Laurel Hill State Park
Jefferson Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
One of five Recreational Demonstration Areas created in Pa. by the National Park Service during the Great Depression to improve land use. Between 1935 and 1941, workers from the CCC and WPA New Deal programs built roads, buildings, and sites here to support many types of recreation. Laurel Hill is the most intact RDA in Pa., retaining examples of all of its original property types. The park continues its legacy of conservation begun in 1935.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Laurel Hill was one of five Recreational Demonstration Areas the National Park Service created in Depression-era Pennsylvania to reclaim worn land for public use. Between 1935 and 1941, workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration built the roads, cabins, and facilities that turned the site into a place for recreation. Today it is the most intact RDA in the state, still holding examples of every kind of structure the New Deal builders left behind.
Why it matters
The park is a living record of how New Deal work programs put the unemployed to labor rebuilding the land, creating public spaces Americans still enjoy generations later.
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Related events
- ¡ New Deal
- ¡ Civilian Conservation Corps
- ¡ Works Progress Administration
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Early Bible
Somerset, PA ¡ est. 1954
In 1813, in a log cabin on this spot, printer Charles Frederick Goeb produced what is remembered as the first Bible printed west of the Allegheny Mountains. Getting a printing press â and the paper, type, and skill to run it â across the mountains was no small feat on the early frontier, where books were scarce and precious. A Bible off a local press meant a community had crossed a threshold from raw settlement toward established cultural life.
Quecreek Mine Accident and Rescue
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Rural Electrification
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