page_title: Colton Point State Park
section_title: Modern era
hierarchical_section_title: Colton Point State Park / History / Modern era
caption_attribution_description: CCC-built Picnic Shelter 3 (north and east sides) in Colton Point State Park in Shippen Township, Tioga County, Pennsylvania, United States.
context_page_description: 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, which is 800 feet deep and nearly 4,000 feet across at this location. The park extends from the creek in the bottom of the gorge up to the rim and across part of the plateau to the west. Colton Point State Park is known for its views of the Pine Creek Gorge, and offers opportunities for picnicking, hiking, fishing and hunting, whitewater boating, and camping. Colton Point is surrounded by Tioga State Forest and its sister park, Leonard Harrison State Park, on the east rim. The park is on a state forest road in Shippen Township 5 miles south of U.S. Route 6.
  Pine Creek flows through the park and has carved the gorge through five major rock formations from the Devonian and Carboniferous periods. Native Americans once used the Pine Creek Path along the creek. The path was later used by lumbermen, and then became the course of a railroad from 1883 to 1988. Since 1996, the 62-mile Pine Creek Rail Trail has followed the creek through the gorge.
context_section_description: The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) started work on the park in June 1935, and it opened as "Colton Point State Forest Park" in 1936. The CCC, founded by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression, created jobs for unemployed young men from throughout the United States. Much of the work of the CCC at Colton Point is still visible as of 2015, and is one of many examples of the work of the CCC throughout northcentral Pennsylvania.
  In 1936, the year the park opened, Larry Woodin of Wellsboro and other Tioga County business owners began a tourism campaign to promote the Pine Creek Gorge as "The Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania". Greyhound Bus Lines featured a view of the canyon from a Leonard Harrison lookout on the back cover of its Atlantic Coast timetable. The bus line's Chicago to New York City tour had an overnight stay in Wellsboro and a morning visit to the canyon for $3. More than 300,000 tourists visited the canyon by the autumn of 1936, and 15,000 visited Leonard Harrison over Memorial Day weekend in 1937. That year more visitors came to the Pine Creek Gorge than to Yellowstone National Park. In response to the heavy use of the local roads, the CCC widened the highways in the area, and guides from the CCC gave tours of the canyon.
  Colton Point originally opened with only "limited facilities", but the success of the tourism campaign led to the park's expansion by the CCC. New facilities were added in 1938, and included buildings such as picnic pavilions, latrines, and a concession stand, as well as "stone cook stoves, tables, and developed trails and overlooks ... an amazing amount of work in one year". The CCC also built the road to the park and planted stands of larch, spruce and white pine for reforestation. On February 12, 1987, the entire 368-acre (149 ha) park was listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), including "eight buildings and nine structures".
  The park has five CCC-built picnic shelters: pavilions 1, 3, and 4 are made of stone and timber with stone fireplaces, while pavilions 2 and 5 each has log columns that support a pyramidal roof. The CCC also built six rustic latrines with clapboard siding and gable roofs, and an underground reservoir that is covered with a low hipped roof. Additional structures constructed by the CCC include three overlooks and a rectangular gable-roofed maintenance building with wane edge siding and exposed rafters made of logs. The structures built by the CCC are noteworthy in that they exemplify the rustic style of construction that was prevalent at national and state parks built during the Great Depression. Workers used locally found, natural materials in construction that blended with the natural surroundings. Not all of the CCC's work has survived. A concession stand was built by the CCC and sold food and souvenirs from the late 1930s to at least 1953, but was not listed on the 1986 NRHP nomination form. The CCC also built a brick and stone incinerator, but it is in ruins now.
  The Pennsylvania Geographic Board dropped the word "Forest" and officially named it "Colton Point State Park" on November 11, 1954. The first major change in the park was in 1970, when a camping area was established. That same decade saw the completion of a new water system in 1973, and a holding tank dump station was added to the camping area in 1977. A park office was built in 1983, but as of 2009 the park headquarters are in the adjoining Leonard Harrison State Park and the Colton Point office does not appear on the official park map. Pine Creek was named a state scenic river on December 4, 1992, which ensured further protection of Pine Creek Gorge in its natural state. In 1997 the park's Important Bird Area (IBA) was one of the first 73 IBAs established in Pennsylvania. In 2000 the park became part of the Hills Creek State Park complex, an administrative grouping of eight state parks in Potter and Tioga counties. As of 2004, the park does not have telephone or electrical lines, although it uses solar cells for limited electricity needs.
  The second ha
caption: CCC-built shelter 3 in the park
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