WILL PRICE: Coming up on Keystone Stories, State Parks.

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Welcome to Keystone Stories.

The Pennsylvania State Park system began in 1893.

Today there are 124 state parks covering more than 300,000 acres.

These parks offer countless opportunities for outdoor recreation.

But many of these state parks, like here at Whipple Dam, would not be what they are today without the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

1933 at the height of the Great Depression, newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched his 100 days program aimed at finally putting people back to work.

Out of that came the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps.

And with the enthusiastic support of Governor Gifford Pinchot, Pennsylvania was all in.

Not every state did it, but Pennsylvania was second only to California in the number of camps that we had.

There were CCC camps throughout the state.

In total there were 153 camps in Pennsylvania.

Pretty much the entire state was covered by CCC camps at some point.

WILL PRICE: Within a few months, thousands of enrollees were put to work in Pennsylvania state parks planting trees, fighting fires, and building dams, trails, and campgrounds.

KYLIE ORNDORF: Before the Conservation Corps came into play, there were very few state parks.

It really made the state park system here into what it is today.

It's the first really large scale conservation effort in the history of the country.

In the meantime, we had very high unemployment among young men generally the age of about 18 to 24.

In some areas of the country it ran 40% or 50%.

So what Roosevelt did was marry these two things together to create the CCC, put these young men with their energy, put them out to work doing conservation projects.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: It's very good to be here at these CCC camps.

I wish that I could take a couple of months off from the White House and come down here and live with them because I know I'd get full of health the way they have.

The only difference is that they've put on an average of about 12 pounds apiece since they got here, and I'm trying to take off 12 pounds.

[laughter] PAUL FAGLEY: One of the statistics is that in the first three months of enrollment, the average enrollee gained 18 pounds.

And this is after heavy work.

The CCC was very work-intensive.

Most of the work was done with pick and shovel.

ERIC RENSEL: A lot of folks were out of work.

And it's hard to feel good about yourself if you can't really contribute.

And so a lot of men were very frustrated and wanting to do, and this was the opportunity.

The young man had to be unemployed.

He had to be unmarried.

The idea was he would support his parents and family.

So they generally had to be below the poverty line.

ERIC RENSEL: We made $1 a day.

They were called the dollar a day boys because you were sending $25 a month home to your family.

It may not seem like much, but it made a difference.

[country tune] RACHEL ECKMAN: Mid 1800s, there was a booming logging industry here.

There were trees if you could imagine, 120ft tall, 5 feet in diameter.

They would just darken the sky.

Huge groves of pine forests and hemlock.

So the lumber industry moved in.

The lumbermen pretty much decimated the area, clear cut all these trees.

WILL PRICE: Truckloads of young men transported into Central Pennsylvania got to work transforming ridges and valleys scarred by clear cut logging and forest fires.

The CCC carries the nickname Roosevelt's tree army because nationwide they planted over 3 billion trees.

ERIC RENSEL: When you drive into Parker Dam, you see the rows of red pine and spruce.

And those were obviously planted by the CCC, who planted things in straight rows, three pick handles apart.

That's how it went.

And as you drive around the state and other places where you see forests of nice straight trees that large, it's like there was a CCC camp somewhere nearby.

A lot of the parks were not parks until the CCC created them.

This was an abandoned splash dam from the lumbering eras of the 1870s, 1880s.

All the stonework that you see was placed by the CCC boys.

The stepping stones down below here on the emergency spillway, it is, kind of, a fun and unique place.

And on the sides of some of those stones, you can find the CCC boys names chiseled in.

There's a few you can see when you go down if you know where to look.

KYLIE ORNDORF: For us here at Poe Valley and Poe Paddy, we can tell the Camp S63 was here in large part because of this dam.

And even when we look at the dam today, we see all of those original rocks that the CCC boys put in hand by hand.

They basically laid this whole dam from the stones that they found here in the mountains.

RACHEL ECKMAN: Those young gentlemen learned so many great skills-- from the elders in their camps, the carpenters, the masons.

And they did such a tremendous job.

These buildings behind me, they're approaching 100 years old, and they are in great shape straight as can be.

KYLIE ORNDORF: They did this work 90 years ago, and people are still using them today.

Hopefully, people will continue to use them for generations to come.

JEN MOORE: If you want to get away, this is the place to come to get some peace and quiet and isolation.

WILL PRICE: In the middle of the Rothrock State Forest, tucked in an isolated area known as the Stone Creek Kettle, is a tiny 41-acre wilderness park called Penn-Roosevelt.

Here was the site of Camp S62 and an untold story just below the surface.

KATE PERESOLAK: I have the 2023 Cultural Resources Crew for the Outdoor Corps here.

And we're in our second year of fieldwork for Penn-Roosevelt State Park.

So we're metal detecting every 5 meters a transect from our tape measure on the X-axis all the way up to 50 meters across the field.

And we're trying to see if anything's here.

They're investigating the former grounds, so far the parade ground of the former Civilian Conservation Corps camp to try and learn a little bit more about the lives of the people that occupied the camp at the time.

There's something written on the bottom.

KATE PERESOLAK: We have been finding some CCC-related artifacts, some of the basic lifestyle hygiene items that anybody would have in the '30s.

Ponds Extract Company, made in the USA.

No way.

It might be a lipstick container.

We found a tiny little ointment tube.

It was maybe an inch wide all rolled up to the very top without a lid.

That was in addition to a toothpaste tube that we found last year with a little nub of toothpaste still in it and then some other artifacts that we haven't identified their function yet.

[music playing] WILL PRICE: The project is an effort to shed light on overlooked contributions for this was a segregated camp, home to company 361C.

The C stood for colored, still an official term.

ERIC RENSEL: Initially when they were pulling men into the camps, Roosevelt did not want it segregated.

But there was enough pushback that the camps ended up segregated.

PAUL FAGLEY: Segregation was still legal at the time.

This is from the Supreme Court decision Plessy versus Ferguson.

As long as they were equal, they could be segregated.

MIKE DINSMORE: There was still separate drinking fountains and separate camps, and they weren't allowed to work alongside each other.

The segregated camps were often placed in more isolated areas because unfortunately, there was still some element of the public that did not like the existence of those African-American segregated camps nearby in the community.

WESLEY ROBINSON: There's an important story to be told about African-American people who came from the city and urban areas who came out and put in work to craft natural spaces in a way that gives people an opportunity to get outside 80, 90, 100 years later and beyond.

MIKE DINSMORE: They built the dam over to our right.

We're amidst the trees that they planted, especially the Norway spruces that you can see behind me.

They built much of the state forest road system and many of the trails that exist today.

The amount of man hours of work they did I think it would be hard to measure.

WESLEY ROBINSON: I think there's a lot of reckoning that we have to do with understanding African-American, Black people's roles in the construction of this country.

And there's an opportunity to educate and remind people that these spaces were created by people who may or may not have been welcome, but they came anyway.

They put in effort, and they have a lasting legacy.

[ambient music] ERIC RENSEL: For many years, we had CCC reunions here.

And a lot of the men who had been in the different CCC camps and their families would come to the reunion here and reminisce and look at pictures and talk about what life was like.

They were proud of what they had done.

And when you look at the parks today, the stonework, the log cabins, the things that are still here, there's a lot to be proud of.

MIKE DINSMORE: I feel like everywhere I look there's a stone walkway, a log pavilion, a stone dam.

So yeah, I feel like the fingerprints are everywhere.

PAUL FAGLEY: We are now 90 years out from the beginning of the program.

And we are still benefiting from the work of the CCC.

ERIC RENSEL: The effort that went into the park years ago is important to realize that it wasn't the government that built it.

It was men and boys that were in need, your families, your ancestors.

WESLEY ROBINSON: Nature for all is a DCNR principle that we focus on.

And part of the reason why we focus on that is so that everyone understands that they have a piece of nature.

State parks offer a wide variety of activities both on land and water.

This next story, however, is about a park whose most notable feature is actually in the sky.

I'm Curt Weinhold, and I'm here to talk about Cherry Springs.

Cherry Springs is developed into a stargazing Mecca for people from all over the East Coast and from other countries as well.

It began about 1998 when a man by the name of Gary Honus was caught camping there.

And the man who was then park director said, what the heck are you doing here?

Gary Honus explained that he had found a great place to view the stars.

And the man said, well, OK, you can stay.

So the word started to spread.

Today we have several hundred people coming there on a weekend to view the stars, and it's because Cherry Springs is unique.

It sets up an elevation of, I believe, 2,300 ft. And we have a 360-degree view.

Lots of places in this area have dark skies.

But at Cherry Springs, we can see in all directions, which is really unique.

When people come to Cherry Springs for the first time, they are a little bit overwhelmed.

They've lost cell phone reception somewhere along the way, but when they get there, they're loving it.

The park staff goes out of their way to see that people feel at home.

There's two members of the park who put on an excellent, excellent program of whatever might be seen in the sky that night.

And about once a year, there will be a music festival there by the Endless Mountains music group, usually some classical music.

I recall last year they played some appropriate music.

One was from composer Holtz called The Planets, and the other was themes from Star Wars.

The pictures for me have been a very important thing most of my life.

I've taught photography workshops here in Coudersport through our Potter County Education Council.

And then it was three years ago when the DCNR Park staff asked me to teach photography at Cherry Springs.

And it's just a wonderful mix of people there just about all from urban areas.

Through the course of the night when I explained to them how to get a good image under their camera viewfinder, they're really thrilled.

They've never seen anything like this before.

First of all, they've never seen so many stars in the Milky Way.

And second of all, here it is on my camera monitor.

I take pictures, not just for my own self satisfaction, but I really do love to promote the area.

I didn't grow up in Potter County.

I grew up in another place in Pennsylvania.

But we moved here quite some years ago, and I love the area.

We've been from Alaska to Arizona and Hawaii to Nova Scotia, and I love it here as well as anywhere.

My name is Jason Heasley.

I'm the Park Manager for the Kinzua Bridge State Park, and I'm here to talk about the Kinzua Bridge State Park and the Kinzua Viaduct.

The Kinzua Bridge was built in 1881 and was finished in 1882.

The reason they built a bridge or viaduct was to haul coal, oil, and timber from this region.

And they built a viaduct because it would cut out 8 miles of track around the area.

The first bridge was built out of iron.

The second structure, they rebuilt in 1900 to handle heavier loads and was built out of steel.

At one time it was the highest viaduct in the world.

They ran the trains up until the 1950s, and then they closed it down.

In the 1980s, they ran an excursion train across from Kane over to the bridge and back to Kane.

In 2000, the DCNR did an inspection of the bridge and found that it wasn't safe any longer to have protections walk across or run a train.

So they brought the William M. Brode Company in to do emergency repairs.

During the repair in 2003, July 21, the bridge was hit by a tornado and tore down.

We took a few years to figure out what they wanted to do, and we ended up building a viewing platform on the remaining towers that were left.

The new walkway actually has a 30 foot by 30 foot platform at the end with a glass floor in the center.

So you can look down and see the bottom of the bridge.

We left the remaining towers that fell from the tornado are on the valley floor.

When you're standing on the platform, you can see for eight miles out of all the Kinzua Valley.

And it's the most beautiful view in the fall.

When the changed leaves color, it's beautiful.

My aunt lives in Kane, and my father would always come up and we'd always go out to the bridge and have a picnic out there when we were little.

I can remember until I was a little bit older I would not walk across it.

It was too tall.

I would go out a little ways and come back.

[music playing] When spending time at our state parks, you should be mindful and respectful of nature.

And in rare cases, you may come across a threat.

This next piece is from a 2016 episode of SciTech Now and tells the story of predator plants.

NARRATOR: Welcome to Black Moshannon State Park, 3,400 acres of protected land surrounded by another 43,000 acres of state forest.

It's about as private as public land gets.

When you're here, don't count on cell phone service or Wi-Fi.

The tweets and snaps are organic.

The science is all natural, and the bog is really worth sharing.

MICHELLE MCCLOSKEY: A bog is a wetland area, so you're going to have soils that are going to help hold the water in, low nutrient counts, and you're going to have plants that are only specifically found in the bog like the carnivorous plants, the leatherleaf, and the sphagnum moss.

NARRATOR: Don't worry, we're going to talk about the carnivores.

But the moss is the main ingredient in this habitat.

The sphagnum moss is found all throughout our bog area.

And as the rain comes down, as water is filtering into it, it actually can clean out any pollution that may be in the water.

So it helps give us good water quality.

NARRATOR: The water is clean, but it's not very nutritious.

The moss absorbs the minerals and replaces them with acids, not a great environment for plants unless those plants have another source of nutrition.

Black Moshannon is home to three types of carnivorous plants.

The pitcher plant is the easiest to find.

MICHELLE MCCLOSKEY: That is our pitcher plant colony.

There's a few of those scattered throughout our bog area.

They grow in very large quantities.

As the bugs fly into it and go down inside the pitchers, it's actually producing an enzyme which is going to break down the insect so it's able to get some of its food that way.

NARRATOR: The pitcher plant is absorbing nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, so does the sundew, but it has a different strategy.

MICHELLE MCCLOSKEY: The sundew is one of our carnivorous plants.

And that is going to look like the sun with little rays coming off of it.

And the little tiny dewdrops on it are actually a type of glue that the plant produces so the insects get stuck to that.

And they actually will close around it just a little tiny bit, and that is going to break down the insects and get its food.

NARRATOR: When it comes to the bladderwort, all of the action is happening under the water.

MICHELLE MCCLOSKEY: Bladderwort is found throughout our lake area.

It actually it looks like seaweed, and it looks like it has little tiny black seeds on it.

Those seeds are actually the bladders, and they have a little tiny trap door on it.

So as an insect such as mosquito larvae would swim by it, it triggers that door.

And it opens up and it sucks in the water in the insect and then closes itself around it.

NARRATOR: The carnivores love the bog, but don't get the wrong impression.

This is not a desolate wasteland where all bugs meet their doom.

It's an intricate and diverse ecosystem.

We have over 80 different kinds of dragonflies and damselflies here.

You can see larger animals, such as bear and bobcat like to be in those areas.

And it's also providing nice clean water for the fish that like to live in our lake area behind us.

NARRATOR: It's also one of the only places in Pennsylvania where you can pick wild cranberries.

OK, let's do this.

It's pretty sour.

It's good.

So if you need a day to simplify, why not unplug and relax in one of the most complex environments in Central Pennsylvania?

LISA BAINEY: My name is Lisa Bainey, and I'm going to talk about Sinnemahoning State Park.

In the 1850s, a logging boom took place in Pennsylvania.

In these rural fingers of Pennsylvania, it really took a unique rugged individual to eke out a living in these logging camps.

And one such family were the Logues.

Chauncey Logue, who lived in what is now Sinnemahoning State Park, was a rather unique individual, very rugged, very self reliant, and full of charisma.

Chance, as he is called, is very well known for going out trapping bears and then leading them out of the woods with nothing more than a billy club and a chain.

But not only that, he really saw the need for conservation after the log drives and the denuding of the hillsides.

And he became one of the area's first game protectors.

In the 1950s, the first Fork Dam was created.

It was part of a four-dam initiative.

The other three dams that were constructed at that time were under the jurisdiction and operation of the Army Corps of Engineers.

So that makes George B. Stephenson dam rather unique.

In the interim, it's created 145-acre lake and has really changed the face of that valley because it provides wetlands and opportunities for wildlife watching.

And since 2000, we've had a nesting bald eagle on the lake as well.

There is no doubt that this area has its own unique beauty and allure.

And I think John Muir probably said it best.

He said, come to the woods for here is rest.

And once you hit the heart of the Pennsylvania Wilds region, it's an area that you can just let down your guard, take a deep breath because there's peace, there's tranquility, there's great fellowship and really good people that live in this region.

For our final piece, we're going to show you a creek where you can go tubing.

But this part of Penn's Creek is special because you can start and finish at the same place.

[country tune] Springtime is probably the best time to get tubing out on Penn's Creek.

You can put in right there at Poe Paddy, foot around the horseshoe around the mountain side.

There's a spot where you're going to take out, come up the hill, walk through that old railroad tunnel.

You can put back in the creek, and you'll end up right back where you started.

So no need for two cars.

It's a one car kind of deal here.

Thanks for watching.

See you next time on Keystone Stories.

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