened in Huntingdon, showcasing the now-vintage collection of W. Emmert Swigart and his son, William E. Swigart Jr. Some three dozen of the family’s 150-car collection are on display at any given time, including a 1936 Duesenberg and a model from, incredibly, 1916.

Living Dead Museum, Monroeville

Sure, it’s better-known for steel and oil – but according to the Living Dead Museum, Pittsburgh is also the Zombie Capital of the World. Fittingly, the museum celebrating zombies in pop culture is located in the suburban Monroeville Mall, which fans will recognize as the setting for the “Night of the Living Dead” horror-movie series (whose creator, George Romero, was a Carnegie Mellon alum). There’s also a gift shop, with zombie-themed lunchboxes for the littlest horror fans. 

Drake Well Museum, Titusville

The Drake Well Museum celebrates America’s mighty oil industry in its Western Pennsylvania birthplace. Visitors can tour a replica of Edwin Drake’s engine house and derrick on the spot where he first struck oil in 1859 – launching an industry that fuels the state’s economy – along with other vintage oil-related equipment, historic photographs and exhibits highlighting the role of petroleum in American life.