Pennsylvania State Park

There are 121 state parks in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, as of 2016. The Pennsylvania Bureau of State Parks, a division of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), is the governing body for all these parks, and directly operates 113 of them. The remaining eight are operated in cooperation with other public and private organizations.

The first Pennsylvania state park, at Valley Forge, opened in 1893 and was given to the National Park Service (NPS) for America's bicentennial in 1976. There are a total of seventeen former Pennsylvania state parks: four former parks have been transferred to the NPS, four to the Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission, two to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, one to both the Corps and the Pennsylvania Game Commission, five to the Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry, and one has ceased to exist. Nine current and two former state parks have had major name changes or have been known under alternate names.

The list gives an overview of Pennsylvania state parks and a brief history of their development since the first park opened in 1893. State parks range in size from 3 acres (1.2 ha) to 21,122 acres (8,548 ha), with nearly one percent (0.96%) of Pennsylvania's land as state park land. According to Dan Cupper (1993), "Pennsylvania is the thirty-third largest state, but only Alaska and California have more park land".

There are state parks in 61 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties, which nearly reaches Pennsylvania's goal of having a state park within 25 miles (40 km) of every resident in the Commonwealth. Eleven of the 121 parks do not have "State Park" in their name. Three are "Conservation Areas": Boyd Big Tree Preserve, Joseph E. Ibberson, and Varden; four are "Environmental Education Centers": Jacobsburg, Jennings, Kings Gap (also a "Training Center") and Nolde Forest; White Clay Creek is a "Preserve"; Norristown is a "Farm Park"; and Big Spring is a "State Forest Picnic Area".

...
Wikipedia