This is the Pinnacle Overlook, part of Susquehannock State Park in Lancaster County, PA.
Half of the "big lockdown" during COVID for me was in Wrightsville, PA at my brother's place. By mutual agreement and to avoid going stir-crazy, we tried to take a big outdoor walk daily. Our walks took us all over York and Lancaster counties. What is most notable is "discovering" all these places near my childhood home that I had never visited (nor my brother who lived in the area far longer than me). There was this constant theme of "Did you know this place existed??" "I can't believe we never came here when we were kids". In all fairness, some of the parks and trails did not exist formally that long ago, but some of the more spectacular ones, like the Pinnacle Overlook, must have been locally well-known. How did we miss it? After my 40 year absence, I can say things truly did improve in terms of parks and hiking/walking trails.
The Pinnacle overlooks the lower Susquehanna Gorge. First and foremost, having grown up near this river, it became my "standard" for all rivers throughout life. I naively thought that every river should approximate the Susquehanna. After I started to travel, I realized that what was a river in some places would only have been a creek in Pennsylvania. My standard was set too high at an early age. To this day, if a river is not at least 3/4 mile across, I whisper to myself "not much of a RIVER". Ahhh the curse of superlatives, I know it well. Experience the biggest, best, or most too soon and spend the rest of life thinking everything else falls short. {See: Burj Khalifa}
Given the copious amounts of free time the pandemic afforded (ha ha), I often researched places we visited. In the case of Pinnacle Overlook, I learned about the river itself. The Susquehanna has been a river in some form for millions of years. It is considered one of the oldest continuously flowing rivers on earth. Wow! Additionally, after the river breaks through Blue Mountain Ridge north of Harrisburg it drops 300 feet in a relatively short run down to the Chesapeake Bay. "In the old days" this meant the pre-dam Susquehanna had major rapids and the current gorges were even deeper. It flooded enough yearly to float the logs out of northern Pennsylvania down to Marietta and Columbia where they could be put on trains and taken to sawmills. I dearly wished to know what the original Susquehanna looked like, however, all that water power was just begging to be dammed.
The Pinnacle overlooks Lake Aldred which is formed by the oldest of the three dams on the lower Susquehanna. The other two, Safe Harbor and Conowingo, lie to the north and south of it. Those three dams provide a crazy amount of power to the Northeast grid. After watching an informative PBS documentary on the Conowingo Dam - thanks to recommendation by CN, GU Alum - I came to know that if for some reason all the power went down on the East Coast, it is those three dams that would help to jump start the electrical grid. So yes, I would love a no-dam Susquehanna with Shad and Atlantic Salmon, but I also like electricity.
Looking over the river valley from the Pinnacle two things struck me. First, what an incredible barrier the Susquehanna must have been in the early days of European settlement. There really are few places it can be crossed easily even though we take it for granted now. Second, how incredibly beautiful and natural most of the valley still is. The Pinnacle Overlook is a small adjunct section to the larger Susquehannock State Park further south. It is not "a major attraction". If this place were in Europe, it would be on everyone's Instagram feed as a selfie-spot must-visit. It would be a national park at least. It would be perhaps world famous. Alas, it is just a small parcel separate from a not-so-famous state park in southern Pennsylvania. After travelling in Europe a lot in the years prior to the pandemic, I was just amazed at how gorgeous many places seemed on my return to Pennsylvania. It often takes leaving a place and seeing it with fresh eyes to really appreciate it.
Comments