Big Creek Valley, Pennsylvania

Beltzville State Park is a 2,972.39-acre (1,202.88 ha) Pennsylvania state park in Franklin and Towamensing townships, Carbon County, Pennsylvania in the United States. The park opened in 1972, and was developed around the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood control project Beltzville Dam on Pohopoco Creek. The village of Big Creek Valley was vacated in 1966 to make way for Beltzville Lake.Beltzville Lake is a 951.5 acres (385.1 ha) with 19.8 miles (31.9 km) of shoreline. Beltzville State Park is 5 miles (8.0 km) east of Lehighton just off U.S. Route 209. The park is at an elevation of 633 feet (193 m).Beltzville Lake is a popular fishing destination. Anglers can fish for striped bass, largemouth and smallmouth bass, trout, walleye, perch, and muskellunge. Pohopoco Creek is stocked with trout by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.Hunting is permitted at Beltzville State Park. Hunters are expected to follow the rules and regulations of the Pennsylvania Game Commission. The common game species are ruffed grouse, squirrels, pheasant, waterfowl, white-tailed deer, and rabbits. The hunting of groundhogs is prohibited.The swimming beach is open from late May until the middle of September along 525 feet (160 m) of sand beach. There is a bathhouse with showers, a food stand, and first-aid building at the beach. Recreational scuba diving is prohibited at Beltzville State Park.Beltzville State Park has four picnic pavilions and several large picnic areas. Playgrounds and playfields are in the area of the picnic tables. Visitors also have the use of modern restrooms and drinking water. A large parking lot and a boat dock are also close by the picnic areas.There are 15 miles (24 km) of hiking trails at Beltzville State Park. The trails follow old roads, paths in the woods and follow the banks of small streams. Saw Mill Trail starts just west of Beltzville Dam is a path through the history of the park. Hikers will pass the remains of a gristmill, small ponds, an abandoned slate quarry and a wetland. Beltzville Lake is popular with recreational boaters. The maximum boating speed permitted is 45 miles per hour (72 km/h). Boats with inboard engines with out-of-the-transom or straight stack type exhausts are prohibited. Camping overnight on boats is also prohibited. Canoes and other small boats are often seen in the shelter coves of Beltzville Lake.Water skiing is permitted only in the south end of the lake in the marked water skiing area. Boats are required to travel in a counterclockwise direction. Boats not towing water skiers or tubers are not permitted to enter the waters of the skiing area.Beltzville State Park does not close for the winter months, when Beltzville Lake is busy with ice fishing and ice boating. The trails of the park are open for cross-country skiing.

Forest Inn is a village located in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, south of Beltzville Lake. Country Junction retail store is located in the village. Forest Inn uses the Lehighton zip code of 18235 and is located on U.S. Route 209.

Palmerton Area High School is a four-year public high school in Palmerton in Carbon County, Pennsylvania. Palmerton Area High School is the sole high school operated by Palmerton Area School District. In the 2021–2022 school year, enrollment was 467 pupils in 9th through 12th grades. The junior high and senior high share a single building. High school students may choose to attend the Carbon Career and Technical Institute for training in the construction and mechanical trades. The Carbon-Lehigh Intermediate Unit IU21 provides the school with a wide variety of services like specialized education for disabled students; state-mandated training on recognizing and reporting child abuse; speech and visual disability services; criminal background check processing for prospective employees and professional development for staff and faculty. The school colors are blue and white, and the athletic teams are the Blue Bombers. The first graduating class from the current school was that of 1966. The previous high school building is now occupied by Stephen S. Palmer Elementary School.

Aquashicola (locally pronounced ack-wa-SHIK-la) is an unincorporated community located in Lower Towamensing Township in Carbon County, Pennsylvania. Aquashicola is located at the intersection of Little Gap Road and Forest Inn Road north of the Aquashicola Creek and immediately east of Palmerton.

Palmerton is a borough in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The borough's population was 5,414 at the 2010 census. Palmerton is located 18.9 miles (30.4 km) northwest of Allentown and 86.6 miles (139.4 km) northwest of Philadelphia.

Lower Towamensing Township is a township in Carbon County, Pennsylvania. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The Lenape Indian tribe name is eponymous and was once applied by the natives to the whole region of Carbon County and bits of the Poconos to the north (Luzerne County) and to Schuylkill County (southwest). The population was 3,228 at the 2010 census.

Aquashicola Creek (Ahkwa-SHIK-ola), also known as Aquanchicola Creek, or Aquanshicola Creek, is a 20.8-mile-long (33.5 km) tributary of the Lehigh River in the Poconos of eastern Pennsylvania in the United States.The name is derived from the language of the Lenape, meaning "where we fish with the bush net." The creek rises from a swamp to the southeast of Saylorsburg, and flows westward between Chestnut Ridge and Blue Mountain. It meets its major tributary, Buckwha Creek, to the south of Little Gap and joins the Lehigh River at Palmerton.

Bowmanstown is a borough in Carbon County, Pennsylvania. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The population was 937 at the 2010 census. The borough is at an elevation of 437 feet (133 m). It is located 3 miles (5 km) west of Palmerton and 4 miles (6 km) south of Lehighton off Pennsylvania Route 248.

Little Gap is a village in eastern Lower Towamensing Township, Pennsylvania on the Aquashicola Creek, which is crossed by a covered bridge, open to vehicular traffic. Blue Mountain Resort is located just to the south of the village, which is split between the Danielsville, Kunkletown, and Palmerton ZIP Codes of 18038, 18058, and 18071, respectively.

The Lehigh Gap or Lehigh Water Gap is a water gap located in the townships of Lehigh, Washington, Lower Towamensing, and East Penn in the Lehigh Valley and Coal Region regions of eastern Pennsylvania. It was formed by the Lehigh River, where it cuts through the Blue Mountain in Pennsylvania. The gap allows easy travel between Carbon County to the north and Lehigh and Northampton counties to the south of the mountain. One of the gap's more distinctive features is Devil's Pulpit, a rock formation that reminds hikers of a church pulpit. Lehigh Gap is also the name of a village once known as Weider's Crossing at the south end of the gap in Lehigh and Northampton Counties.

The Little Gap Covered Bridge is an historic, American covered bridge that is located near Little Gap in Lower Towamensing Township, Carbon County, Pennsylvania.

The Lehigh Canal is a navigable canal that begins at the mouth of Nesquehoning Creek on the Lehigh River in the Lehigh Valley and Northeastern regions of Pennsylvania. It was built in two sections over a span of 20 years beginning in 1818. The lower section spanned the distance between Easton and present-day Jim Thorpe. In Easton, the canal met the Pennylvania Canal's Delaware Division and Morris Canals, which allowed anthracite coal and other goods to be transported further up the U.S. East Coast. At its height, the Lehigh Canal was 72 miles (116 km) long. Although the canal was used to transport a variety of products, its most significant cargo was anthracite coal, the highest quality energy source then available in the United States, and pig iron, a vital input product used in manufacturing steel. Both proved cornerstones of the Lehigh Valley's ascent as a central hub of the American Industrial Revolution, and their mining and transportation defined the rugged blue collar character of the Lehigh Valley towns that surrounded the canal.The route initially consisted of canals and dammed-off sections of the Lehigh River. Boatmen had to navigate barges periodically from the canal through a lock onto the river or vice versa. This design saved time and money and made the canal functional while it was being built, although it made for a slower, more difficult trip for canal-boat captains.