Visiting Utopian Communities: A Guide to the Shakers, Moravians, and Others

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful resource
Review: This guidebook introduces the potential tourist to various utopian communities throughout the United States. Each community is given a chapter, which has an introduction that includes the community's general location, address, telephone number, hours when open, admission, restaurants, shops and facilities. (Everything a tourist could need!) Next follows an overview of the community, its history, and finally a written tour explaining what a visitor will see.

The communities included are: Ephrata Cloister (Ephrata, Pennsylvania), Old Salem (Winston-Salem, North Carolina), Mount Lebanon Shaker Village (New Lebanon, New York), Hancock Shaker Village (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), Canterbury Shaker Village (Canterbury, New Hampshire), The Shaker Museum (Poland Spring, Maine), Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill (Harrodsburg, Kentucky), Shakertown at South Union (South Union, Kentucky), Shaker Museum and Library (Old Chatham, New York), Old Economy Village (Ambridge, Pennsylvania), Zoar Village State Memorial (Zoar, Ohio), Historic New Harmony (New Harmony, Indiana), Oneida Community (Oneida, New York), Fruitlands (Harvard, Massachusetts), Historic Bethel German Colony (Aurora, Oregon), Bishop Hill (Bishop Hill, Illinois), Amana Colonies (Amana, Iowa), Historic Rugby (Rugby, Tennessee), and Koreshan State Historic Site (Estero, Florida).

This book is a wonderful resource! Not only does this book tell you how you can visit various historic utopian communities, but it also gives you the information you need to understand what the community was about. Complete with pictures, I highly recommend this book.