About Promised Land State Park

Promised Land State Park is a roughly 3,000-acre Pennsylvania state park on the Pocono Plateau in Pike County, about 1,800 feet above sea level. It opened in 1905 as the fourth state park in Pennsylvania, on land the state bought after loggers had stripped it almost bare. Today it holds two lakes, cabins built by the Civilian Conservation Corps and miles of trails, wrapped by more than 12,000 acres of Delaware State Forest.

Before the Park

DCNR's history of the park starts with the Minsi people of the Wolf Clan of the Lenni Lenape, whose homeland this was. The deeds come later. In 1854 John Atkinson of Hawley passed 4,252 acres recorded as the "Promised Land Lots" to his brother Asher. Dr. Joseph Jones bought the ground under today's park in 1869 for its timber, and by 1876 the Shakers owned land here too and had contracted Collingwood & Co. to cut it.

Sawmills worked through the big conifer and hardwood stands, and the land was clear-cut again and again. By 1903 it was almost treeless. Erosion and forest fires followed, and the wildlife left.

The State Steps In

Pennsylvania bought the land between 1902 and 1904, paying between 18 cents and $2 an acre, and in 1905 made it a state park. A campground opened that year in a pine plantation between Bear Wallow Road and the stream that runs into Lower Lake; it closed in 1925 and a new one went in where the main beach picnic area is now. In 1911 the original 1890 earthen crib dam on Promised Land Lake was rebuilt for $1,000. Between 1902 and 1933 the Commonwealth planted more than 370,000 trees.

Camp S-139 and the CCC

The Civilian Conservation Corps put young men to work during the Depression building roads and trails, fighting fires and planting trees. Promised Land's camp, S-139-PA, ran from May 1933 to July 1941 on the ground now covered by the Deerfield and Pickerel Point campgrounds. Its crews built Pickerel Point Campground, the Bear Wallow Cabins and Egypt Meadow Dam, built most of North Shore Road by hand and planted over a million trees.

That work is still in daily use: you can sleep in a CCC cabin at Bear Wallow, camp at Pickerel Point and see the camp's story at the Masker Museum. The park holds a CCC festival every August.

The 1998 Tornado

On the evening of Sunday, May 31, 1998, an F-2 tornado with winds of 113 to 157 mph tore through the park on a northeasterly line, crossing Lower Lake Road, PA 390 and North Shore Road near Sucker Brook. More than 500 people were stuck in the park overnight, and nobody was seriously hurt. The park office keeps copies of a booklet about it, "After the Wind Died Down."

Ice, Rock and Bog

About 20,000 years ago an ice sheet close to a mile thick sat over this plateau. It left the rocky glacial till you trip over on every trail, plus the sphagnum bogs and wet hollows that dot the woods. DCNR's Trail of Geology guide for the park explains why the ground is so strewn with boulders: the sandstone ledges are cut by bedding planes and joints, and they break apart along those lines into blocks and slabs.

The forest that grew back after the logging era is mostly beech, oak, maple and hemlock, with mountain laurel and rhododendron underneath. See Wildlife for what lives in it.

Who Runs It

The park belongs to Pennsylvania's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and is run by its Bureau of State Parks. The forest around it is Delaware State Forest, run by a different DCNR unit, the Bureau of Forestry, with its own office and rules. This site is an independent guide with no tie to either bureau.