Penns Creek Path

Penns Creek Path is a short rail trail on the former Lewisburg and Tyrone Railroad grade in Bald Eagle State Forest, running just under three miles along Penns Creek from Tunnel Spur Road near Poe Paddy State Park east to Cherry Run. Within the first quarter mile it crosses the creek on a redecked railroad trestle and passes through the Poe Paddy Tunnel, a 320 foot bore through Paddy Mountain that is dark in the middle, so carry a light. Beyond the tunnel the crushed stone grade runs rail flat through the Penns Creek Wild Area, creek on one side and forested slopes above.

• The Poe Paddy Tunnel is 320 feet long, and an 1873 stockholder report complained that stratified rock forced the builders to arch half of it.
• Poe Paddy State Park is named for the two mountains that surround it, Poe Mountain to the east and Paddy Mountain to the west, with Penns Creek in the valley between them.
• The park sits on the site of Poe Mills, a lumber town that had more than 300 residents at its height, and a railroad branch was laid along Poe Creek to reach its sawmill.
• The green drake mayflies that hatch on Penns Creek in late spring are nearly the size of a small hummingbird and become the main food for the creek's trout.
• Penns Creek Wild Area covers 6,000 acres from south of Coburn east to Weikert, with terrain rising to 2,200 feet on White Mountain.
• Ospreys and bald eagles hunt the wild brown trout of Penns Creek, and wood ducks nest in the hardwoods along its backwaters.
• The Mid State Trail, a 325 mile hiking route that DCNR calls the wildest trail in Pennsylvania, uses the tunnel and trestle, and hikers were rerouted over the ridges while the tunnel was closed from 2013 to 2015.
• The 2015 tunnel and trestle project cost 1.2 million dollars and included shoring and resurfacing more than two miles of the rail trail so construction crews could reach the site.

Big Poe Creek was dammed to power the sawmills of Poe Mills, and the lumber town at the mouth of the creek grew to more than 300 people during Pennsylvania's timber boom. The Lewisburg, Centre and Spruce Creek Railroad reached this stretch of Penns Creek in the 1870s. The Pennsylvania Railroad leased the company in 1869 and backed the construction. The winding gorge forced two tunnels, one through Paddy Mountain and one through Tunnel Mountain, and the line reached Rising Springs, now Spring Mills, by 1877. An 1873 stockholder report noted that stratified rock in the 320 foot Paddy Mountain bore required arching half of its length. Around 1880 the company became the Lewisburg and Tyrone Railroad, and a short branch was laid along Poe Creek to reach the sawmill at Poe Mills. The line hauled lumber out of the ridges. In 1970 Penn Central abandoned the middle of the line from Mifflinburg to Coburn, which includes this corridor. Hurricane Agnes in 1972 finished the rest west to Lemont, and the tracks came up. The grade through the Penns Creek Wild Area became a state forest rail trail and a link in the Mid State Trail. Deteriorating rock closed the tunnel on February 5, 2013, and hikers detoured over the ridges. In 2015 the Bureau of Forestry spent 1.2 million dollars to stabilize the tunnel with an internal framework, redeck the trestle over Penns Creek, and resurface the trail, and the tunnel reopened that year.

• Poe PaddyMILE 0Directions
• Cherry RunMILE 2.7Directions

• Pennsylvania DCNR · Penns Creek Path - Mid State Trail
• Pennsylvania DCNR · Construction to begin at Poe Paddy Tunnel along Penns Creek
• Pennsylvania DCNR · Penns Creek Wild Area factsheet
• Pennsylvania DCNR · Penns Creek Trail in Bald Eagle State Forest provides access to Penns Creek
• StateCollege.com · A Tale of Two Tunnels
• Wikipedia · Poe Paddy State Park
• PA Bucket List · Riding Penn's Creek Path in the Bald Eagle State Forest
• Wikipedia · Lewisburg and Tyrone Railroad
• Abandoned · Lewisburg & Tyrone Railroad