Tionesta, PA

Tionesta, PA is an extremely rural town located in northwestern, PA. It achieved tourism destination status when the Army Corps of Engineers installed a dam for the purposes of flood control. The resulting lake became a place people from the surrounding areas came to boat, fish and canoe. The Corps of Engineers campground, while rather nice, is a stark disconnect from the rest of the town. While basically very friendly, the town had a bit of a “dying” feel to it. There was only a couple restaurants and they were not exactly super high caliber. The town laundromat looked like something out of the (early) 80’s. The one grocery store had extremely limited food options.

Tionesta Lake

Tionesta Lake

For us the place just wasn’t very friendly. AT&T cell phone service worked fine but the data was slow to the point of being unusable. A call to order pizza from the Seldom Inn on a thursday evening resulted in us being told there was a 1.5 hour wait. It took days to reach the people renting boats to go out on the lake (who for some reason had 3 different phone numbers listed) and there were probably other issues I don’t remember.

The bottom line is come to Tionesta for a decent lake experience, but there is better out there. Much better.