Public Parks in Dutch Country Roads 26
State parks and forests, national recreation areas, wildlife refuges and city parks.
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Pine Grove Furnace State Park
Near the Appalachian Trail's halfway point, with an old iron furnace, the Appalachian Trail Museum, swimming in Fuller Lake, a flooded ore pit, and a second, larger lake with a beach and boating.
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French Creek State Park
The core of the Hopewell Big Woods, an unbroken sweep of forest with two lakes, rocky trails for hikers and mountain bikers, and the restored iron village of Hopewell Furnace right next door.
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Codorus State Park
Sailboats and fishing boats ply Lake Marburg's many coves, a resting place for migrating ducks and geese, in rolling farm country near the Maryland line, with bridle trails, a pool and a campground.
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Gifford Pinchot State Park
A lake named for the conservationist governor is the centerpiece here, popular with sailors, paddlers and anglers, with a swimming beach, cabins and a lakeside campground.
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Little Buffalo State Park
A restored 1800s gristmill, a covered bridge and the old Blue Ball Tavern cluster near Holman Lake, with a big swimming pool and a trail along the bed of a narrow-gauge railroad.
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Swatara State Park
Between two ridges, Swatara Creek winds through fields and woods, followed by a flat rail trail past old canal remnants and crossed by the Appalachian Trail on a relocated 1890 iron truss bridge.
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Colonel Denning State Park
Set in Doubling Gap, where Blue Mountain folds back on itself in an S-curve, with a small swimming lake and a steep trail up to Flat Rock's broad view over the Cumberland Valley.
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Nolde Forest Environmental Education Center
A hosiery magnate's stone mansion and the pines and spruces he planted in the early 1900s anchor these woods, threaded with trails and streams and kept as a center for nature education.
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Caledonia State Park
The rebuilt stack of Thaddeus Stevens' iron furnace, burned by Confederate troops on the road to Gettysburg, anchors this South Mountain park, with the Appalachian Trail, a big pool and summer theater.
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Susquehannock State Park
From clifftop overlooks such as Hawk Point, the Susquehanna spreads wide below, dotted with wooded islands where bald eagles are often seen, and trails drop through steep ravines toward the river.
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Fowlers Hollow State Park
Rustic campsites line a mountain run in this narrow hollow, a trail hub where hikers, riders and mountain bikers head off into the Tuscarora State Forest.
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Memorial Lake State Park
At the foot of Blue Mountain, a small, quiet lake circled by a woodland footpath, with electric-motor boating, good fishing and the National Guard's Fort Indiantown Gap as its neighbor.
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Kings Gap Environmental Education Center
A stone mansion from the early 1900s crowns South Mountain and looks out across the Cumberland Valley, while miles of year-round trails wind down through the oak forest around it.
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Samuel S. Lewis State Park
A grassy ridgetop with long views over the Susquehanna River valley and the farmland around it, a breezy spot for kite flying, picnics and watching the sunset.
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Buchanan's Birthplace State Park
Under tall evergreens in a narrow mountain gap, a stone pyramid marks where James Buchanan, the 15th president, was born in a log cabin, beside a clear brook-trout stream.
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Gettysburg National Military Park
The fields, ridges and woods of the Civil War's bloodiest battle, fought in July 1863, with more than 1,300 monuments, the great cyclorama painting and the cemetery where Lincoln spoke.
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Mont Alto State Park
The longest-serving park in Pennsylvania's state system began as a railroad excursion ground in 1875, and its domed dance pavilion, picnic grove and trout stream still make for a gentle afternoon.
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Boyd Big Tree Preserve Conservation Area
Outsized trees of many species shade the slopes of Blue Mountain here, alive with warblers in spring, while a hillside meadow fills with butterfly weed and butterflies in midsummer.
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Joseph E. Ibberson Conservation Area
Tall hardwoods blanket Peters Mountain here, and quiet trails wind up through warbler-filled woods to join the Appalachian Trail along the crest.
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Susquehanna Riverlands State Park
Hikers on the blue-blazed Mason-Dixon Trail climb to rocky lookouts above the Susquehanna in this riverside woodland at the mouth of Codorus Creek.
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Fort Hunter Mansion and Park
A Federal-style stone mansion on the site of a French and Indian War fort, set in riverside parkland along the Susquehanna with traces of the Pennsylvania Canal and a rebuilt covered bridge.
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Michaux State Forest
South Mountain's big working forest, where Pennsylvania's first forestry school took root, crossed by the Appalachian Trail and dotted with rocky overlooks and charcoal hearths from the old iron-furnace days.
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Tuscarora State Forest
Parallel ridges and narrow valleys of the Ridge and Valley country, with the Tuscarora Trail, mountaintop vistas and backcountry that includes a natural area of towering old-growth hemlocks.
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Big Spring State Park
A railroad tunnel bored into the mountain and then abandoned unfinished lies at the end of a short walk from this shady picnic spot, also a trailhead for the long Iron Horse Trail.
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Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area
Each late winter, tens of thousands of snow geese and tundra swans crowd the lake here on their way north, a spectacle that draws birders from across the region to the visitor center and trails.
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Chickies Rock County Park
A quartzite cliff rising about 200 feet above the Susquehanna, reached by a short woodland walk, with the Northwest River Trail running along the shore below for cyclists and walkers.
