Climb Into the Treetops: A State Forest Drive to the Fire Towers Roosevelt's Boys Built
Photo by Photo by Walter Martin on Unsplash on Unsplash
Somewhere around 1933, a seventeen-year-old kid from a coal town outside Hazleton got on a train with a duffel bag, a pair of work boots, and no job prospects whatsoever. He got off in the middle of a state forest, was handed a shovel and a canvas tent, and spent the next two years planting trees for thirty dollars a month — twenty-five of which went home to his mother.
Multiply that kid by 315,000 and you get a rough sense of what the Civilian Conservation Corps did in Pennsylvania. The state had more CCC camps than almost anywhere in the country, and the evidence is everywhere once you know what you're looking for: stone staircases that climb to nothing in particular, fire towers standing lonely above the canopy, picnic shelters built of rough-hewn timber that modern carpenters can't quite replicate.
Here's the good news — you can visit a whole string of them in a single day, and most of it is free.
Start Where the Trees Were Made
The epicenter of CCC country in Pennsylvania is the vast state forest land of the north-central tier — places like Tioga, Michaux, and the Michaux-adjacent ridges of South Mountain. But for a manageable day trip, the Laurel Hill section of Forbes State Forest and the surrounding ridges make an ideal loop through the southwest corner of the state.
Begin at the Laurel Hill State Park area, where the CCC boys built a day-use complex so handsome — chestnut log shelters, native stone fireplaces — that it landed on the National Register of Historic Places. The chestnut itself is a story: the lumber came from trees killed by the blight that wiped out American chestnuts across the East, so the Corps essentially turned a forest disaster into architecture.
There's a CCC interpretive kiosk near the park office, and the old camp site is marked. Walk it. Nothing remains but foundations and a mowed field, and somehow that's the part that sticks with people.
The Towers You Can Still Climb
Fire towers are the crown jewels of any CCC drive, and Pennsylvania still has a handful open to the public — though check conditions before you go, because these are working-age structures now.
Mount Davis Lookout Tower in Forbes State Forest stands near the state's highest point (3,213 feet, and yes, there's a plaque). The climb is a steel staircase that hums slightly underfoot, and the view from the cab is the kind of panorama that makes you understand why somebody thought a 60-foot tower in the middle of nowhere was worth hauling up a mountain.
Over in Michaux State Forest, the Hammonds Rocks area pairs a scrambly rock outcrop with nearby CCC-built roads and recreation areas, and the Caledonia area offers one of the best-preserved CCC camp stories in the state — the CCC museum at Caledonia State Park is worth planning your whole route around.
A practical note: most towers are gated or have locked cabs these days, thanks to liability and the occasional vandal. Some are open seasonally, some are climbable year-round, and some you view from the ground with your neck craned. Call the forest district office before you go. Rangers love this stuff and will tell you exactly which ladders are currently safe.
The Lodges Nobody Mentions
Beyond the towers, the Corps built recreation infrastructure that still serves the public without anyone realizing how old it is. Stone picnic pavilions. Swimming areas with terraced edges. Hiking trails blazed and benched into hillsides ninety years ago that are still in service.
The Pine Grove Furnace State Park area — where the Appalachian Trail hikers' half-gallon ice cream challenge happens — sits amid CCC-built roads and structures, and the park's iron furnace history layers nicely with the Depression-era story. Two eras of Pennsylvania industry, stacked in one parking lot.
Why It Still Matters
The Corps enrolled some 3 million young men nationally during the Depression, and Pennsylvania's forests were arguably the biggest beneficiary. Before the CCC, the state's timberlands had been logged to stubble — the "Pennsylvania desert," people called it. Every mature oak and pine you drive past on this route was, in all likelihood, planted by hand in rows by boys who'd never seen a forest in their lives.
That's the thing about this drive. It looks like a scenic tour. It's actually a walk through the largest reforestation project in human history, done by hand, in the middle of an economic catastrophe, by teenagers.
The Practical Stuff
- Best season: Late September through October for the views; the towers are more exposed than they look, so bring a windbreaker even on warm days.
- Time needed: A full day for the Forbes/Mount Davis loop; add a second day if you push up to Michaux and Caledonia.
- Cost: State forest access is free. State parks may charge modest fees at busy lots.
- Bring: Sturdy shoes for tower ladders and rock outcrops, cash for small-town diners, and a paper map — cell service in the state forests is exactly what you'd expect.
End the day the way the CCC boys ended theirs: at one of those stone shelters, watching the light go out over a forest that shouldn't exist. Ninety years later, it does. That's the whole argument for the trip, right there.
