Greenwood Lake Dam NRHP

🏊Swimming at Greenwood Lake Dam NRHP

Swimming takes place at a 300-foot sand beach on the small (6-acre) dam-impounded Greenwood Lake. It is an unguarded, DCNR-managed swim area (no lifeguards posted since 2008 per park history) suited to casual, low-key lake swimming rather than deep-water or current-driven swimming.

📍How to get to this swimming hole

The park is located along PA Route 305, about 5 miles west of Belleville, PA, at 15795 Greenwood Road, Huntingdon, PA 16652; it is roughly 20 miles from Lewistown, Huntingdon, and State College. Parking is available in the day-use area near the park office/Pine Pavilion, close to the beach.

Parking: Parking is available in the day-use area near the park office and Pine Pavilion, which also has a two-plug EV charging station; no separate beach parking lot size was specified in official sources.

🥾The walk in

No real hike here. The water is a short walk from where you park. This is a drive-up beach in the day-use area next to the park office/Pine Pavilion parking lot - no hike is needed to reach the water. For visitors who want to walk, the 0.3-mile Lakeview Trail (rated 'more difficult' despite its short length) loops the lake past the ADA fishing pier and ends at the historic dam, but it is a scenic add-on, not the access route to the beach.

📜Backstory

The lake was built in 1842 to supply water power for a gristmill serving the Greenwood Furnace ironworks, which operated from 1834 to 1904 as a charcoal-fueled ironworks employing about 300 workers. The dam itself was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 11, 1987 (NRIS #87000050). The state acquired the land in 1906 for a forest tree nursery, and the site became a public recreation area starting in 1924, with CCC improvements in the 1930s.