Presque Isle State Park

By Eugene H. Ware

Located on a seven-mile peninsula on the shores of Lake Erie in Erie, Pennsylvania, Presque Isle State Park attracts four million visitors each year. With its designation in 1921, Presque Isle became the second state park in Pennsylvania. From this beginning, the citizens of Erie and surrounding areas developed an affinity and appreciation for the park. Presque Isle has
been left relatively unchanged over the years, and when improvements have been made, they have been executed in ways that have not altered the park's natural beauty. Through images gathered from the collections of the author, Erie County Historical Society, Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, and various other local sources, Presque Isle State Park reflects the history and unique atmosphere of a park that has come to be known as "a place for all seasons."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Jun 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781439656556

Eugene H. Ware

Eugene H. Ware, a financial consultant with a love of Presque Isle, is the president of the Friends of the Tom Ridge Environmental Center and past president of the Presque Isle Partnership, both organizations that support Presque Isle and its missions. He has previously written four books about the park, which is just five minutes from his home. He also writes a blog about Presque Isle State Park for the local newspaper called “A Place for All Seasons”.

Book preview

Park.

INTRODUCTION

It seems almost as if when heaven and earth were created, a pause was taken at just a few places to create something special—places where a person could stop and reflect on what is right about the world; places to relax, play, and rest for a moment to drink in the beauty and wonder of nature and the natural world. Presque Isle State Park is surely one of these.

The park is a modest seven-mile-long sandspit peninsula located along the shore of Lake Erie just north of Erie, Pennsylvania. It sweeps like a bow nearly two miles out into the lake on a northeastern course and forms a protected natural harbor two miles wide and five and three-quarter miles long. The story of the park has always been interwoven with the history of northwestern Pennsylvania and the firm desire of the people of Erie and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to keep the park natural while cautiously updating it for visitor use and protecting it from the ever-present ravages of Lake Erie. This book will give the reader a glance at the changes, people, activities, and scenes on the park from about 1948 through 2015.

Between these dates, many significant changes took place on the park. Those include the 1950 expansion of Presque Isle’s neck to stop Lake Erie from continuing its efforts to make the park an island. This immense task involved dredging 3.8 million cubic yards of sand from the widest area of the park as well as parts of Presque Isle Bay. While the new neck allowed for a four-lane entry road into the park, it also allowed for the creation of a vast new interior lake with a 500-boat inland marina. Additionally, in 1957, eight new full-service bathhouses were added to principal beaches.

From 1989 to 1992, the Army Corps of Engineers installed 58 stone breakwaters about 50 to 70 yards off the beaches to protect the eroding shoreline of Presque Isle. These breakwaters were 50 to 60 feet in length, spaced 60 yards apart, and four feet higher than the surface of the water. Since that time, the erosion has slowed by over 60 percent. Sand still needs to be brought in to repair some of the beaches each year. The park fills in much smaller areas with sand than in the past, and in the last few years, sand has been brought to Presque Isle by 980-foot-long lake freighters rather than being trucked in.

In 1984, the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources began building the first phase of the Karl Boyes Multi-Purpose National Recreational Trail. After 12 years in construction, the 14-mile-long trail completely circles Presque Isle State Park. It is entirely paved and was built for walkers, joggers, runners, in-line skaters, and recreational bicyclists. There are also 34 more miles of interior hiking trails on the park.

This book will profile Presque Isle State Park and show the reader why I call it A Place for All Seasons. It will display to the reader the remarkable power and beauty of nature, the history of northwestern Pennsylvania, and the unending effort of the people of Erie and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to maintain the park’s natural beauty. Using images, maps, and descriptions from the park’s history, this book will give the reader a glimpse of why over four and a half million visitors make their way to Presque Isle each year. This attendance is more than Yellowstone or Yosemite National Park.

Have you ever watched a sunrise while walking on the beach of either an ocean or lake? Maybe it’s a shaft of morning’s golden light rippling off the still water that seizes and holds your attention. Presque Isle visitors are offered this simple gift of nature, a place where you can pause for a moment to drink in the beauty that nature has to

Reviews for Presque Isle State Park

[csayban · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Presque Isle State Park stretches seven miles into Lake Erie and represents one of the most beautiful undeveloped stretches of land in North America. Eugene Ware’s book Is a photo essay of the history of this unique piece of real estate. From wildlife sanctuary, to military staging area to commercial hub to family playground, Presque Isle has a diverse history. The photography is culled from more than 100 years and gives a powerful perspective. Ware provides a certain amount of the history in commentary to each photo, but the book really doesn’t provide the kind of narrative that could have elevated the book to a real treasure. As it stands, this book does document the diverse pictorial history of Presque Isle and that is valuable in itself.