Truman also established a mill on the site of the current state park. Just north of Bendigo State Park, the Belgian Count De Hamm founded a settlement of glass blowers. The settlers could not survive on just glass making and soon B.F. Hazleton built a large sawmill in the town and the town was renamed Glen Hazel. The logging town thrived while the timber lasted, but now is mostly summer cottages and hunting camps. Chartered in 1887, the Johnsonburg and Clermont Railroad linked the towns and mills of the area to haul the timber to the market.
Visitors drive the old railroad trace when they drive the main park road.
When the timber was exhausted, the railroad, sawmills and towns like Bendigo, slowly disappeared. Bendigo State Park began in the 1920s as a community project of the nearby town of Johnsonburg. Floods destroyed many of the WPA facilities in the 1940s, but the stone wall and dam on the East Branch of the Clarion River still remain. The process began in August of 1948, and in April of 1949, the late State Senator George B. Stevenson introduced the bill that transferred the property to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Nearby Attractions For information on nearby attractions, contact the Northwest Pennsylvania's Great Outdoors Visitors Bureau.