Raccoon Creek State Park

Raccoon Creek State Park, just off the old Lincoln Highway west of Pittsburgh, is a product of the New Deal. In the nineteen thirties this land was exhausted farmland, stripped and overworked. The federal government selected it as one of several Recreational Demonstration Areas in Pennsylvania, and by nineteen thirty-five the Civilian Conservation Corps had moved in, men housed in two camps on the property.

They built picnic shelters, helped develop the park lake, planted trees, and laid the trails you can still walk today. In nineteen forty-five the federal government handed the park to Pennsylvania, and it has been a state park ever since.