Beacon Hill, at over 500 feet elevation, is one of the highest points in Bucks County. In the 18th century, scouts from Washington’s army lit signal fires on this hill as they marched from Valley Forge to confront the British at the Battle of Monmouth. The hill remained farmland throughout the 19th century. Then in mid-20th century local farmers sold 40 acres to the Pauline Fathers, a monastic order of the Roman Catholic Church. It was the birth of a Polish Catholic Shrine in the United States.
From 1955-1966, a barn was used as a chapel by the local Polish-American community. In 1960, with the financial support of the faithful, more property was acquired. A new vision was proposed to build a shrine on 180 acres further up the hill in New Britain Township. Today, the history of Poland’s 1,000 years of Christianity in stained glass fills the east and west window walls of the shrine, while other panels depict American history. The Lower Chapel houses a true replica of the altar in Czestochowa, Poland, where the venerated icon of Our Lady, the Madonna, is housed. (In 1972, the barn chapel was transported in its entirety and relocated to its current location in the cemetery.)
Since its dedication in October 1966, three U.S. presidents (Lyndon Johnson, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan), numerous cardinals, bishops and archbishops, the prime minister and the president of Poland, and a future pope (Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II) have come to visit the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa on Beacon Hill.
Sources: https://czestochowa.us/about-us/history/ and Lester Trauch in Man About Town by Kathryn McKenna
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