FALL INTO PENNSYLVANIA With Bedford, who needs Vt.?

There's maple syrup and fall foliage right here, and the town has a rich history,to boot.
By CINDY LOOSE
WASHINGTON POST
Architect Stephen George could rightly take pride in the meticulous renovation he and his wife accomplished in their 1875 Italianate Victorian home. But it's the views from the windows of his about-to-open bed-and-breakfast that he repeatedly lauds.
"Doesn't that look like a Vermont scene?" he asks, pulling aside a lace curtain over a bathroom window at the Chancellor's House. "Even sitting on the throne, there is nothing but beautiful views."
I can see what he means.
In fact, it's the final proof I need to conclude that there's no point driving all day to Vermont for fall foliage when there is such a view from a bathroom in Bedford, Pa. The town is about 20 miles from Breezewood, where Interstate 70 intersects with the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Checklist
Of course, there is more to the New England fall experience than the brilliance of red maples and yellow birches in towns surrounded by rolling hills and mountainsides. To duplicate the experience, you'd need things like:
UChurch spires punctuating the horizon. Check. Plenty of those in Bedford.
UCovered bridges. Check. The county has 13.
UA courthouse, at least 100 years old, overlooking a village green. Check. Bedford's courthouse, built in 1828, is the state's oldest operating courthouse. The village green includes a Civil War monument and a gazebo-style band shelter.
UA house where George Washington slept. Check.
UA vibrant downtown where locals live and shop, but with cute stores for tourists wishing to buy antiques, handmade crafts and candles. Check. How else would we have happily spent two days poking around town?
URestaurants in buildings that, by American standards, are ancient. Check. Oralee's Golden Eagle Inn was built in the late 1700s; the Jean Bonnet Tavern is a 1760 historic landmark; and a tavern open for meals sits in a 76-acre historic village that re-creates life from the 1800s.
ULocally produced maple syrup. Check. Available in utilitarian jugs and, for tourists, fancy tins.
ULocally produced cheese. Uh, no cheese shops, even though the town is surrounded by dairy farms.
Everyone is different, but for us, cheese wasn't so important. My mother, sister and I were quite satisfied with our journey into Bedford last week. We headed straight to Founder's Crossing and other antique and craft stores on Julian Street. The supply of handmade quilts has apparently outpaced demand, and we found some marked down from $600 to as little as $100.
I was taken with a stained-glass butterfly ornament and a pig weather vane. When I returned to the shop later that day to buy them, they were gone. At the end of the trip, I discovered my family had scooped them up for me when I'd turned my back.
Town history
My mother was intrigued enough with Oralee's Golden Eagle Inn to agree to take on a pair of stairs to get inside for lunch. We entered a gracious old dining room of what was, in the 1700s, the mansion of a local doctor who made the first floor of his home into a tavern.
Bedford was once the Western frontier. As settlers and traders began to push farther into the interior, the town became an important way station. At one time, every third building in Bedford was a tavern with floor space for bedrolls.
The Golden Eagle Tavern, as the inn was known more than two centuries ago, housed troops who came in 1794 to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. It was the first test of a new government and its ability to control the former colonies. Obviously, the U.S. government prevailed.
We lingered over tea, then my sister and I climbed yet another staircase to check out some of the 12 rooms in the inn. Each is furnished with period antiques. Rooms start at $69, but we agree it would be worth shelling out $109, breakfast included, for the biggest room, with a stone fireplace.
British fort
Each Friday afternoon, the downtown tourism office offers guided walks. We strolled around town with tourism director Dennis Tice. The town, he told us, was settled around the British-held Fort Bedford in 1758.
"There were Europeans immigrating here well before that, but they didn't last long," Tice said. "The Indians killed them." A few traders who came earlier survived for a time.
An account book kept by Thomas Kinton, dated Nov. 14, 1737, shows the number of skins of beavers, wolves, foxes, otters, raccoons and other animals collected in a single day. Hunting remains popular here in 2002, although the area can no longer boast of being one of the finest preserves for wild game on the continent.
Today, a museum housed in a replica of the fort sits along the river near where the original once stood. Three months ago, its remains were identified.
Plans are under way to excavate and reconstruct the fort, said Roger Kirwin, executive director of a historic, Williamsburg-type attraction called Old Bedford Village, at the edge of town.
Faith and justice
We headed to the actual town's village green and courthouse. Tice pointed out the two pillars at the courthouse entrance. Tight-fisted city fathers apparently considered the pillars an unnecessary expense, he said. The architect, Solomon Filler, added them later, at his own cost. Soon after, he built the Presbyterian church across the street as nearly a mirror image of the courthouse.
"He considered faith and justice one and the same," Tice explained.
We strolled down the town streets, which are bereft of parking meters. There are instead iron hitching posts left from the 1800s. A jewelry store and barbershop share a brick structure built in 1771.
Tice pointed out two buildings decorated with lacy ironwork porches, & agrave; la New Orleans. They are last vestiges of the influence of the ousted French.
"Bedford came about because British people wanted to drive out and kill French people," Tice said. The town took its name from Duke Bedford, who helped fund the British push for conquest.
Washington slept here
A national historic landmark, the stone Espy House was built in 1771 by David Espy, an old friend of George Washington. Washington stayed here when he arrived in town as president and commander-in-chief, back when the latter title literally meant what it said. Washington came with troops to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. Farmers who had found whiskey the most profitable way to dispense with their grain were protesting a government tax on the beverage.
"They were saying, 'Didn't we just fight a war against taxation?' " Tice explained. "They were told, 'No, you just won a war against taxation without representation.' " The fight was over in just a couple of months, with the arrest of 100 men for sedition. (One of the battles will be re-enacted at Old Bedford Village Oct. 19-20.)
Incidentally, Washington was already familiar with Bedford by the time of the rebellion. He was among the 6,780 troops stationed at Fort Bedford, fighting with the British during the French and Indian War, Kirwin said.
Part of the ground level of the Espy House is currently a bakery, and we loaded up on cinnamon rolls, maple-frosted doughnuts and big pastries filled with fruit for $1 each.
Places to stay
We'd have more good food at yet another old tavern, this one just outside of town. First, I wanted to check out some more of the B & amp;B options in town. Miss Charlotte's is a lovingly restored Victorian from the 1890s, filled with period antiques.
"My idea of a good time is to go to auctions, flea markets and estate sales," owner Charlotte Livingston said. Livingston left Bedford after growing up here but returned to restore and open the B & amp;B after her husband died and her children went off on their own.
"I had an empty nest, and making a home is what I know how to do best," she says. "We treat guests like extended family."
Her friend, Walter Witt, says some guests return just for the orange pecan French toast she whips up for breakfast.
The area near the courthouse is home to the most imposing house in town, the recently opened Chancellor's House B & amp;B. The property was the home of John Bowman, an erudite Renaissance man who was the guiding force behind the creation of the University of Pittsburgh.
Stephen and Lynn George have spent the past 12 years renovating the place, three of those years working full time. Stephen, formerly head of the Pittsburgh Redevelopment Authority and director of aviation at Pittsburgh International Airport, has overseen a lot of big building programs. But his retirement project in Bedford seems to be his pride and joy.
Every bedroom in the elegant house is a corner room, providing a sense of privacy unusual in a B & amp;B. Just three rooms are open to guests, and at prices ranging from $110 to $135, they are a bargain.
We rounded out our day with a drive in the countryside and a meal at the Jean Bonnet Tavern in a basement restaurant with thick stone walls.
The old village
We put off more shopping the next morning long enough to visit Old Bedford Village. Forty buildings dot the property, the oldest from 1860. On any given day, about half the buildings are staffed with volunteers in period costume running blacksmith shops, making crafts and operating the general store and tavern.
Once or twice a month, the village revs up for special events. And plans are underway for more activities, including dances in the old barn that is now a gift shop.
The nonprofit village was suffering financially when Kirwin arrived last year. He put out an appeal for help to what he calls "the re-enactment community," a huge group of people nationwide who live to relive history.
"The response was terrific," said Kirwin, as re-enactors turned out to create events to draw crowds, or more specifically, to re-enact battles from the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the Whiskey Rebellion and the Civil War.
"Bedford's history really is immense, and one of the best-kept secrets," said Kirwin, who came here from Britain to take over the helm of the village.