Cold Spring Hollow Bottles History: How a Pennsylvania Craft Distillery Turned Civil War Tragedy Into Bourbon
There is a particular kind of grit embedded in the limestone bedrock of south-central Pennsylvania — a stubbornness that does not announce itself but simply endures. You feel it in the small towns strung along Route 30, in the old stone farmhouses that predate the republic, and most pointedly in Chambersburg, the Franklin County seat that was founded, burned to the ground, and rebuilt with a ferocity that history has never quite given its due. Now, 162 years after one of the most jarring acts of destruction ever visited upon a Northern civilian population during the Civil War, a local distillery has chosen to pour that history into a bottle — and what a bottle it is.
The history of the 1864 Burning of Chambersburg has inspired a new spirit called 1864 Bourbon, produced by Cold Spring Hollow Distillery. The release, timed to coincide with a community commemoration event, is the rare marriage of regional craft spirits and genuine historical weight — not the manufactured, marketing-department version of history that gets slapped onto a label to move units, but the real thing, forged in fire and rebuilt with bare hands.
The Distillery Behind the Bottle
A First in Franklin County
In the heart of Franklin County, a place rich in history and tradition, Cold Spring Hollow Distillery stands as the first legal liquor producer in the region since Prohibition. That distinction alone carries enough historical resonance to fill a feature article, but Cold Spring Hollow has never been content to rest on institutional novelty. Nestled in the heart of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, the distillery is more than just a production facility — it stands as a testament to local craftsmanship and a dedication to producing small-batch spirits.
Cold Spring Hollow Distillery LLC is a craft distillery located in Mercersburg, PA, owned and operated by local Pennsylvanians producing small-batch spirits using advanced technological distillation equipment to create products with distinct flavor profiles, smoothness, and drinkability. The combination of modern equipment and an intimate, locally rooted philosophy is exactly the kind of approach that has driven the American craft spirits renaissance over the last decade — but Cold Spring Hollow adds something that most craft distilleries in Brooklyn loft spaces or Portland warehouses simply cannot: an authentic, lived-in sense of place.
Craft Roots and Community Commitment
At Cold Spring Hollow Distillery, the team hand-crafts flavored moonshines, whiskeys, bourbons, rums, gins, and vodkas. That diversity of production signals a distillery that has not pigeonholed itself, but it is bourbon that carries the most cultural currency in the American market, and it is bourbon that the distillery has now leveraged for its most ambitious release to date.
The distillery sources locally grown and distributed products whenever possible, supporting Pennsylvania's farmers, manufacturers, and suppliers — it is their way of giving back to the place they call home. They blend time-honored distillation techniques with cutting-edge technology, allowing them to create spirits with distinct flavor profiles that offer unrivaled smoothness and drinkability. For a small operation in rural Pennsylvania, that commitment to locality is not just a marketing bullet point — it shapes what ends up in the glass, and it shapes the distillery's relationship with the community that surrounds it.
The Event: Ransoming, Burning and Rebirth of Chambersburg
A Day Built Around Memory
On July 18, 2026, the Franklin County Visitors Bureau commemorated the history of July 1864 at the Ransoming, Burning and Rebirth of Chambersburg. The event is not a morbid exercise in Civil War grievance but a full-throated celebration of resilience — a community that understands where it came from and is not afraid to look directly at the worst of it. Cold Spring Hollow sold 1864 Bourbon throughout the day at Old Market Day and in the evening during the activities of the 1864 Ransoming, Burning and Rebirth of Chambersburg event.
On that Saturday, Chambersburg came to life with history, artisans, music, and more. It was the kind of day that American small towns do well when they stop trying to imitate the entertainment economy of larger cities and instead lean into the singular, unrepeatable character of their own past. For whiskey drinkers, it meant something more specific: the chance to raise a glass of locally produced bourbon on the very ground where 2,800 Confederate cavalry once leveled a century-old American town.
Why This Bourbon, Why Now
To honor the resilience, history, and enduring spirit of Chambersburg, Cold Spring Hollow Distillery crafted 1864 Bourbon Whiskey as a special release. The name is spare and unambiguous — four digits that carry enormous freight for anyone who knows even a passing amount of Civil War history. For those who do not, the bottle itself becomes an entry point into a story that most American history textbooks cover in a paragraph if they cover it at all.
Chambersburg was established in 1764 and burned in 1864 — exactly a century after its founding, which gives the town's story the kind of symmetry that historical fiction writers would reject as too on-the-nose. The Chambersburg of today grew out of the ashes of that destruction. A bourbon that takes its name from that year does not need to explain itself in lengthy tasting notes. The number does all the work.
The Fire That Forged a Town: What Happened in 1864
The Chain of Escalation
To understand why a Confederate cavalry force burned a Pennsylvania town in the summer of 1864, you have to understand the grim logic of retaliation that had taken hold of both armies by that point in the war. By the summer of 1864, the Civil War in northern Virginia, including the Shenandoah Valley, had taken a brutal turn, with burnings and hangings by both sides becoming more common. Sent to take control of the Valley by General Ulysses S. Grant in June 1864, Maj. Gen. David "Black Dave" Hunter burned the Virginia Military Institute and former Virginia governor John Letcher's home. Those acts, brutal even by the evolving standards of a war that had already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, gave Confederate General Jubal Early what he considered sufficient justification for what came next.
Early ordered cavalry leader McCausland to cross the Potomac River and raid into Pennsylvania, demanding $100,000 in gold or $500,000 in cash from the citizens of Chambersburg; if the people refused to pay, McCausland was to "burn the entire town." Early admitted he was ordering the raid on his own, without authorization from above, declaring, "for this act I, alone, am responsible." It was an extraordinary admission from a general who understood exactly what he was ordering, and who chose to do it anyway.
The Night Ride and the Morning That Changed Everything
Riding through the night, two brigades of Confederate cavalrymen reached the outskirts of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, at about 3 a.m. on July 30, 1864. The Confederate force consisted of McCausland's own brigade and that of Bradley Johnson — perhaps 2,800 men and four cannons in all. The town's residents, it turned out, were not particularly alarmed when they got word. When Chambersburg residents learned that yet another Confederate cavalry raid was approaching their city, most people were not overly concerned. Rebels had occupied the city in October 1862 and again in June 1863, soon before the Battle of Gettysburg, and on both occasions Southern troops had behaved reasonably well, although they had burned military supplies and railroad equipment during Jeb Stuart's raid of 1862.
This time, however, things would be categorically different. Brigadier General John McCausland and 2,800 Confederate cavalrymen entered Chambersburg, rang the courthouse bell to gather citizens, and read a ransom demand of $100,000 in gold or $500,000 in Yankee currency, threatening to burn the town in retaliation for the destruction committed by General Hunter in the Shenandoah Valley. Even if the citizens of Chambersburg had wanted to meet the demand, they could not. With Jeb Stuart's raid in 1862 and the invasion of the Army of Northern Virginia in 1863, residents had shipped their valuables out of town, and the banks had transported their money to safer places.
The Burning
When the ransom demand was not paid, General John McCausland fired the 100-year-old town on July 30, 1864. When the money was not forthcoming, the town was ordered burned at 9:00 a.m., although it may have begun as early as 8:00 a.m. Chambersburg was fired in multiple places, and many of the soldiers also plundered the town.
Not every Confederate soldier complied without reservation. Colonel William Peters led the 21st Virginia into town but refused the order to fire the town and was arrested for insubordination — charges that were dropped the next day. That act of individual conscience in the middle of an ordered atrocity is the kind of detail that tends to get lost in the macro-history of battles and campaigns but says everything about the moral complexity of what was unfolding on those streets.
The physical toll was staggering. When the local citizens failed to produce the demanded ransom, McCausland had his troops set fire to the town, an action that destroyed approximately 550 buildings, left 3,000 people homeless, and caused $1.6 million in damages. At least ten square blocks in downtown Chambersburg lay in ruins. Public buildings, including the Franklin County Courthouse, the Bank of Chambersburg, the printery of the German Reformed Church, numerous stores, and many private homes perished in the flames.
The strategic and political consequences rippled far beyond Franklin County. The burning of Chambersburg all but spelled defeat for Lincoln in the election of 1864, until General Philip Sheridan reorganized the Army of the Shenandoah and delivered victories in Virginia. McCausland's raid would ultimately be the last time that Confederates entered Pennsylvania during the Civil War.
Rebuilding: The Spirit That the Bourbon Honors
One month after the burning, Chambersburg was already busy formulating progressive recommendations for rebuilding the town, and ten years after the 1864 burning, the community was solidly moving toward a new era. Ladies groups and veterans' organizations resolved to establish a memorial to pay tribute to the soldiers of Franklin County in the Civil War, and on Saturday, July 20, 1878, more than 15,000 people gathered in the diamond of Chambersburg to remember, honor, and appreciate the county's veterans with the dedication of a 26-foot-tall, five-basin cast iron bronze Memorial Fountain. For a town that had been reduced to rubble just fourteen years prior, that turnout was not just a civic gesture — it was a statement.
In 1866, Pennsylvania's Legislature passed an act for the relief of certain citizens of Chambersburg and vicinity whose property was destroyed by the rebels on the thirtieth of July 1864. The legal acknowledgment came two years after the fact, the way official recognition usually does. But the town had not waited for Harrisburg to start putting itself back together. That capacity for self-directed recovery — to burn and rebuild without waiting for permission — is precisely what Cold Spring Hollow is trying to capture in a bottle.
Why Civil War-Inspired Bourbon Is a Natural American Tradition
History Has Always Had a Place at the Bar
American whiskey and American history have been intertwined since before there was an America to speak of. Frontier distillers, revolutionary-era taverns, Whiskey Rebellion farmers, Reconstruction-era rectifiers — the timeline of bourbon and rye is inseparable from the timeline of American political and social life. It should surprise no one that a distillery rooted in south-central Pennsylvania, a region that served as a geographic hinge point throughout the Civil War, would eventually produce a commemorative spirit. What makes the Cold Spring Hollow release different from the standard battlefield-branded product is specificity: this is not a generic Civil War bourbon. It is tied to a singular event, a specific date, a specific place, and a community that still lives with the legacy of that July morning 162 years ago.
The craft distillery movement in America has matured to the point where the most interesting producers are not simply trying to out-age or out-barrel the big Kentucky operations. The most compelling stories being told in the spirits world right now are hyperlocal ones — distilleries that understand the land beneath their feet, the water they draw from, the neighbors they source their grain from, and the history that shaped the ground they stand on. Cold Spring Hollow, as the first legal distillery in Franklin County since Prohibition, occupies exactly that niche.
The Geography of Taste
Franklin County, Pennsylvania, is located just north of the Mason-Dixon Line and is an easy drive from Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. That positioning is not incidental. This is a region that has always served as a crossroads — between North and South, between Appalachian foothills and the Great Valley, between agricultural Pennsylvania and the urban corridor of the East Coast. The whiskey made here carries those crosscurrents in its DNA, whether the distiller intends it to or not.
Cold Spring Hollow believes in boosting the local economy by sourcing ingredients and materials from their neighbors, contributing to the growth and prosperity of the community and ensuring that their success becomes everyone's success. In practical terms, that means the grain going into 1864 Bourbon is likely coming from Pennsylvania farmland that sat in the path of Confederate cavalry in the summer of 1864. There is something powerfully grounding about that — a bourbon whose very raw materials come from soil that endured what Chambersburg endured.
What This Release Means for the Craft Spirits Industry
Terroir as Narrative
The wine world has spent decades evangelizing about terroir — the idea that place imprints itself on what grows there. American craft distillers have been slower to adopt that framework, partly because bourbon's legal requirements (new charred oak barrels, specific grain percentages, distillation and proof parameters) impose a degree of standardization that can obscure regional character. But the most thoughtful craft producers have found that terroir in whiskey is not just about the grain or the water — it is about the story, the people, and the accumulated memory of a place.
Cold Spring Hollow's 1864 Bourbon is an example of what might be called narrative terroir: the idea that a spirit's meaning — and thus a significant portion of its value — is inseparable from the story of where it comes from and why it was made. A bourbon aged anywhere in America under the right conditions can taste extraordinary. A bourbon made by the first legal distillery in Franklin County since Prohibition, released on the anniversary of the most destructive military attack on civilian Northern soil during the Civil War, carries a dimension of meaning that no amount of angel's share can evaporate.
Community-Anchored Releases as a Growth Model
For smaller craft distilleries operating without the marketing budgets of the national brands, community-anchored releases like 1864 Bourbon represent a genuinely smart business strategy, not just a feel-good one. By partnering with the Franklin County Visitors Bureau and timing the release to coincide with a major community event, Cold Spring Hollow gained visibility far beyond its normal distribution footprint. Whiskey enthusiasts who might never have heard of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, are now reading about the distillery's work in outlets that cover both spirits and Civil War history — an unusually wide Venn diagram that few craft producers ever manage to inhabit simultaneously.
Cold Spring Hollow spirits are also featured in select local breweries, where they complement the diverse beer offerings and create a unique tasting experience that celebrates local craftsmanship. That kind of embedded presence in the local hospitality ecosystem means that visitors arriving in Franklin County for the Ransoming, Burning and Rebirth event are likely to encounter 1864 Bourbon in multiple contexts — at the event itself, at the tasting room, at local establishments. That kind of layered visibility is exactly what turns a limited release into a lasting brand asset.
For the Bourbon Enthusiast: Why 1864 Belongs on Your Radar
Limited Production, Maximum Meaning
Serious bourbon drinkers have been conditioned by the allocated-bottle economy to treat every limited release with a degree of calculated skepticism. Is the scarcity real or manufactured? Is the liquid worth the hunt? In the case of Cold Spring Hollow's 1864 Bourbon, the answers tilt decisively in the consumer's favor. This is not a secondary-market play dressed up in historical packaging. It is a small-batch product from a craft distillery that blends time-honored distillation techniques with cutting-edge technology to create spirits with distinct flavor profiles that offer unrivaled smoothness and drinkability.
The distillery's existing lineup of straight bourbon whiskey gives some indication of the house style — a commitment to clean, accessible profiles that do not hide behind gimmicks. A release timed to a specific historical commemoration and produced by a distillery that takes its regional identity seriously is the kind of thing that tends to punch well above its price point, simply because the people making it have something to prove and something to honor at the same time.
A Reason to Visit Chambersburg
The Franklin County Visitors Bureau invites all to explore Franklin County, PA and enjoy the trails of history, arts and architecture, recreation, natural beauty, fresh foods, and the warm hospitality of communities like Chambersburg, Greencastle, Mercersburg, Shippensburg, and Waynesboro. For the bourbon traveler who has already made the pilgrimage to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and the Tennessee whiskey towns, Franklin County offers something genuinely different: a region where the history is not curated and commodified but still raw enough to give you pause. You can walk the same streets where a courthouse bell rang out that July morning in 1864 and follow it up with a pour of something made from Pennsylvania grain by people who grew up with this history in their bones.
Cold Spring Hollow Distillery is located at 8 Findlay Dr. in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, and the distillery also maintains a presence through Waffles and Shine in downtown Chambersburg. The tasting room experience at an operation this size tends to be exactly what large-distillery visitors are increasingly looking for: direct conversation with the people making the product, an unmediated connection to the source, and a pour that tastes like it came from somewhere specific rather than from a generalized ideal of what bourbon is supposed to be.
The Larger Lesson
There is a version of this story that reduces itself to a local-interest novelty: small distillery makes whiskey for town event. That version misses almost everything important about what Cold Spring Hollow has done with 1864 Bourbon. Chambersburg was established in 1764 and burned in 1864, and the Chambersburg of today grew out of the ashes of that destruction. A town with that kind of timeline understands something about resilience that does not require a motivational poster to communicate. It is built into the sidewalks and the courthouse and the people who choose to stay and build something in a place that has already been taken from them once.
When a craft distillery — itself the first of its kind in the county since Prohibition, itself an act of rebuilding something that was lost — releases a bourbon named for the year that tested this community most severely, it is doing something that bourbon does better than almost any other American product: it is turning time into something you can hold, pour, and share. The year 1864 is not a marketing hook. It is a reckoning, bottled in small batches, made from local grain, and offered to anyone willing to raise a glass to the remarkable, stubborn, fire-tested spirit of a place that refused to stay burned.
