Presque Isle State Park
Presque Isle State Park is a 3,112-acre Pennsylvania State Park on an arching, sandy peninsula that juts into Lake Erie. Presque Isle was formed at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation about 11,000 years ago. The earliest known inhabitants of the southern Lake Erie coast were the Erielhonan, an Iroquoian speaking tribe of Native Americans.
About Presque Isle State Park in brief
Presque Isle State Park is a 3,112-acre Pennsylvania State Park on an arching, sandy peninsula that juts into Lake Erie. Presque Isle was formed at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation about 11,000 years ago. The earliest known inhabitants of the southern Lake Erie coast were the Erielhonan, an Iroquoian speaking tribe of Native Americans. The French first named the peninsula in the 1720s; presque-isle means peninsula in French. In 1921, it became a state park, and as of 2007 it hosts over 4 million visitors per year, the most of any Pennsylvania state park. It has 13 miles of roads, 21 miles of recreational trails, 13 beaches for swimming, and a marina. Popular activities at the park include swimming, boating, hiking, biking, and birdwatching. The Tom Ridge Environmental Center at the entrance to the park allows visitors to learn more about the park and its ecology. The park has been named one of the best places in the U.S. for watching birds, particularly in the Gull Point Natural Area. It is located 4 miles west of the city of Erie, in Millcreek Township, Erie County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The recorded history of Presque Island begins with the E Arielhonan who gave their name to Lake Erie, and includes French, British, and American forts, as well as serving as a base for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s fleet in the War of 1812.
In 1795 General Anthony Wayne laid out the town of Erie near the peninsula, and on April 3, 1792 General Wayne built a new, “Fort Presque’ Isle’ Ile. In the second year of that year the town was laid out near the second Fort Stanwix, since it was the second time the land had been laid out since 1792. The name Erie is a corruption of ErielHonan, and the name Erie became the name of the lake and county in which the park is found and of theCity nearest the park. The Eriel Honan are believed to have lived and farmed on the peninsula. They fought several wars, the last starting in 1653 with the Five Nations of the Iroquois. Despite initial victories over the Senecas, in 1654 the E Urielhonans’ largest village, Rique, was destroyed by 1,800 Iroquoi warriors. By 1656, the Eielhonan had been destroyed as a people, although the Iroqois adopted survivors who were absorbed primarily into the Seneca tribe. The Presque Isles passed from British to American control after the American Revolutionary War, with the land containing the peninsula containing the land sold to the United states at the Treaty of 1784. The French also built two military outposts on Presque Isles itself. During the French and Indian War, the British constructed a new fort of the same year, which later fell on June 19, 1963, during Pontiac’s Rebellion.
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This page is based on the article Presque Isle State Park published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 02, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
