This photo was taken on Independence Day weekend, 2025. I was trying to duplicate a photo that I took for my old blog in October of 2009. SEE HERE. Beaver Meadows was once a campground and recreation area in the Allegheny National Forest. The campground was closed for unknown reasons, but the trails and lake were kept open with a few picnic tables but no potable water or restrooms. It's all very much in keeping with current trends in the Allegheny. Although the forest was originally created to protect the watershed, it has been increasingly repurposed as a place for industrialists to make a quick buck. Our national forest has been in a long, rapid, and seemingly inexorable descent into an industrial wasteland. Conservation and recreation in the forest is diminishing. Beaver Meadows was closed. The nearby Twin Lakes campground and recreation area was also closed, due to barium in the water--which is caused by gas drilling in adjacent forestlands. Local volunteers have taken on the task of reopening the campground at Twin Lakes, out of community pride and pure nostalgia, but how can this kind of reckless exploitation be allowed on our public lands. The Trump administration wants to enact a major increase in logging, too.
But the trail system at Beaver Meadows is pleasant. It's got about 7 miles of interconnecting loops with one very long boardwalk over a marshy area with all manner of birds. The red-winged blackbirds are especially numerous. I think there must be good fishing here, too, since most of the people I saw had fishing poles.
The last time I was at Beaver Meadows--in 2009--I didn't get very far on these trails. I was still relatively new to the hiking life back in those days, and I naively took my two little girls with me, intending to pull them along the trails in their little red wagon. It was not a successful excursion. Now that they're both adults, I could bring them back here to explore the trails on foot, but I think there might be even more whining now than there was when they were 3 and 4. They would do it to make me happy, but they wouldn't like it.
It seems strange that this big trail system has been here all along, and though I fancy myself an expert on all things ANF, it took me 16 years to finally explore it. True, it doesn't have any spectacular views or interesting rock formations. Even the woods here is not especially lush or lovely--a lot of evergreens that look like they were planted by hand. But it's pleasant and uncrowded with some nice waterside areas.
I don't remember if the lake was covered in lily pads the last time I was here, but they're pretty, and they bespeak the stillness and the tranquility of the place. You can tell that all of this--the trails, the lake, the dam, the boardwalk, etc.--used to be attached to a campground that is no more. I guess that's what gives Beaver Meadows a slightly forlorn and forgotten feel. If I ever go to another costume-Halloween party in this life of years, I'm going to go as a red-winged blackbird.
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