Gallitzin State Forest is a Pennsylvania state forest established in 1916 as part of the state’s early forest system. Covering 24,370 acres in two separate tracts across Somerset, Bedford, Cambria, and Indiana Counties, it includes the Charles F. Lewis Natural Area and the Clear Shade Wild Area. The forest emerged from conservation efforts after nineteenth-century logging, iron production, and wildfire had devastated old-growth timber and hindered regrowth. Enabled by Pennsylvania’s 1897 law on forest reservations and shaped by reformers such as Dr. Joseph Rothrock, it stands today as protected upland forest on the western edge of the Allegheny Plateau, named for Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin.

Ogle, Pennsylvania · USA