Most Pennsylvania towns nod to their history with a plaque or a proclamation. Washington, 30 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, celebrates its rebellious past with the Whiskey Rebellion Festival, a two-day block party featuring custom cocktails, interactive street theater, and a man who volunteers for a molasses-and-feathers reenactment.
The Whiskey Rebellion Festival, July 10-11 and now in its 16th year, commemorates a showdown that could only happen in Western Pennsylvania: It’s 1794, the country barely formed, and frontier farmers were picking a fight with the federal government. The flashpoint was whiskey. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton proposed a tax on distilled spirits to help pay Revolutionary War debts, but farmers who relied on turning grain into whiskey saw it as a threat to their livelihood—and pushed back hard. What started as a dispute over whiskey quickly became a much bigger issue: What happens when a country founded by rebels suddenly has rebels of its own? More than 230 years later, the town of Washington is still exploring that question the same way the argument began: with people gathering, debating, and drinking whiskey.
Why the Whiskey Rebellion Festival Is Washington’s Biggest Weekend
For Traci Liberatore, executive director of the Bradford House Historical Association, which organizes the all-volunteer festival, the mix of history and hometown pride explains why the event has become Washington’s biggest weekend of the year. “It’s our Super Bowl,” she says.
The festival’s success isn’t just about drawing thousands of visitors to the area. It’s getting them invested in a 230-year-old argument without making it feel like one. “Half the people at the festival don’t even realize that they’re learning,” Liberatore says.
At the Blue Eagle Tavern, the festival’s recreation of an 18th-century public house, the drinks do more than cool visitors on a scorching July afternoon. They channel an era when taverns weren’t just places to order another round, but gathering spots where people debated politics, traded news, and occasionally plotted a rebellion.
“Where did all the business in the 1790s get done?” Liberatore says. “At the tavern.”
Turning a 230-Year-Old Rebellion Into a Cocktail Menu
The festival’s version is under a canvas canopy instead of colonial rafters, but the mission remains the same: Every pour comes with a backstory. This year, creating those stories one cocktail at a time fell to Tom Karolewics, a paralegal, self-described history nerd, and part-time bartender at the nearby 230-year-old Century Inn. He’s also someone who understands an important fact about colonial-era cocktails: You probably don’t want to drink one.
“Way back when, the taverns would make their own whiskey,” Karolewics says. “A lot of times it was terrible.”
His challenge was to reverse-engineer a colonial cocktail menu that captures the spirit of the Whiskey Rebellion, without recreating the questionable decisions of an 18th-century bartender. In the 1700s, tavern keepers often relied on fruits, syrups, honey, and bitters to make the whiskey more drinkable. In his research, Karolewics found recipes with ingredients—like tansy, an aromatic herb—that have disappeared from the modern backbar, for good reason.
“Tansy is poisonous, so we couldn’t use it in our drinks,” he says. “The bartenders 200 years ago used it to get rid of parasites.”
While Karolewics wanted the drinks to transport visitors back to the Whiskey Rebellion, he didn’t want the cocktails themselves making the trip. Instead, the Rebellion Smashed turns Maker’s Mark bourbon, lemon, simple syrup, and mint picked from the Bradford House gardens into a bright, citrusy take on a frontier julep. Elizabeth Bradford’s Spritz—named for the wife of Whiskey Rebellion firebrand David Bradford—brings a lighter touch with rye, blood orange, citrus, and Prosecco. For visitors who want their rebellion straight up, Rebel’s Choice keeps things simple: whiskey served neat, on the rocks, or mixed to order.
The Street Theater That Turns History Into a Live Argument
The tavern isn’t the only place where festival organizers turn history into something visitors can walk into. Throughout the day, costumed actors take over South Main Street, pulling visitors into the arguments and conflicts of the Whiskey Rebellion. The scenes unfold in order, allowing festivalgoers to follow the uprising from fiery debates over Hamilton’s whiskey tax to the confrontations that eventually brought federal troops to Western Pennsylvania.
For Terri Perry, who oversees the street theater, the goal is making visitors understand that the people of 1794 weren’t just names in a textbook. They were neighbors arguing in real time over what their brand-new country was to become.
“You’re not just reading about these people,” Perry says. “You’re seeing them and hearing their side of the story.”
The Whiskey Rebellion Festival’s Famous Tar-and-Feathering Reenactment
That commitment extends all the way to one of the festival’s biggest crowd-pleasers: the tar-and-feathering, which actually happened during the 1794 uprising. This year Perry’s husband, JP, will play the unlucky tax collector who has his shirt ripped off before experiencing a much sweeter version of frontier justice. When she asked him to take the role, he had one concern: advance notice.
“He said, ‘You have to let me know now, because I am going to start a workout regimen and diet,’” Perry says.
The tar for the performance is a molasses mixture that they make weeks ahead of the festival, store in a bucket, and occasionally stir while it ferments in a volunteer’s garage.
The faux tar is just one small piece of a festival powered by months of planning. The people debating cocktail recipes, rehearsing street scenes, and perfecting an 18th-century punishment involving molasses are doing it on their own time.
“None of us are paid,” Liberatore says. “We all have jobs outside of the festival.”
For Liberatore, all the work comes back to the reason the Bradford House Historical Association started the festival in the first place: getting people invested in the history that happened in their own backyard.
“The festival is our number one educational program,” she says.
What to Know Before You Go to the Whiskey Rebellion Festival
- The festival is free. Daytime programming runs from noon to 6 p.m., with street theater every hour on the hour along South Main Street. Saturday’s history parade starts at noon.
- The Bradford House Museum (175 South Main Street) and the Whiskey Rebellion Education and Visitor Center (184 South Main Street) are open from noon to 6 p.m.
- The Washington Symphony Orchestra performs Friday night starting at 8 p.m. Saturday’s music lineup is headlined by Pittsburgh favorites The Clarks, celebrating their 40th anniversary.
- Along with a children’s area inside the museum, there will also be a juggler, storyteller, and a silhouette artist doing portraits on demand. Kids can try 18th-century games such as rolling hoops and stilts, and participate in militia musters and drills.
- Parking is free throughout downtown Washington. Do not park at the police station behind the museum.
Story by Kathleen Renda
Photos Courtesy of Bradford House Historical Association
Subscribe to TABLE Magazine’s print edition.
