Growing up in Manheim, April Lynn Gibble Downey always knew the town was a special place. Now she's hoping to share the community's story with others.

Downey, who currently lives outside of Baltimore, has a made a video about Manheim that she hopes to turn into a full-blown series of videos spotlighting towns across the country.

"I created a full-length documentary on Manheim to use an as example episode for a new documentary series I am going to be proposing to major production companies," she explained. "The series is tentatively called 'America's Historic Towns.'"

Downey's goal is to film the official series with professional film crews and actors, but for the pilot episode on Manheim, she produced the video entirely on her own.

"I had done a few other YouTube videos before this, educational and entertaining videos," she said. After writing a book about Manheim for the series "Images of America," Downey realized she had more to say about her hometown.

"I used some of the historic photos from the book, and some of the places featured in the video are the same as the ones featured in the book, but there are stories in the video that aren't in the book," she stated. "You get more of a personal feel in the video."

Narrated by Jon Addison, the video features Downey talking about the town and its history as well as interviews with local people and visits to local buildings and organizations.

Highlights for Downey while making the video included visiting the former Stiegel mansion and seeing the railroad museum, which was closed when she wrote the book. "They had a lot more artifacts in the museum than I realized," she remarked. "I had no idea what they had in there." The video also relates ghost stories heard around Manheim.

In fact, Downey said she had to cut the video down in the editing process because she had too much information to include. As it stands, it's just over 45 minutes long.

Downey is in the process of shopping the video to production companies, and she said she already has ideas for other places she'd like to spotlight. "There are literally thousands of small towns across the country that would be great to feature," she stated. "I personally love Havre de Grace in Maryland."

She said the goal of her video series is to highlight these small towns in a positive way. "There's a lot more history in a lot of these places than people might realize, and I think they'd be really interested if they knew it," she explained. "People live in these small towns, and they have no idea of their town's history and the bigger role their town may have played in the overall American story."

To view "America's Historic Towns: Manheim," visit http://www.youtube.com/spinningpinecone.