What do you get when you combine colonial roots, “George Washington slept here,” an English-style citadel on one of the your main streets, Civil War battle scars, an Olympic gold medalist, one of the nation’s oldest active military posts and strong organizations dedicated to keeping all these stories straight?
You get your town named as one of America’s 10 Best Historic Small Towns. That’s what.
That happened this week in Carlisle, as the Cumberland County seat – after a round of public voting among 20 expert-selected nominees – landed at No. 4 on 10best.com’s list of small towns – defined as under 25,000 in population – with interesting stories to tell. The 2022 list is topped by Wickford, R.I.
For Carlisle, the honor was accepted by Mayor Sean Shultz as a sign of 271 years of accomplishment, and a hope for more to come.
“The rich history of Carlisle gives us a great deal to be proud of,” Shultz said in a statement after the final results came in. “Our history laid the foundation for Carlisle to flourish into a captivating town with arts, cuisine, breweries, distilleries, and unique shops. It is a history that inspires us to continue growing and improving for the sake of all who live, work, shop and dine in Carlisle.”
The latest honor also comes just one year after the borough was named an “All-America City” by the National Civic League.
A branch of the USA Today media empire, 10Best.com is dedicated to offering readers a chance to help other readers discover new spots that will feed all kinds of interests.
Twenty nominees for specific categories are chosen by a panel of experts including a combination of editors from USA Today; editors from 10best.com; and relevant expert contributors. Then the chosen 20 are subjected to an online vote, to get the voice of the people represented in the selections.
Other “small town” lists released this week include the readers’ choices for shopping, food scene, adventure, cultural scene, and coastal.
Carlisle promoted the contest through the borough’s social media channels, and through other partners and stakeholders, including the Downtown Carlisle Association, Dickinson College, and the Cumberland Valley Visitors Bureau.
Laid out in 1751, the town and its residents played an important role in the American Revolution and a few decades later, preservation of the newborn United States itself, when then-President George Washington mustered troops here to assert the federal government’s power during the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.
Dr. Benjamin Rush made a lasting mark on the town in 1783 when he procured the charter for Dickinson College, which would become the first college established after independence.
The borough was the target of a shelling by Confederate troops in the run-up to the Battle of Gettysburg, and later in the 19th Century Carlisle Barracks would pay host to the ever-controversial Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which was a flagship of federal government efforts to assimilate Native Americans into the mainstream American culture of the day.
The early 1900s saw an athlete from that school, Jim Thorpe, win Olympic gold and be remembered by some as the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th Century. In 1961, Dickinson hosted a speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Barracks contributes mightily to the nation’s senior Army leadership through the U.S. Army War College.
Visitors can check all this out at any time, and anyone interested can dig a lot deeper with resources like the Cumberland County Historical Society and the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center.
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