Pymatuning State Park will be a hub of activity this year with four major improvement projects worth about $16 million happening at one of Crawford County’s most popular attractions.

“There are a lot of improvements going on that we hope visitors will appreciate,” Dan Bickel, the park’s superintendent, said recently.

Two of the projects — upgrades of the park’s Jamestown Campground and a hiking/biking trail extension near Linesville — are continuations of work begun in 2021. Work already has resumed on both, Mr. Bickel said.

The other two projects planned are about 3 miles of paving at various sites within the park while the Tuttle Point Campground, closed for more than a decade, is slated to be rebuilt this year and ready for the 2023 camping season.

Upgrading the Jamestown Campground by replacing its six washhouse facilities began last July with a phased shutdown of the campground. It closed completely by early August due to the scope of the work. That left Pymatuning with only Linesville Campground operating for the rest of the 2021 camping season.

However, Jamestown will be open for the bulk of Pymatuning’s 2022 camping season.

“Jamestown Campground will open by Memorial Day weekend — but we hope to open it even sooner,” Mr. Bickel said. “We have all-new shower buildings and a camp store at Jamestown.”

The new buildings are heated. The new shower buildings have private unisex restroom facilities, too.

The previous shower/washroom buildings at Jamestown Campground were made of unheated concrete block buildings that were more than 50 years old and had fallen into disrepair.

Chivers Construction Co., of Fairview, is the general construction contractor for the project at $2,724,970, while Penn Ohio Electrical Co. of Masury, Ohio, is the electrical contractor at $249,900.

Mr. Bickel said a $2.28 million project to improve and expand the state park’s Spillway Trail south of Linesville restarted this month. Horizon Construction Group of Sandy Lake, Mercer County, is the contractor.

When finished in July, the paved trail will be increased from 1 mile to more than 3 miles in length.

The current trail is from Fries Road in North Shenango, going north and parallel to Linesville-Hartstown Road, and ending just south of Linesville. It’s being extended north into Linesville and will turn east before ending at South Chestnut Street in the borough.

The trail will reuse the historic Messerall Truss Bridge from Oil Creek Township. In 2020, Crawford County, which owned the one-lane iron bridge, transferred its ownership to the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources for use on the project.

The bridge, which dates from the 1870s, was dismantled and refurbished, and now will carry the trail over Linesville Creek, according to Mr. Bickel.

“It will be partially reassembled and brought to the site in late June to be installed,” he said. “It will be one of the last things to do.”

Meanwhile, an estimated $2 million in paving will be done at various locations in the state park — including resurfacing the road across the top of the park’s dam, Mr. Bickel said.

The paving bids were due March 17 and still are being reviewed by the state.

Paving work will include the Pymatuning Dam Road, Manning Boat Launch and Orchard Boat Launch areas, Wilson Road Access area, Espyville Marina, Linesville Beach parking lot, and Jamestown Campground’s group camping area, Mr. Bickel said.

Bids for a multimillion-dollar project to rebuild Pymatuning’s Tuttle Point Campground also are under review by the state.

Tuttle Point Campground, located north of the Route 285 causeway, was closed by the state after the 2009 camping season, as a cost-saving measure. Its closure left the park with just Jamestown and Linesville campgrounds.

Last fall, plans were announced to rebuild Tuttle Point Campground with 112 new handicapped-accessible sites with water, sewage and electric hookups and to refurbish its water tower. Bids for the project, estimated at up to $9.2 million, were received by the state in January.

Construction would be done this season with Tuttle Point to reopen for the 2023 camping season, Mr. Bickel said.

First Published: March 27, 2022, 11:00 a.m.