page_title: Presque Isle State Park
section_title: Geology and climate
hierarchical_section_title: Presque Isle State Park / Geology and climate
caption_attribution_description: English: Migration of Presque Isle from 1790 to 1971.
context_page_description: Presque Isle State Park is a 3,112-acre Pennsylvania State Park on an arching, sandy peninsula that juts into Lake Erie, 4 miles west of the city of Erie, in Millcreek Township, Erie County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The peninsula sweeps northeastward, surrounding Presque Isle Bay along the park's southern coast. 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 recorded history of Presque Isle begins with the Erielhonan, a Native American tribe 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. With the growing importance of shipping on Lake Erie in the 19th century, Presque Isle became home to several lighthouses and what later became a United States Coast Guard station. 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.
context_section_description: Presque Isle is a recurved sand spit that formed during the last glacial period, or ice age, when the Laurentide Ice Sheet advanced into the basin now occupied by Lake Erie, and, when it retreated to the north between 12,370 BC and 12,790 BC, left behind a moraine consisting of clay, sand, and gravel that initially formed the Presque Isle peninsula. The deposits are constantly being re-worked by wave action and are gradually migrating to the northeast due to longshore drift.
  The French term presqu'île, the origin of the park's name, means "peninsula", or, literally, "almost an island". Despite the name, Presque Isle has been an island for brief periods of time after it has been cut off from the mainland several times since 1819—the longest stretch was from 1832 to 1864. In the 1950s, in an effort to combat erosion, the state and federal governments built sets of concrete seawalls and perpendicular groins. In 1992, a series of 58 breakwaters were also constructed to help capture sand and significantly slowed its movement eastward. Even with the substantial engineering projects, sand has to be relocated from tombolos that form behind the breakwaters, and new sand has to be brought in annually to replenish the beaches.
  Presque Isle protects the natural Presque Isle Bay, which creates a deep and wide harbor for the city of Erie. The bay is often filled with pleasure craft as well as cargo ships from all over the world that use the Great Lakes shipping port. Erie became an international port after the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959.
  Owing to the park's location relative to Erie, its climate is similar to that of the city. Erie and the peninsula are located in a snow belt that stretches from Cleveland to Syracuse and Watertown; accordingly, its winters are typically cold, with heavy lake-effect snow, but also with occasional stretches of mild weather that cause accumulated snow to melt. The Erie region lies in the humid continental zone (Köppen Dfa). Presque Isle's lakeside location helps to temper summer heat, with an average of only 3.8 days of 90 °F (32 °C)+ highs annually, and the highest temperature ever recorded was 100 °F (38 °C) on June 25, 1988; there is an average of 2.5 days with lows of 0 °F (−18 °C) or colder annually, and the lowest temperature ever recorded was −18 °F (−28 °C) on January 19, 1994 and February 16, 2015. Ice dunes typically form along the beaches in the winter from snowfall and frozen spray, and normally reach a height over 6 feet (1.8 m). The dunes protect the beaches from erosion during winter storms, and continue growing until the surface of Lake Erie freezes in the winter.
caption: Migration of Presque Isle from 1790–1971
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