23 places
Waterfall glens, coal country and the Endless Mountains
Northeastern Pennsylvania is two landscapes side by side. In the valleys around Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton lies the anthracite country whose hard coal fueled America's industrial age. You can ride a car down into an old mine in Scranton, walk the lanes of a nineteenth-century company village at Eckley, and see giant steam locomotives at Steamtown, in the old Scranton rail yards.
North and west of the cities rise the Endless Mountains, a rolling upland of dairy farms, small lakes and deep woods. Ricketts Glen State Park has more than twenty named waterfalls tumbling down two wooded glens, Worlds End sits in a steep valley of Loyalsock Creek, and Eagles Mere is an old lake resort high on the plateau. At the region's southern edge, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary was founded in 1934 to protect the hawks and eagles that pass along its ridge every autumn.
Highlights
State park · Colley Township, Sullivan County
The Falls Trail drops through two wooded glens past more than twenty named waterfalls, among them 94-foot Ganoga, under old-growth trees, with Lake Jean's beach and campground up top.
National historic site · Scranton, Lackawanna County
A historic rail yard where steam locomotives fill a working roundhouse, with museums of railroading and a Union Pacific Big Boy among the giants on display.
Photo: National Park Service, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Raptor sanctuary · East Brunswick Township, Schuylkill County
The world's first refuge for birds of prey, where hikers climb to rocky lookouts on the Kittatinny Ridge to watch thousands of hawks, eagles and falcons stream south each fall.
Photo: Zeete, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
State park · Forks Township, Sullivan County
Loyalsock Creek snakes through a deep, twisting gorge here, with a creek swimming area beside CCC cabins, the rugged Loyalsock Trail and overlooks that draw crowds when the leaves turn.
State historic site · Foster Township, Luzerne County
A 19th-century anthracite company town of miners' houses and churches, with a coal breaker built for the 1970 film The Molly Maguires, telling the story of mining families.
Photo: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Town · Eagles Mere, Sullivan County
Victorian summer cottages and inns ring a clear mountain lake, with a footpath around the shore and, in winter, a toboggan slide onto the frozen lake.
The full list
A historic rail yard where steam locomotives fill a working roundhouse, with museums of railroading and a Union Pacific Big Boy among the giants on display.
Restored trolleys and exhibits on electric streetcar history, with rides that roll past the old iron furnaces and through a nearly mile-long tunnel.
Founded in 1908 in Nay Aug Park, this museum of natural history, science and art shows dinosaurs, birds, Dorflinger glass and folk art.
The story of the immigrants who mined anthracite coal and worked in the region's mills and factories, from church and home to company store, in McDade Park.
Ride an open mine car 1,800 feet into the side of a mountain, then take a narrow-gauge steam train past strip mines and a bootleg coal hole.
A 19th-century anthracite company town of miners' houses and churches, with a coal breaker built for the 1970 film The Molly Maguires, telling the story of mining families.
Descend about 300 feet in a mine car into a real anthracite mine, where guides recount the hard lives of the men and boys who worked underground.
A historic rail yard where steam locomotives fill a working roundhouse, with museums of railroading and a Union Pacific Big Boy among the giants on display.
A 19th-century anthracite company town of miners' houses and churches, with a coal breaker built for the 1970 film The Molly Maguires, telling the story of mining families.
On a quiet bend of the Susquehanna, the site of a 1790s refuge built for French exiles fleeing revolution, with the 1836 LaPorte House and a museum cabin.
Victorian summer cottages and inns ring a clear mountain lake, with a footpath around the shore and, in winter, a toboggan slide onto the frozen lake.
The Falls Trail drops through two wooded glens past more than twenty named waterfalls, among them 94-foot Ganoga, under old-growth trees, with Lake Jean's beach and campground up top.
Wooded hills laced with bike and bridle trails surround a lake of quiet coves, with a swimming pool and campground within easy reach of Scranton.
Named for a girl seized by Lenape raiders in 1778 who chose to live out her life among the Miami, this park curls around a horseshoe-shaped lake with camping, boating and a pool.
Loyalsock Creek snakes through a deep, twisting gorge here, with a creek swimming area beside CCC cabins, the rugged Loyalsock Trail and overlooks that draw crowds when the leaves turn.
Campers fill sites on both sides of this forest-fringed mountain lake, with a beach, fishing and paddling close at hand and trails winding through the woods.
Locust Mountain rises steeply from the far shore of the lake here, a summer favorite for its sandy beach, lakeside picnic area and good fishing.
The North Branch of the Susquehanna makes a great looping bend around this quiet peninsula, where trails follow an old canal and rail line past buildings and graves from the 1700s.
Songwriter Stephen Foster, who spent part of his youth in the area, gave his name to the lake here, set beneath Mount Pisgah in Endless Mountains farm country, with a pool, paddling and trails.
Fall Brook tumbles over a series of three waterfalls in a narrow gorge shaded by ancient hemlocks, with a 19th-century farmhouse and a small campground close by.
The world's first refuge for birds of prey, where hikers climb to rocky lookouts on the Kittatinny Ridge to watch thousands of hawks, eagles and falcons stream south each fall.
Anglers wade a well-loved trout creek and birders scan the marshes in this valley of wetlands and woods, where an education center offers nature programs.
Named for conservationist Gifford Pinchot, these northeastern tracts include the Pinchot Trail, a long loop through boggy plateau woods, hardwoods and laurel thickets.
A glacial pothole 38 feet deep, drilled into the bedrock by swirling meltwater and stones at the end of the Ice Age and uncovered by coal miners in 1884.
The world's first refuge for birds of prey, where hikers climb to rocky lookouts on the Kittatinny Ridge to watch thousands of hawks, eagles and falcons stream south each fall.
Waterfalls, rock ledges and vistas line this nearly 60-mile footpath through Loyalsock State Forest and Worlds End State Park, which passes the creek's Haystacks boulders.
