Lambs Creek Trail

The Lambs Creek Trail is a paved rail trail of just under four miles in Tioga County, Pennsylvania. It leaves the north edge of Mansfield near Corey Street and runs up the Tioga River valley to the boat launch at Lambs Creek Recreation Area, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers day use area at the south end of Tioga Lake. The grade is rail-trail flat with gentle curves, and the one exception is a short, sharp rise and dip just outside town. Fields and scattered woods line most of the way, and late summer brings goldenrod along the open stretches. The lake end offers a boat ramp, a group shelter, and access to Tioga Lake for fishing and paddling.

• The trail ends near Tioga Lake, a 498-acre Army Corps reservoir that draws water skiers, anglers, and paddlers.
• A closed road bridge over the Tioga River at Lambs Creek Recreation Area has become a canvas for layers of graffiti and is now a short walking destination of its own.
• Beekeepers keep hives along the trail near the recreation area, and the fields there fill with goldenrod in late summer.
• The group shelter at Lambs Creek Recreation Area is fully accessible and seats up to 100 people in the woods near the lake.
• Pennsylvania DCNR notes that the otherwise flat trail has a surprisingly steep incline and dip just outside Mansfield.

The Tioga River valley north of Mansfield was one of Pennsylvania's early railroad corridors. Before 1841, the Tioga Navigation Company built a line along the river to carry coal from the Blossburg mines north toward Corning, New York, and the Chemung Canal. The line later came under the control of the Erie Railroad and ran as part of its Tioga Division, and decades after that it belonged to the Erie Lackawanna. A small village named Lambs Creek grew up beside the tracks. It had a depot where passenger trains stopped only when someone flagged them down, and mail was picked up by a crane while the train was still moving. In 1958 Congress authorized the Tioga-Hammond Lakes flood control project to protect towns along the Chemung and Susquehanna Rivers. The dams were finished in 1979 and the lakes began holding water that November. The village of Lambs Creek disappeared under the project, and its cemetery was moved to Oakwood Cemetery in Mansfield. Also in 1979, the United States Army Corps of Engineers took over the old rail corridor along the river, paved it, and opened it as the Lambs Creek Hike and Bike Trail. The Corps still owns and maintains the trail today, with help from local volunteers.

• MansfieldMILE 0Directions
• Lambs Creek Recreation AreaMILE 3.8Directions

• Campflare · Lambs Creek Recreation Area - Campground Details
• Recreation.gov · Lambs Creek Recreation Area, Tioga-Hammond Lakes
• Pennsylvania DCNR · Lambs Creek Bike & Hike Trail
• MyHikes · Lambs Creek Graffiti Bridge Trail - Mansfield, PA