Jennerstown, PA

Jennerstown is a Somerset County borough with two very different kinds of Saturday-night energy: live theater in an old gristmill and stock-car racing at the speedway. The town began as a late-eighteenth-century stagecoach stop on the Forbes Road, was first called Laurel Hill, and later took the Jenner name. The Mountain Playhouse has been putting on professional summer stock for more than 80 years. Down the road, Jennerstown Speedway grew out of the Jenners Fairgrounds, a half-mile dirt oval opened in 1929; it was rebuilt and paved in 1987. Add Route 30, the Laurel Highlands setting, and a town named for smallpox-vaccine pioneer Edward Jenner, and Jennerstown has a remarkably full local map.