Loleta Recreation Area Campground

This area has been recently nominated and accepted onto the National Register of Historic Places. The area was once a bustling logging town, established in 1889, with over 600 inhabitants. The town had a large sawmill, shingle mill, broom handle factory and a rail connection for shipping products to Sheffield, PA. Once the timber supply was exhausted in 1913, the mills shut down and the town was deserted. The Federal Government purchased the site in 1925, adding it to the newly formed Allegheny National Forest. In the 1930s, the Forest Service (using CCC labor) reconstructed the mill pond, added a bathhouse, swimming area, picnic shelters, and landscaping. The distinctive quality of CCC workmanship is evident today in the dam stonework and the log construction of the old bathhouse. The camping loops were added in the 1960s. Trout fishing is good in Millstone Creek. The picturesque Clarion River, about four miles south of the campground, offers excellent fishing and canoeing. A three-mile long hiking trail, marked with off-white diamonds, starts and ends at Loleta, from the parking lot near the group camping site through the woods around the upper camping loop and comes back in between the upper loop and the group site. Buzzard Swamp offers 10 miles of trail, 5 miles North of Loleta Recreation Area.