SWEET ESCAPE : HERSHEY: THE TOWN THAT CHOCOLATE BUILT.

Byline: Susanne Hopkins Daily News Travel Editor

This town is the story of a failure who, with the help of a few billion kisses, ultimately enjoyed sweet success.

Take a jaunt to Hershey, a village of 7,400 people snuggled in Pennsylvania's Lebanon Valley, and you'll find yourself in a virtual shrine to the man who invented the chocolate bar: Milton S. Hershey.

There are streetlamps in the shape of Hershey's Kisses, both wrapped and unwrapped, along Chocolate Avenue (there's a Cocoa Avenue, too). There's the Milton S. Hershey School, which houses and schools 1,100 disadvantaged students; the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, which includes Pennsylvania State University's College of Medicine; Hersheypark, a lively amusement park with 50 rides and attractions; Hershey Gardens, a 23-acre botanical garden that has its roots in Hershey's original rose garden; the Hershey Museum, built on Hershey's collection of American Indian and Pennsylvania Dutch artifacts; and pricey Hershey Lodge and Hotel Hershey.

It's also the home of Hershey Foods Corp. which, with its Chocolate World ride through the chocolate-making process, has helped draw about 2.2 million visitors a year to the place.

Beyond the Hershey stuff, there isn't much here - just tidy homes on tree-shaded streets, a few antiques stores, a downtown devoid of charming shops, and, on the outskirts, some outlet stores.

But if you're in the neighborhood - Lancaster, Philadelphia, Gettysburg, Harrisburg, for example - Hershey is a sweet retreat for a day or so.

You'll quickly get into the spirit of things with a first stop at Chocolate World. Years ago, you could go through the factory and watch folks whip up those bars and kisses. But when more than 1 million tourists began descending on the place each year, the Hershey Foods Corp. realized it couldn't conduct tours and make candy at the same place. So it built a visitors center. Now, in these days of multimedia, you enter Chocolate World (it's free), hop aboard a swiveling car and, in a Disneyland-like ride, enter the chocolate-making world. The hosts: a dancing Hershey's Kiss and a companion, a Hershey's Milk Chocolate bar.

We see how sugar, milk and cocoa beans are gradually blended into chocolate (``wholesome and nutritious,'' our narrator says with assurance) and we even go through a simulated cocoa bean roaster complete with red lights and the sensation of heat. The smell of chocolate is pervasive as we watch the rich liquid being molded into those trademark bars. It whets the appetite for the Hershey store where we'll end up after the ride.

Still, it's all very cheery and upbeat, although that is not how the man in the seat behind me sees it.

``This is just one big advertisement for Hershey,'' he grumbles to his companion.

Surprise.

At least he gets a couple of Hershey's Kisses at the end.

Across the way from Chocolate World and just above Hersheypark is the Hershey Museum. Expecting to spend a half-hour or so here, I have to wrench myself away an hour or more later. This is where you'll meet, in words and pictures and belongings, the man behind the town.

Milton S. Hershey, it turns out, was born here (the town then was called Derry Church) in 1857, the son of a Mennonite couple. He went as far as fourth grade before starting an apprenticeship with a printer. He later apprenticed to a candy maker and in 1876, he opened his own candy shop in Philadelphia. It failed. He moved on to New York and started another candy business. It also failed, and Hershey quickly lost family financial and moral support.

So he went to Denver, Colo. He stayed just long enough to learn to make caramels, then returned to Pennsylvania in 1876 where he set up a candy shop in Lancaster. That, too, seemed doomed to fail - until a British candy importer offered to market the caramels abroad. It worked, and soon the caramels were selling briskly in America, too.

The sight of German chocolate-making machinery at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 stirred Hershey to try again to make a salable milk chocolate. He bought the machinery and, in 1900, sold his Lancaster Caramel Co. for $1 million. He would make or break his future in chocolate.

By 1903, he had moved his factory to Derry Church, where he had access to the fresh milk needed for his chocolate. He made bars, kisses (which, depending on the story you like, got their name because at the turn of the century, it was a common term for small, bite-sized pieces of chocolate or because the machine that pumped them out made a puckering sound like that of a kiss), baking chocolate and cocoa, all of which sold briskly. In the ultimate display of self-esteem, Hershey renamed the town after himself.

Then he built it. Hershey became a company town. The candymaker paid to have a school, brick homes and a park built.

``The community of Hershey was conceived to meet every resident's needs,'' says the informational exhibit on the early days of Hershey. All necessary services and recreational opportunities were available here, it says.

Not all was sweetness and light. There was the 1937 sit-down strike over wages, which prompted a melee between townsfolk loyal to the candymaker and workers seeking raises. While wages were ultimately raised, hard feelings apparently lasted for years.

In 1918, Hershey put the bulk of his $60 million estate into a trust for a boys' orphanage - the forerunner of the Milton Hershey School. In 1963, the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center of Pennsylvania State University was endowed with $50 million from a Hershey trust.

The museum's exhibits flow out of this story of Hershey - both the man, who died in 1945 at the age of 88, and the town. You can pick up telephone receivers and hear old-timers remembering special moments with Hershey himself and clock in at the old time clock that once was in the Hershey factory. There's an impressive display of Pennsylvania Dutch furniture, weavings and housewares Hershey collected and an admirable collection of American Indian artifacts, as well.

But what seems to capture the attention of everyone in the museum is the Apostolic Clock, a handsome, intricately carved clock created between 1867 and 1878 by John Fiester of Lancaster. At quarter to the hour, it puts on a show of moving figures - the Apostles and Jesus Christ, the devil and characters representing the cycle of man twirling around the clock front, in and out of doors.

Even time is sweet in Hershey.

Up the hill from the museum and across from Hotel Hershey (which has grounds worth seeing itself), I find Hershey Gardens. They're getting ready for a wedding this day - the gazebo by a small display of dormant rose bushes is festooned with paper bells and bridal netting.

I can see why. This is a serene place, its quiet broken only by birds whistling a happy tune and the occasional cries of excitement from those on the wooden rollercoaster at Hersheypark. There is a baker's dozen of themed gardens here, from the rock garden and the garden of ornamental grasses to three rose gardens and an herb garden. I find the Japanese garden the most showy, abloom with giant peonies and accented with a babbling brook, shaped trees and large, artfully placed rocks.

I walk through an arbor under a leafy weeping beech tree. Ahead, flags wave in the breeze over the memorial garden. I half expect Milton Hershey himself to walk up the hill, waving his hat in greeting. His presence is so pervasive, it could happen.

On Location

For more information about Hershey and its attractions, call (800) HERSHEY (437-7439).

CAPTION(S):

6 Photos, Box

Box: On Location (See text)

Photo: (1--Color) It was Milton S. Hershey's collection of roses that inspired Hershey Gardens. Today, 23 acres are planted in several styles, ranging from the formal rose garden to this tranquil Japanese garden.

(2-3--Color) At right, Hersheypark is a lively amusement park that sports 50 rides and attractions. Below, the Pennsylvania town that chocolate built has streets named Chocolate and Cocoa.

(4--Color) While the downtown area of Hershey is unremarkable, its streetlights in the shape of wrapped and unwrapped Hershey's Kisses have charmed many a tourist.

(5) Visitors stroll the lush grounds of Hershey Gardens, where fountains bloom and flowers blossom.

Susanne Hopkins/Daily News

(6) Milton S. Hershey

Founder of Hershey, Pa.