Elk State Park is located in the mountains of northern PA. Read on to learn more about Elk State Park’s amenities and more!
Elk State Park Amenities
Elk State Park is a larger state park, at 3,192-acres. The main feature of the park is East Branch Lake, a 1,160 acre lake. The lake is large enough for unlimited horsepower boats, making it great for water-skiing.
East Branch Lake does not occur naturally. After the great Clarion River floods in 1936 and 1942, the government started to acquire land in order to build the East Branch Flood Control Dam. When the East Branch Dam was created, the towns of Instanter and Straight were flooded and lie beneath the waters of the lake. Kind of crazy! For more information on Instanter, check out this article.
The park is definitely a boater’s paradise. It has a public boat ramp, making it easy for local boating enthusiasts to enjoy the lake. The park offers educational activities, such as guided kayak adventures. For more information about events at Elk State Park, visit the PA DCNR website.
Swimming is not allowed in the park. To swim, visit the swimming pool at Bendigo State Park.
To download a map of the park and all of the amenities, click here. For the park recreation guide, click here.
Visiting All PA State Parks
If you’re trying to visit all of the Pennsylvania State Parks, I recommend combining Bendigo and Elk, as they’re about twenty minutes apart. In our visit, we visited Kinzua Bridge on a Saturday afternoon and Bendigo and Elk on a Sunday morning.
This was not my favorite state park. It was lovely in the winter, but it’s definitely a park meant for warmer weather. And I bet it would be awesome to explore with a boat!
Personally, I want a state park with more trails. There is one 0.5 mile hike, but since we didn’t have any cell service coming from Bendigo, we follows the signs to the park. Unfortunately, this brought us to the other side of the lake from the trail, a mistake that would have cost us thirty minutes in the opposite direction from home to rectify. Download your maps, kids!
Looking to visit more Pennsylvania State Parks? Check out my post listing all of my PA State Park guides for tips on visiting some of my favorites!
Getting to Elk State Park
Elk State Park is about eight miles east of Wilcox on SR 1006 and about nine miles south of Clermont on SR 1001. As I mentioned earlier, cell service is limited in the area and you may need to follow signs. I highly recommend downloading Google Maps or having a paper map handy!
What do you think about Elk State Park? Let me know in the comments below!