Laurel Hill State Park in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, spans just over 4,000 acres around Laurel Hill Lake, a man-made lake built during the Great Depression. The area reflects a shift from heavy logging, which stripped away most old-growth forest between 1886 and 1940, to large-scale restoration under New Deal programs. Beginning in 1935, federal crews, including two Civilian Conservation Corps camps, cleared streams, planted trees, and built roads, trails, bridges, cabins, picnic grounds, and the lake dam. Transferred to Pennsylvania in 1945, the park preserves the state’s largest collection of CCC architecture and traces of its earlier logging landscape, including surviving old-growth hemlock.

Seven Springs, Pennsylvania · USA