Kooser State Park

There's much to like about the tiny roadside Kooser State Park.  Its "Mighty Oak Pavilion" and its rentable cabins and other buildings all have that way-cool "rustic" old CCC architecture of the 1930s.  The park is only about 250 acres, but it's close to lots of public land and good hiking.  There's tall, dense forest, a beautiful beach area, and a miniature, four-acre lake.  The old log and stone buildings blend into the dark upland woods--hemlock and beech--to create an almost cinematographic effect.  If not for the state highway that runs along one full side of the park, this place would remind me for all the world of a place in the Allegheny National Forest called "Twin Lakes."  At Twin Lakes, there are miles of woodlands stretching off up the hillside behind the beach parking lot.  Here at Kooser, the beach lot opens onto a busy road.

 I came here on a Friday afternoon, and all of the cabins appeared to be reserved for the weekend.  The campground area was less than half full, and I had the entire beach area to myself for reasons explained below.  I wasn't crazy about the campground, though it was nice enough.  Most of the sites were set up for RVs and campers, treeless and out in the open.  There were only three small tenting sites hidden away uphill and into the woods, isolated from the main parts of the campgrounds; # 33 is most secluded and wooded.

Look closely at the top picture, and you'll see that it's a beach.  The dark little lake--or pond--can barely be discerned in the shadow of the forest.  Despite the fact that the beach area is beautifully shaded with those most native highland trees, hemlocks and beeches, and the restroom / bath house facilities are clean and new, swimming is no longer allowed.  The lake is choked with algae and sedimentation.

 The PA DCNR won't admit it, but algae in lakes comes from industrial chemicals and / or fertilizers draining into the watersheds.  Kooser is just downstream from a huge coal operation--though I'm not sure if that's the culprit.  (Mining would explain the sedimentation, but what about the algae?)  Why is the state so passive when nearby industries wreck public property--as in the lakes at both Kooser and Ryerson Station state parks?  Because industry is good for the economy...

It's a shame.  Kooser is a small gem of a park, scenic and serene with a quaintly rustic and historic feel to it.  It would be a lot nicer with a swimming beach.  But there were a handful of other drawbacks, too.  The park's only hiking trail was just one mile long--the Kincora Trail, named after an Irish missionary priest.  And perhaps when the CCC built the park here, PA 31 was less busy.  But nowadays the nearby roadway screams with constant traffic, especially coal trucks.  When I come to the mountains, it's in order to escape traffic noise...but that's not always possible here in the Old Fatherland, where heavy industry encroaches even on lovely ridges that ought to be remote.  

I imagine that Kooser functions mainly as an overflow for the much larger and more truly remote Laurel Hill State Park--which is nearby and has a bigger lake, bigger beach, bigger campground, and many more miles of hiking trails.  On the Kincora Trail, someone carved into a tree the words, "Doctors Kill Us."  Whoever carved that inane message must have really meant it, for the carving must have taken hours to complete.  Medical doctors kill us with bad advice?  Doctors of divinity kill us with boredom?  For a more recent write-up about Kooser, follow this link.