Situated in the heart of the Northeast Corridor, Philadelphia is within a 5.5-hour drive of 40 percent of the country’s population. From New York City, for example, you can get here in 2 hours, from Baltimore 90 minutes, and from Washington, DC, 3 hours.
Getting into most big cities, especially on the East or West Coast, is a migraine event, and getting around them is even worse. Not so with Philadelphia! Freeways into Center City keep traffic moving as smoothly as sleek ribbon (except during the expected rush-hour jams), with easy-to-see signage that makes sense. For those flying in, more than 25 airlines stage some 575 departures every day to 115 cities around the world. Just blocks from downtown, Amtrak’s 30th Street Station’s 11 train lines connect to every train destination in the nation.
Philadelphia is so ideally positioned that getting here by plane, car, bus, or train is hassle-free. Once you’re here, you’re in a walking city, with dozens of historic sites inside the compact, 25-block Center City grid. Visitors too rushed for a stroll through history can easily hail one of the ubiquitous taxis constantly cruising the streets—and if you prefer to drive yourself, the grid is easy to negotiate, with plentiful parking in every section of town.
Whether you’re making the trip by car, plane, train, or bus, getting to Lancaster County is pretty much a snap, especially when you consider that early-18th-century traders and travelers from Philadelphia used to slog for 4 days along bumpy, rut-pocked, mired-in-mud “roads.” Although that route had the regal name of “King’s Highway,” it was really nothing more than a glorified dirt trail.
The construction of the nation’s first turnpike, which opened in 1795, significantly smoothed the way, allowing stagecoaches to make the journey from Philadelphia in around 12 hours. Sharing the turnpike were Conestoga wagons (which, by the way, were invented in Lancaster County) drawn by horses specially bred to haul hefty loads of produce from Lancaster County farms to Philadelphia markets. Lancaster also became a primary “Gateway to the West” for settlers on their way to the Allegheny Mountains.