The Evolution of Amish Country
Tensions between tourism, development, long-range commuting, and the Amish heritage
This is a piece I had worked on in 2023 and 2024 and wrapped in early 2025. I had actually kind of forgotten about it, as I sometimes do with pieces that have particular hooks (I had visited Lancaster County a couple of times over those years and had it on my mind). I’m actually visiting Amish Country again this month, and that jogged my memory. I did some actual journalism for this piece, and I like how it turned out, so I’m running it despite it being one year out of date from my final notes on it.
Another Lancaster-area tourism season is looming. It begins, traditionally, with the opening of the Sight & Sound Theatre in March. Or, depending on your activity preferences, perhaps with the snow geese migration in late February at the nearby Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area.
Over the last couple of years, there were widely publicized concerns in the media about the shortage of traditional (or “traditional”) Amish restaurant capacity, following the December 2021 closure of Good ‘N Plenty, the fire at Hershey Farm in January 2023, and the closures over the last several years of a handful of smaller Amish or Amish-themed restaurants. One typical news story, from early 2023, read:
With barely more than a month before the season begins, the area is down more than 1,000 seats at Pennsylvania Dutch-style restaurants since this time last year.
Good ‘N Plenty in East Lampeter Twp. closed in early 2022, taking 600 restaurant seats out of service….
“It is a real concern on the Route 30 corridor there: where are these buses going to go?”
This was for the most part a weird, one-time logistical logjam: a catastrophic fire happened to line up with the squeeze of the post-pandemic economy. The Hershey Farm complex reopened this last July, and another anxious bit of news—the expected closure of the iconic Dutch Haven store in Ronks, reported in January 2023—turned out not to happen after all.
Despite the restaurant and Amish kitsch situation looking a little more secure as 2025’s tourism season arrives, there’s a deeper anxiety under those old news stories. Was—is—Amish Country subtly changing, maybe permanently? Was something like gentrification happening—with the arrival in recent years of Wegmans and Whole Foods, the smattering of longtime business closures, and the pandemic-era “discovery” of Amish Country by occasional long-term Philadelphia commuters? Will tour buses full of largely older folks, who may have been children when modern Amish Country tourism began, still be able to find tables at a smorgasbord? And will those buses still come? In five or 10 years?
No doubt some real changes have occurred, and have been occurring. The pandemic altered settlement and commuting patterns, with many ex-urbanites finding solace in the communities around the Lancaster area. The emergence of a larger penumbra of typical suburban sprawl around the urban core of Lancaster City, and the region’s intensifying traffic, can make it feel like its distinct identity is being lost. Anecdotes—the closure or redevelopment of an iconic smorgasbord here, a new big-box store there—can start to look like patterns.
I spoke to Joel Cliff from Discover Lancaster, Amish Country’s major tourism organization, to find out what the folks in charge of the tourism industry think about the last few years’ developments. Of course, it’s their job to spin events to fit the conclusion that Lancaster is thriving and you should visit! No surprise, that’s what was conveyed to me. But that doesn’t make it incorrect.
Cliff was unconcerned about the restaurant capacity issue. A few of the less notable restaurants had closed, and Good ’N Plenty wasn’t coming back. But—we spoke before its reopening—Hershey Farm was building a massive new restaurant, including a section for “pass-the-plate” all-you-can-eat family-style dining. (It turns out that option is only offered for large groups, with the main dining option being a self-serve smorgasbord, but it does mean a dining option almost synonymous with Amish Country exists again after the Good ’N Plenty closure.)
But this isn’t just about all-you-can-eat restaurants.