Laurel Hill RDA

Laurel Hill State Park covers 3,935 acres in the foothills of the Laurel Mountains in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, and was built around a lake the Civilian Conservation Corps created by damming Laurel Hill Creek. Camps SP-8 and SP-15 built the Recreation Demonstration Area between July 1935 and 1942, and the National Park Service transferred the facility to the state of Pennsylvania in October 1945. The historic district includes a park office and maintenance area, four organized group camps, two former CCC camps and three day use areas, with about 210 buildings and seven structures, most of them contributing. Organized Group Camp No. 1 has a central administrative unit, a mess hall, a recreation hall and four unit camps of cabins with wane-edged siding and log or squared timber porch columns. The district is regarded as a significant example of Emergency Conservation Work architecture in Pennsylvania state parks, with standardized military-style barracks and garages at the former CCC camps.