Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Mount Gretna, PA

Mount Gretna is a tiny borough in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, within the Lebanon metropolitan area, famous as a Victorian-era summer colony hidden in the woods.

The name Mount Gretna first appeared in print on September 21, 1883, in the Lebanon Daily News; it was suggested by the wife of Cornwall and Lebanon Railroad official Hugh Maxwell and borrowed from Gretna Green in Scotland.

Mount Gretna began as a picnic stop on iron magnate Robert Coleman's Cornwall and Lebanon Railroad, and Coleman offered land beside the tracks to the Pennsylvania Chautauqua movement.

The first Pennsylvania Chautauqua gathering was held at Mount Gretna in July 1892, with a dozen cottages, several public buildings and an auditorium built in that first year.

The Pennsylvania Chautauqua at Mount Gretna is one of only eighteen Chautauquas still surviving in North America, and it still runs summer programs built on its four pillars of arts, education, religion and recreation.

The Mount Gretna Playhouse stands on the site of the original 1892 Chautauqua auditorium, and theatrical productions have been presented there since 1927 by what is now Gretna Theatre.

Historic Mount Gretna is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and its porch-lined cottage streets retain their Victorian character.

The borough was incorporated in 1926; its first census, in 1930, counted just 17 year-round residents.

Mount Gretna's population peaked at 303 in 1990 and stood at about 190 at the 2020 census, though the wider Gretna community swells with summer cottagers every year.

The borough is divided into seven sections, including the Chautauqua grounds, the Campmeeting grounds, Mount Gretna Heights and Stoberdale.