Upper Pine Bottom State Park is a tiny five-acre site in Pennsylvania’s Pine Creek Gorge, surrounded by Tiadaghton State Forest and shaped by a rugged Appalachian landscape. Long before its creation, Native peoples used the gorge and Pine Creek corridor for travel, hunting, and sacred purposes. In the early nineteenth century, industry arrived with an iron furnace, sawmills, and a mountain route that evolved into today’s Route 44. Heavy logging and fires later stripped the area, but state forest acquisition and public recreation gradually restored its use. What began as a roadside camp became a small day-use access point to the recovering second-growth forest and gorge.