Long before there was a Hershey, Pennsylvania, there was a quiet Lancaster County town — and a caramel factory that helped Milton Hershey build an empire.
This week, a new movie trailer dropped — and everyone is talking about Milton Hershey again. The film, simply titled Hershey, is a period piece set for a Thanksgiving 2026 release. It stars Finn Wittrock as Milton and Alexandra Daddario as his beloved wife, Catherine “Kitty” Hershey, and tells the story of how one couple’s vision transformed a string of early failures into something the world still savors today.
But here in Lancaster County, we know something the movie posters don’t say: before there was Hershey, Pennsylvania, there was Mount Joy.
A factory in a quiet river town
In 1891, Milton Hershey was already running his Lancaster Caramel Company out of the city of Lancaster — and business was booming. His caramels had caught the attention of buyers at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and orders were pouring in. To keep pace, he looked outward.
He found what he needed in Mount Joy, a small borough tucked along the Chickies Creek, about twelve miles west of Lancaster. That year, Hershey acquired three lots and a small factory building there, at the corner of East Donegal and South Jacob Streets. By 1892, caramel production had begun.
It wasn’t the showpiece of his operation. The Mount Joy facility was a satellite — a smaller, quieter outpost connected to the main Lancaster works. But it was productive, and it ran for roughly six years. Neighbors would have smelled the sugar in the air.
The road to chocolate — and beyond
In 1900, Milton Hershey made a decision that still echoes. He sold his entire Lancaster Caramel Company — the Lancaster facility, the Mount Joy operation, and the brand itself — to the American Caramel Company for one million dollars. It was an enormous sum for the era. And he used it to do something almost no one expected: he pivoted to chocolate.
Within a few years, Hershey had founded a new factory, a new town, and a new company in the farmland of Derry Township, Dauphin County. What had been a caramel empire quietly became the foundation for one of the most recognizable brands in American history.
The Mount Joy building passed out of his hands with the sale. The street corner moved on, as street corners do. But the chamber of commerce remembered. In 1972 — nearly a century after Hershey first walked those lots — they mounted a plaque so the town would know what had once happened there.
A timeline of the early years
1886 — Milton Hershey founds the Lancaster Caramel Company in Lancaster, PA, after years of failed candy ventures in Philadelphia, New York, and Denver.
1891 — Hershey acquires three lots and a small factory in Mount Joy, expanding his caramel operations outside Lancaster city for the first time.
1892 — The Mount Joy caramel factory begins production at East Donegal and South Jacob Streets.
1898 — The Mount Joy operation winds down, after approximately six years of caramel production.
1900 — Hershey sells the Lancaster Caramel Company to the American Caramel Company for one million dollars — and turns his full attention to chocolate.
1972 — The Mount Joy Chamber of Commerce, under president Harold Keller, installs a plaque commemorating Hershey’s caramel factory on the site.
What the new film reminds us
The Hershey trailer — released this week by Angel Studios at CinemaCon — focuses on the love story at the heart of it all. Director Mark Waters, known for Mean Girls and Freaky Friday, says the film explores not just how Milton built a company, but how Kitty inspired his greatest legacy: the Milton Hershey School, which still serves children in need today. It’s a story about purpose, as the filmmakers put it, not just profit.
That resonates differently when you know about Mount Joy. The caramel years weren’t glamorous. They were grinding, practical, logistical — the unglamorous business of making something good and getting it out the door. The satellite factory on East Donegal Street wasn’t a monument; it was a stepping stone. Milton Hershey spent his early decades building and selling and building again, failing and trying and moving forward.
The plaque is easy to miss. The street corner looks like any other corner in a Lancaster County borough. But underneath the ordinary surface is a thread that connects this quiet place to one of the great American stories — and now, to a film that will bring that story to theaters across the country this Thanksgiving.
The former caramel factory site is located at East Donegal and South Jacob Streets in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania. The commemorative plaque was installed in 1972 by the Mount Joy Chamber of Commerce. The Lancaster Caramel Company was sold to the American Caramel Company in 1900, freeing Milton Hershey to found what would become the Hershey Chocolate Company.
