Historic RittenhouseTown Juneteenth Free Museum Day

About this event

Tucked along Monoshone Creek in the Wissahickon Valley, the 18th-century paper-mill village of Historic RittenhouseTown opens free for Juneteenth weekend as part of Wawa Welcome America's Free Museum Days. Founded in 1690 as the site of British North America's first paper mill, the village offers a tour of the surviving colonial-era houses, an artifact display, an art exhibit, and a hands-on paper-making demonstration where families can pull a sheet of cotton-rag paper using 18th-century techniques. Juneteenth interpretation highlights the role paper played in the abolitionist press and in the freedom papers and manumission documents that formerly enslaved Philadelphians carried. A quiet, woodsy counterpoint to downtown festivities.