Sitting on the side of the Susquehanna River, and across from the main park is the Fort Hunter Mansion. The Federal style house is on the site of the old French and Indian War Fort Hunter, was built in three sections. The two front sections were built for Archibald McAllister with locally quarried stones. The grand front mansion was erected in 1814 while the middle “cabin” section, built in 1786, was the first McAllister house. The rear wooden portion was built by Daniel Dick Boas in 1870.
Your tour of the Fort Hunter Mansion will begin with a video with a brief history of the home, and continues through the home. The home is still filled with family artifacts, furniture and original elements. A few of the paintings are reproductions but overall the home remains intact from when the McAllister and Boas families called it home.
For the time, the home was opulent for the time, the tour takes you through the every day life of an active farm house for the period. The tour does have a bit of an upstairs/downstairs type feel when you enter the summer kitchen and see how items were produced for the main house. With actual artifacts throughout, you can see how the both the family and people who lived on the property lived and worked.
The location of the Fort Hunter Mansion played a pivotal role in forming the city of Harrisburg and protecting the area during the French and Indian War. Yearly, the park actually has days to celebrate the history of the area with recreations and demonstrations happening. There is also an active archaeological site behind the mansion that hopes to find more from the original fort and settlement that existed before the mansion was built.
Take a Look Inside the Fort Hunter Mansion:
Visitors to the area can tour the mansion with tickets are only $7 for a guided tour throughout the home. For tour information visit the Fort Hunter Website