Harrisburg Historical is a free downloadable app that introduces users to the significant stories, places, and people of the Pennsylvania capital region. Harrisburg Historical offers the best of place-based storytelling that includes interactive maps, historical resources, primary documents, old photos, and audio and video interviews. The mobile app provides an easy way to navigate the local histories that have shaped Pennsylvania's Capital Region. Harrisburg Historical is a product of the Center for Public Humanities at Messiah University and the Digital Harrisburg Initiative in collaboration with community institutions and partners. Our stories are written and developed by students, professors, teachers, and community historians. We publish new stories twice a year in January and July.

To make recommendations for potential stories, or to volunteer to review, write, or develop stories, contact digitalharrisburg@messiah.edu.

Privacy Policy

The Center for Public Humanities at Messiah University operates the Harrisburg Historical website and app. Whenever you use Harrisburg Historical, we collect basic information that your browser or device sends to us that is called Log Data. This Log Data may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser or device version, content that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, and other statistics, including your location (if you have given us permission to do so, e.g. by enabling location services in your browser or device). We use this information only to provide core functionality and do not collect personally identifiable information for marketing or any other purpose. On the website – but not in the mobile apps – Harrisburg Historical shares some collected information with Google for the purpose of analyzing general usage patterns. Google's terms and policies are available here. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our Privacy Policy, please contact us.