Visit These PA Parks, Museums For Free On MLK Day Of Service

PENNSYLVANIA — To honor the spirit of America's great crusader for justice and intellectual pioneer, residents can visit certain Pennsylvania parks, museums, and more for free on Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service.

All properties managed by the National Park Service will grant free entry. In Pennsylvania, that includes 18 sites (although none of them are actually considered a National Park). Service to public lands and people has become synonmous with MLK Day, the only federal holiday designated as a day of service.

“Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve," King iconically said. "You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."

A full list of all of Pennslyvania's NPS sites with free admission on Monday, Jan. 16 is below:

• Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site
• Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area
• Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site
• Eisenhower National Historic Site
• First State National Historical Park
• Flight 93 National Memorial
• Fort Necessity National Battlefield
• Friendship Hill National Historic Site
• Gettysburg National Military Park
• Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site
• Independence National Historical Park
• Johnstown Flood National Memorial
• Middle Delaware National Scenic River
• Potomac Heritage Trail
• Steamtown National Historic Site
• Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial
• Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River
• Valley Forge National Historical Park

Dozens of museums around the state, including some of Philadelphia's biggest establishments like the African-American History Museum and the National Constitution Center, will offer free admission.

Nationally, many of the national parks and places where King and the civil rights movement made history are among sites managed by the National Park Service. Those include the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park in Atlanta, the Selma to Montgomery Historic Trail, which traces the footsteps of King and other civil rights activists in the 1965 Voting Rights March in Alabama, and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Thousands of volunteer projects are taking place in National Park Service-managed facilities on MLK Day of Service. The parks service said the holiday is a call for volunteerism to help bring about systemic changes that make the just, equitable and inclusive communities King dreamed of possible.

The National Park Service has free entrance day at the facilities it oversees five times a year. Other days this year when admission is free are:

• April 22: First day of National Park Week
• Aug. 4: Anniversary of the Great American Outdoors Act
• Sept. 23: National Public Lands Day
• Nov. 11: Veterans Day