Moraine State Park, the third largest state park in the commonwealth, is a recreational gem. However, Lake Arthur, the sixth largest inland lake in the state with 3,225 acres and 42 miles of shoreline, has not always been there.

Lake Arthur is a manmade re-creation of a much larger glacier lake that existed roughly 140,000 years ago during the Illinoian Ice Age. Prior to this ice age, the area around the park looked a lot different. The rivers flowed north.

The area near Cleland Rock at McConnells Mill State Park was the location of an old watershed divide. If a water droplet fell north of Cleland Rock, it flowed north all the way to Canada. If the water droplet fell south of Cleland Rock, it flowed south, to the Gulf of Mexico. But when the Illinoian glacier moved down from Canada, it dammed up the Slippery Rock and Muddy creeks and McConnells Mill Run, creating glacial lakes.

As the glacier started to recede, water in the lakes drained and carved out the Slippery Rock Gorge. A similar thing happened 20,000 years ago during the Wisconsin Ice Age, carving the gorge deeper, forever changing the course of the local creeks. The glacier also left behind a moraine — a glacial till or loose sediment and stone — and the word was selected as the park’s name.

After the glacial period, the land of Moraine State Park was home to the Muddy Creek Valley. While there were no permanent Native American villages in the valley, this area incorporated important hunting grounds and trade routes.

One route, the Logstown Path, roughly followed the ridge of the moraine. The path ran from Logstown, modern-day Ambridge, to Venango, modern-day Franklin.

In December 1753, 21-year-old George Washington, a major in the Virginia Regiment, traveled through the valley. He was tasked with delivering an ultimatum to the French, who were occupying the Upper Ohio Valley, land the British believed to be theirs.

Washington left Williamsburg, Va., traveling up to Pittsburgh into Logstown, taking the Logstown Path north, with Native Americans as his guides. After he delivered the ultimatum, he returned south on the Venango Path, which roughly followed modern-day routes 8 and 528, back through the Muddy Creek Valley.

After the Revolutionary War, the land in the Muddy Creek Valley was given to soldiers as payment for serving in the war. If they did not want to farm, they sold their land.

Farmers inhabited the valley. They cleared the land and drained wetlands. These farmers also would commonly work other jobs, often mining coal or limestone, or oil-drilling.

Oil was first discovered in the valley by Daniel Shanor on his farm north of Prospect. This was the start of the Muddy Creek Oil Field, which, in total, had 422 oil and natural gas wells. Oil was brought to the surface by pump jacks, and typically 17 pump jacks surrounded an “AA” Bessemer engine. The engine was powered by natural gas that drove an elliptical gear assembly, transferring the rotating energy from the engine to a series of straight rods suspended by tripods to the pump jacks, allowing to oil to be brought up.

Miners extracted bituminous coal in Muddy Creek Valley. There were 53 deep mines but later mining became strip mining.

The largest producer of coal in the valley was the U.S. Steel town of Mayne, located near today’s Burton Road Boat Launch. Mayne was home to 40 to 50 people. It had an entrance to an underground deep coal mine, a mule barn, blacksmith shop, store and, later, a Catholic church.

After the coal was mined and brought out of the mine by a cart pulled by a mule, the coal was stored in a large coal tipple before being loaded into waiting hopper cars. Those were connected to the train when full. After the coal was exhausted, Mayne became a ghost town in 1930.

The train that ran through the valley was the Western Allegheny Railroad, which was formed in 1903 by the Queen brothers, Emmett, Evan, and Daniel. The railroad’s main purpose was to transport coal and limestone to Pittsburgh blast furnaces.

The original section of track traveled 18 miles, from Queens Junction east to Kaylor. In 1906, the Western Allegheny Railroad extended the track 23 miles west into New Castle for its steel industry. The railroad took advantage of the flat land in the Muddy Creek Basin; however, seven trestles, 45 feet in length, were required to carry the straight tracks over the meandering Muddy Creek. In 1909, the railroad added passenger service, which continued until 1932.

Within the Muddy Creek Valley, there were two passenger stations, Portersville and Isle. People living in the valley would walk or use a horse and wagon to catch the train at the stations.

Isle, Nealey, Barbers and Portersville were other coal towns and stops along the Western Allegheny Railroad.

Isle was the largest village within the Muddy Creek Valley. It was an established farming and coal-mining community with a population of 80. There was a general store run by the Watsons, then later the Robinsons. Isle had a 14-car siding for coal storage and loading mine timbers. Mount Zion Baptist Church was originally built in the town in 1819, but it was moved across the Muddy Creek in 1844 to its current location.

Along Shannon Run, a dam had been built to create Shannon Lake, which was drained and removed before Lake Arthur was created. Today the town of Isle would be under water near the Route 528 Boat Launch in the park.

The coal mining town of Nealey only had a half dozen homes, but was famous for having the best swimming hole in the valley. Even people from Pittsburgh would travel to use the swimming hole, to escape the city. The village was named after the Nealey Family.

Miners would come from New Castle or Isle to work. The mine closed in 1930, and the town vanished. Today, this is the location of Nealey’s Point.

Barbers had a siding for loading coal. It is named after an early settler, Adam Barber. Only a few homes stood at this intersection of two country roads, where Bear Run entered Muddy Creek. In the park today the town’s former site is near Barbers Point, the windsurfing area.

Portersville Station was a stop for passenger services. It had a station master’s office, a freight room, waiting room with benches, and a 12-car siding. The station closed Dec. 1, 1928, although it serviced passenger trains until 1932. As the automobile became more popular and coal was exhausted, there was no need for the railroad anymore. The western part from Queen Junction to New Castle closed in 1939.

Western Allegheny Railroad continued running trains east from Queen Junction to Kaylor until 1942. The rails were removed and used for the war effort.

Within the valley and boundaries of today’s park, there were four one-room schoolhouses with first to eighth grade. Bunker Hill was on the west side of Route 528, near Mount Zion Baptist Church, and operated between 1854-1963. The park was going to make this schoolhouse a museum, but it was vandalized.

Pleasant Valley Schoolhouse was located near today’s park office. It operated from 1874-1953. Sand Hill School, located near Portersville Station, educated students from the late 1800s until 1943. This building is now repurposed as a park manager’s house. Island Independent was located between Swamp Run and the Muddy Creek. It operated from 1874-1948. All of the schools were within the Slippery Rock School District, which accepted all students when the schools closed.

There was a 25-acre amusement park, called Shawood Park, in the valley with cabins, picnic shelters, kiddie rides, a carousel, a midway of games, dance hall, skating rink, boating on the Muddy Creek and ball fields. It closed in 1955 when the land was taken to create Moraine State Park. It was located near the North Shore exit along route 422.

While life of the farmers, miners, and oilmen in Muddy Creek Valley continued, two men were envisioning a future for the valley. One of those men was Frank W. Preston, born May 14, 1896, in Leicester, England.

In his early years, Preston attended Wyggeston Boys School. He later earned an associate’s degree in arts at 16, a bachelor’s degree in engineering at 20, a Ph.D. in engineering at 29 and doctorate of science at age 55.

Professionally, Preston was a trained civil engineer, but switched his focus to glass. He worked on creating lenses for aerial photography for World War I. After coming to Butler to work for Standard Plate and Glass, he eventually founded his own glass research company, Preston Laboratories, in 1926.

In his free time, Preston was an amateur geologist and bird enthusiast who owned property in the Muddy Creek Valley, where he enjoyed his hobbies. That is where he noticed the land looked similar to his homeland of England, with unusual topography created by glaciers.

Around the same time that Preston was making observations of Muddy Creek Valley, so was Edmund Watts Arthur. Arthur was born in 1874 in Bellevue, Pa. He was an attorney, naturalist, conservationist, nature writer, and ranking amateur geologist. In his free time, he would go to the swimming hole at Nealey.

Arthur and Preston met in 1946 and instantly became friends, sharing their common thoughts of the Muddy Creek Valley being home to an ancient glacial lake.

Arthur died on Oct. 8, 1948. This spurred Preston to hold a meeting on Oct. 21, 1948, with several professors and community leaders at his property off Whippoorwill Road. The land overlooked the Muddy Creek Valley. Their ideas began as a small preserve for ecological studies, then evolved into a project to acquire several thousand acres and reflood the entire valley.

In 1951, land acquisition started with the Greater Pittsburgh Parks Association, then later the Western Pennsylvanian Conservancy. In 1959, the Pennsylvania General Assembly authorized $1 million for acquiring land for Western Pennsylvania park development, which now allowed the state to start buying land by eminent domain. There was push back. Farmers in the valley who had money were able to sue the state for more compensation but others could not.

On Sept. 18, 1962, the soon-to-be park, initially Muddy Creek State Park, was officially named Moraine State Park. Then the work started to create it.

A dam was sited on Muddy Creek, with construction of the dam beginning Nov. 4, 1965. But before flooding the valley, land had to be reclaimed.

Moraine State Park was the first strip mine reclamation project approved in the 12-state Appalachian Region. It served as a demonstration and model for all future reclamation projects.

Oil wells also had to be plugged, Route 422 had to be moved and a new bridge constructed for Route 528. Trees were also planted.

Once all that work was done and the dam was complete, the state closed the sluice gate on the dam on May 15, 1969. As Lake Arthur began to fill, people came to try their luck driving across the 17 roads in the lake area before they were flooded.

Finally, on April 3, 1970, Lake Arthur reached full pool at 1,190 feet above sea level. Moraine State Park was officially dedicated on May 23, 1970.

Megan Stephenson is the environmental interpretive technician at the Moraine State Park complex. This is her third season at the complex. After graduating from Slippery Rock University with a Bachelor of Science in environmental geoscience, she worked two seasons at Pymatuning State Park as a resource ranger. She has a personal connection to the history of Moraine State Park, as her great-grandparents farm was taken by eminent domain as part of the park’s creation.