Pymatuning State Park is a Pennsylvania state park covering in Conneaut, North Shenango,

Pine A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden accep ...

, Sadsbury, South Shenango, West Fallowfield and West Shenango Townships,

Crawford County Crawford County is the name of eleven counties in the United States: * Crawford County, Arkansas * Crawford County, Georgia * Crawford County, Illinois * Crawford County, Indiana * Crawford County, Iowa * Crawford County, Kansas * Crawford County, ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, in the United States. Pymatuning State Park is the largest state park in Pennsylvania and contains the of

Pymatuning Lake Pymatuning Reservoir is a man-made lake in Crawford County, Pennsylvania and Ashtabula County, Ohio in the United States, on land that was once a very large swamp. Much of it is incorporated into two state parks: Pymatuning State Park in Pennsylv ...

, three-quarters of which is in Pennsylvania and one-quarter of which is in

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. A three-mile (5 km)

causeway A causeway is a track, road or railway on the upper point of an embankment across "a low, or wet place, or piece of water". It can be constructed of earth, masonry, wood, or concrete. One of the earliest known wooden causeways is the Sweet Tra ...

extends between Pennsylvania and Ohio near the center of the lake. The lake provides fishing and boating year round. There are two natural areas, Clark Island () and Blackjack () in the park. The park is also home to the University of Pittsburgh's

Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology The Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology (PLE) is a year-round ecology field station of the University of Pittsburgh Department of Biological Sciences located in Linesville and South Shenango Township on the shores Pymatuning Lake in Pennsylvania. Th ...

. Like all Pennsylvania state parks, admission to the Pymatuning State Park is free. The northern access for Pymatuning State Park can be reached from

U.S. Route 6 U.S. Route 6 (US 6), also called the Grand Army of the Republic Highway, honoring the American Civil War veterans association, is a main route of the U.S. Highway system. While it currently runs east-northeast from Bishop, California, to P ...

and the southern access is reached from

U.S. Route 322 U.S. Route 322 (US 322) is a long, east–west United States Highway, traversing Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The road is a spur of U.S. Route 22 and one of the original highways from 1926. A portion of it at one time was concurrent with ...

. Pymatuning State Park was chosen by the

Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), established on July 1, 1995, is the agency in the U.S. State of Pennsylvania responsible for maintaining and preserving the state's 124 state parks and 20 state forests; pr ...

(DCNR) and its Bureau of Parks as one of "25 Must-See Pennsylvania State Parks". The park will be the only State Park in Pennsylvania to be in the path of totality for the 2024 total solar eclipse that has camping.

History

Native Americans

Pymatuning State Park is on land that was once a very large

swamp A swamp is a forested wetland.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in ...

. The first known inhabitants were the

Mound Builders A number of pre-Columbian cultures are collectively termed "Mound Builders". The term does not refer to a specific people or archaeological culture, but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks erected for an extended period of more than 5 ...

. Two of their mounds were flooded over by the creation of Pymatuning Lake. The

Lenape The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory includ ...

were living in the area when European settlers first came to the area. The lake is named for the

chief Chief may refer to: Title or rank Military and law enforcement * Chief master sergeant, the ninth, and highest, enlisted rank in the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force * Chief of police, the head of a police department * Chief of the boa ...

, who lived in the area at the time, Pihmtomink. The Lenape were pushed out of the area by the

Seneca Seneca may refer to: People and language * Seneca (name), a list of people with either the given name or surname * Seneca people, one of the six Iroquois tribes of North America ** Seneca language, the language of the Seneca people Places Extrat ...

tribe a member of the larger

Iroquois Confederacy The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...

. The Seneca were defeated by

General Anthony Wayne Anthony Wayne (January 1, 1745 – December 15, 1796) was an American soldier, officer, statesman, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He adopted a military career at the outset of the American Revolutionary War, where his mil ...

's forces during the

Northwest Indian War The Northwest Indian War (1786–1795), also known by other names, was an armed conflict for control of the Northwest Territory fought between the United States and a united group of Native American nations known today as the Northwestern ...

and left the area under the terms of the

Treaty of Greenville The Treaty of Greenville, formally titled Treaty with the Wyandots, etc., was a 1795 treaty between the United States and indigenous nations of the Northwest Territory (now Midwestern United States), including the Wyandot and Delaware peoples, ...

. This treaty marked the beginning of the white man's domination of the area.

From swamplands to parklands

The first settlers to the area were

farmer A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer mig ...

s. Life was not easy for the farmers. The land was very swampy and very difficult to

reclaim Reclaim, reclaimed, reclaimer, reclaiming or reclamation means "to get something back". It may refer to: * Land reclamation, creating new land from oceans, riverbeds, or lake beds * Dedesertification, reversing of the land degradation in arid ...

. Farm animals that wandered off were often lost in the

quicksand Quicksand is a colloid A colloid is a mixture in which one substance consisting of microscopically dispersed insoluble particles is suspended throughout another substance. Some definitions specify that the particles must be dispersed in a ...

s of the swamp or fell

prey Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill the ...

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

s like

fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

es,

bears Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae. They are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the North ...

and

mountain lion The cougar (''Puma concolor'') is a large cat native to the Americas. Its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America and is the most widespread of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere. I ...

s. The swamps were infested with

mosquito Mosquitoes (or mosquitos) are members of a group of almost 3,600 species of small flies within the family Culicidae (from the Latin ''culex'' meaning " gnat"). The word "mosquito" (formed by ''mosca'' and diminutive ''-ito'') is Spanish for "li ...

es that brought

yellow fever Yellow fever is a viral disease of typically short duration. In most cases, symptoms include fever, chills, loss of appetite, nausea, muscle pains – particularly in the back – and headaches. Symptoms typically improve within five days. In ...

to the settlers. Building a dam on the

Shenango River The Shenango River is a principal tributary of the Beaver River, approximately 100 mi (160 km) long,flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

in 1913 caused $3 million in damage and took several lives. The

Pennsylvania General Assembly The Pennsylvania General Assembly is the legislature of the U.S. commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The legislature convenes in the State Capitol building in Harrisburg. In colonial times (1682–1776), the legislature was known as the Pennsylvania ...

approved a budget of $1.2 million to build at dam across the Shenango, but Governor John K. Tener slashed the budget to just $100,000. The legislature took action again in 1917. This time approving a $400,000 budget under the condition that the needed land in

be purchased by the private sector. The Pymatuning Land Company was formed and raised the needed funds to purchase the needed Ohio properties. The land was finally acquired in full by 1931 when Governor Gifford Pinchot approved $1.5 million to complete the dam. 7,000 men began work on the dam in 1931, and the project was completed in 1934. The final cost of building the dam was $3,717,739; and the lake now holds of water, covering over a length of with a width of at the widest and of shoreline with a maximum depth of .

Pymatuning Lake

Pymatuning Lake was formed in the 1930s by a

dam A dam is a barrier that stops or restricts the flow of surface water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by dams not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use ...

on the

Shenango River The Shenango River is a principal tributary of the Beaver River, approximately 100 mi (160 km) long,Linesville, is a protected gameland where colonies of 20,000

Canada geese The Canada goose (''Branta canadensis''), or Canadian goose, is a large wild goose with a black head and neck, white cheeks, white under its chin, and a brown body. It is native to the arctic and temperate regions of North America, and it is o ...

and many more ducks winter each year. The lake is the result of an earth dam three miles (5 km) north of

Jamestown, Pennsylvania Jamestown is a borough in northwestern Mercer County, Pennsylvania, United States, along the Shenango River. The population was reported as 580 on the 2020 census. It is part of the Youngstown–Warren metropolitan area. History The town was fo ...

, whose outflow forms the Shenango River. A north-south

spillway A spillway is a structure used to provide the controlled release of water downstream from a dam or levee, typically into the riverbed of the dammed river itself. In the United Kingdom, they may be known as overflow channels. Spillways ensure tha ...

crosses the northern part of the lake, with the gameland on the east side. Along this spillway are a

wildlife Wildlife refers to domestication, undomesticated animal species (biology), species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wilderness, wild in an area without being species, introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous ...

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

and the Linesville spillway, a site famous as "The Place Where the Ducks Walk on the Fishes' Backs". Many people throw bread into the water here, and the resulting density of fish (

carp Carp are various species of oily freshwater fish from the family Cyprinidae, a very large group of fish native to Europe and Asia. While carp is consumed in many parts of the world, they are generally considered an invasive species in parts of ...

) enables the

duck Duck is the common name for numerous species of waterfowl in the family Anatidae. Ducks are generally smaller and shorter-necked than swans and geese, which are members of the same family. Divided among several subfamilies, they are a form t ...

s and other

waterfowl Anseriformes is an order of birds also known as waterfowl that comprises about 180 living species of birds in three families: Anhimidae (three species of screamers), Anseranatidae (the magpie goose), and Anatidae, the largest family, which in ...

to walk on top of the carp to vie for the thrown food. The spillway was renovated in 2007. The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources had planned to prohibit bread as food for the carp and ducks on January 1, 2009, only permitting commercial fish food as part of an effort to clean up the area and increase its wild nature, but subsequently reconsidered. pymatuninggatehouse

Boating

Motorboats up to are permitted on Pymatuning Lake. All boats must have a current registration with any state or a launch permit from the

Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission is an independent state agency responsible for the regulation of all fishing and boating in the state of Pennsylvania within the United States of America. Unlike many U.S. states, Pennsylvania has a separ ...

. There are three

marina A marina (from Spanish , Portuguese and Italian : ''marina'', "coast" or "shore") is a dock or basin with moorings and supplies for yachts and small boats. A marina differs from a port in that a marina does not handle large passenger ships o ...

s in the Pennsylvania owned part of the lake. These marinas have mooring facilities and rent

pontoon boat A pleasure boat with two lengthwise pontoons A pontoon boat is a flattish boat that relies on floats to remain buoyant. These pontoons (also called ''tubes'') contain much reserve buoyancy and allow designers to create large deck plans fitted wi ...

s, rowboats, motorboats,

canoe A canoe is a lightweight narrow water vessel, typically pointed at both ends and open on top, propelled by one or more seated or kneeling paddlers facing the direction of travel and using a single-bladed paddle. In British English, the term ...

s, and motors. They also have stores that sell bait, tackle and snacks.

Fishing

Pymatuning State Park is open for year-round fishing on Pymatuning Lake. It is a warm water fishery. The most common species are largemouth and smallmouth bass,

walleye The walleye (''Sander vitreus'', synonym ''Stizostedion vitreum''), also called the yellow pike or yellow pickerel, is a freshwater perciform fish native to most of Canada and to the Northern United States. It is a North American close relat ...

bluegill The bluegill (''Lepomis macrochirus''), sometimes referred to as "bream", "brim", "sunny", or "copper nose" as is common in Texas, is a species of North American freshwater fish, native to and commonly found in streams, rivers, lakes, ponds and ...

crappie Crappies () are two species of North American freshwater fish of the genus ''Pomoxis'' in the family Centrarchidae (sunfishes). Both species of crappies are popular game fish among recreational anglers. Etymology The genus name ''Pomoxis'' ...

perch Perch is a common name for fish of the genus ''Perca'', freshwater gamefish belonging to the family Percidae. The perch, of which three species occur in different geographical areas, lend their name to a large order of vertebrates: the Percif ...

, and

muskellunge The muskellunge ''(Esox masquinongy)'', often shortened to muskie, musky or lunge is a species of large freshwater predatory fish native to North America. It is the largest member of the pike family, Esocidae. Origin of name The name "muskellun ...

. The lake is a popular

ice fishing Ice fishing is the practice of catching fish with lines and fish hooks or spears through an opening in the ice on a frozen body of water. Ice fishers may fish in the open or in heated enclosures, some with bunks and amenities. Shelters Longer ...

destination during the winter months. All anglers are expected to follow the rules and regulations of the fish commission. Licenses from Ohio and Pennsylvania are permitted if the fishermen are fishing from a boat in any section of the lake. Only Pennsylvania licensed fishermen can fish from the Pennsylvania shore and only Ohio licensed fishermen are permitted to fish from the Ohio shore. One of the largest warm water fish hatcheries in the world is owned and operated by the

at Pymatuning State Park.

Swimming

There are four

beach A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc shel ...

es that are open to the public at Pymatuning State Park. All four are open from 8:00 a.m. until sunset beginning in late-May and ending mid-September.

Lifeguards A lifeguard is a rescuer who supervises the safety and rescue of swimmers, surfers, and other water sports participants such as in a swimming pool, water park, beach, spa, river and lake. Lifeguards are trained in swimming and CPR/ AED first a ...

are not posted at the beach. Swim at your own risk. The beaches do have bathhouses with restrooms.

Wildlife

Pymatuning State Park is home to a wide variety of wildlife.

Bald eagle The bald eagle (''Haliaeetus leucocephalus'') is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it has two known subspecies and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle (''Haliaeetus albicilla''), which occupies the same niche as ...

s make their nests in the trees on the shores of Pymatuning Lake. Migratory waterfowl and resident waterfowl thrive in the waters of the lake. The Pennsylvania Game Commission operates a waterfowl museum at the park. The land surrounding the lake is ideal habitat for white tailed deer and other woodland animals.

Hunting

Hunting is permitted on about of Pymatuning State Park. Hunters are expected to follow the rules and regulations of the

Pennsylvania Game Commission The Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) is the state agency responsible for wildlife conservation and management in Pennsylvania in the United States. It was originally founded years ago and currently utilizes more than 700 full-time employees and ...

. The common game species are

squirrels Squirrels are members of the family (biology), family Sciuridae, a family that includes small or medium-size rodents. The squirrel family includes tree squirrels, ground squirrels (including chipmunks and prairie dogs, among others), and flyi ...

white-tailed deer The white-tailed deer (''Odocoileus virginianus''), also known as the whitetail or Virginia deer, is a medium-sized deer native to North America, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru and Bolivia. It has also been introduced t ...

, and

rabbits Rabbits, also known as bunnies or bunny rabbits, are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also contains the hares) of the order Lagomorpha (which also contains the pikas). ''Oryctolagus cuniculus'' includes the European rabbit specie ...

. The hunting of

groundhog The groundhog (''Marmota monax''), also known as a woodchuck, is a rodent of the family Sciuridae, belonging to the group of large ground squirrels known as marmots. The groundhog is a lowland creature of North America; it is found through mu ...

s is prohibited. Special areas of the lake are set aside for waterfowl hunting.

Staying overnight

Pymatuning State Park is open for overnight guests beginning in mid-April and ending in late-October. There are two camping areas at the park. They are near the lake and have a sanitary dumping station. Linesville Campground is in the northern part of the park. It has modern facilities including modern bathhouses with flush toilets and hot showers. Tuttle Campground is closed. Jamestown campgrounds is within walking distances of small stores that sell a variety of camping supplies and groceries. Laundry facilities are located at each of the stores. There are twenty five modern cabins available to rent at Pymatuning State Park. Each cabin has a furnished living area, a kitchen and dining area, restrooms, and two or three bedrooms. Bed linens, towels, tableware and cookware are not provided.

Nearby state parks

The following state parks are within of Pymatuning State Park: *

Erie Bluffs State Park Erie Bluffs State Park is a Pennsylvania state park in Girard and Springfield Townships, Erie County, Pennsylvania in the United States. The park is the largest undeveloped stretch of land overlooking Lake Erie in Pennsylvania. Erie Bluffs Sta ...

( Erie County) *

Maurice K. Goddard State Park Maurice K. Goddard State Park is a List of Pennsylvania state parks, Pennsylvania state park in Deer Creek Township, Mercer County, Pennsylvania, Deer Creek, Mill Creek Township, Mercer County, Pennsylvania, Mill Creek, New Vernon Township, Mercer ...

( Mercer County) *

Mosquito Lake State Park Mosquitoes (or mosquitos) are members of a group of almost 3,600 species of small flies within the family Culicidae (from the Latin ''culex'' meaning "gnat"). The word "mosquito" (formed by ''mosca'' and diminutive ''-ito'') is Spanish for "litt ...

(

) * Pymatuning State Park (Ohio)

References

External links

* {{authority control Protected areas established in 1934 State parks of Pennsylvania Parks in Crawford County, Pennsylvania Fish hatcheries in the United States Agricultural buildings and structures in Pennsylvania Protected areas of Crawford County, Pennsylvania