Colton Point State Park
Colton Point State Park is a 368-acre Pennsylvania state park in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is on the west side of the Pine Creek Gorge, also known as the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania. The park is named for Henry Colton, a Williamsport lumberman who cut timber there starting in 1879.
About Colton Point State Park in brief
Colton Point State Park is a 368-acre Pennsylvania state park in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is on the west side of the Pine Creek Gorge, also known as the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania. The park is named for Henry Colton, a Williamsport lumberman who cut timber there starting in 1879. Since a successful publicity campaign in 1936, the park and gorge have been a popular tourist destination, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Since 1996, the 62-mile Pine Creek Rail Trail has followed the creek through the gorge. The gorge is home to many species of plants and animals, some of which have been reintroduced to the area. It was named a National Natural Landmark in 1968 and is also protected as a Pennsylvania State Natural Area and Important Bird Area, while Pine Creek is a Pennsylvania Scenic and Wild River. The first settlers were Paleo-Indian nomadic hunters known from their stone tools. The earliest recorded inhabitants of the area were the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks, who lived in stockaded villages of large long houses. Their numbers were greatly reduced by disease and warfare with the Five Nations of the Iroqueois, and by 1675 they had died out, moved away, or been assimilated into other tribes. After this, the lands of the West Branch SusqueHanna River valley were under the nominal control of the Iroquois. The Iroquois lived in long houses, primarily in what is now New York, and had a strong confederacy which gave them power beyond their numbers.
The Seneca tribe of the Seneca believed that Pine Creek was sacred and never established a permanent settlement there. The French and Lenape led the migration of many Native Americans to the westward to fill the void left by the demise of the Susquequeannocks in the 16th century. The state park was chosen by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Bureau of Parks for its \”25 Must-See Pennsylvania State Parks\” list, which praised its \”spectacular vistas and a fabulous view of Pine Creek gorge\”. It is located on a state forest road in Shippen Township 5 miles south of U.S. Route 6. It has a population of 2,000. It also has a sister state park, Leonard Harrison State Park, on the east rim. It’s located on the Pennsylvania State Forest and its sister park,Leonard Harrison State park, on the east Rim. It offers opportunities for picnicking, hiking, fishing and hunting, whitewater boating, and camping, and is surrounded by Tioga State Forest. The Pine Creek River flows through the park, and has carved the gorge through five major rock formations from the Devonian and Carboniferous periods. The Gorge was clearcut in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but it is now covered by second-growth forest, thanks in part to the conservation efforts of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.
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This page is based on the article Colton Point State Park published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 15, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
