Twin Lakes (PA)
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- Sites
- 5451 on recreation.gov
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 11 notices
In the agency’s own words
Rec.gov campsite availability grid is not reflective of availability. For more information on reservations, please visit http://fotlanf.org/ Twin Lakes Campground is located near a small, spring-fed, trout-stocked lake, popular with families. Visitors enjoy fishing, swimming and exploring local trails, including the Twin Lakes Trail. The campground was once the site of a chemical factory, and the lake was built as a "splash dam" to raise water levels in a plant downstream. Keep reading
Recreation
Campers love Twin Lakes for its swimming beaches and lakeside fishing piers. Mill Creek offers native trout fishing, and can be accessed along the Mill Creek Trail. Hiking and backpacking are available along area trails. The Black Cherry National Recreation Interpretative Trail features nearly 40 interpretive displays along its path, and forms the eastern end of the Twin Lakes Trail, the second longest in the forest.
Facilities
Twin Lakes Campground offers a variety of sites, from group picnic and overnight sites to family sites with and without electric hookups. Amenities include vault toilets and a dump station. Ice and firewood are available for purchase.
Natural Features
The Twin Lakes area is forested with a mixture of hardwoods. Many natural streams and creeks meander through the landscape within the Allegheny National Forest in northwestern Pennsylvania. The Allegheny is the state's only national forest. It covers nearly half a million acres and is populated primarily with black cherry, maple and other hardwoods. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (814) 389-3019.
What the agency tells you
Railroad underpass on entrance road restricts vehicle height to less than 10 feet
First come, first served sites are available
Group sites are available for both day use and overnight camping
Everything else this campground posts · 8
Pets must be on a leash
Pets are not to be left unattended at campsite
Dogs are not allowed on beaches
Please clean-up after your pets
Please visit our website
Click here to learn more about the Allegheny National Forest
Don't move firewood: To limit the spread of invasive tree-killing pests, firewood from outside the area is not permitted. Some states have quarantines and may confiscate your firewood. Please help protect our forests from invasive species by obtaining your firewood at or near your camping destination and burning it on-site. Visit dontmovefirewood.org for more information.
The Friends of Twin Lakes and Allegheny National Forest are working together to restore water and sewage to the campground. There is not currently water available. There is a dump station available.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 54 · 3 tent-only, 2 group
- Hookups
- 19 electric
- Longest rig
- 40 ft
- Accessible sites
- 4
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…electric hookups. Amenities include vault toilets and a dump station. Ice and firewood are available…”
- Dump station
- Yes
- Firewood
- Sold here
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Creek, Beach
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Swimming
- Night sky · 14th darkest of 48 in PA
- Bortle 4
- Fall color · reported 2 days ago, in Elk County
- Peak color
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
recreation.gov lists 51 of the 54 campsites the agency files here. The rest aren’t on its booking system, so a reservation won’t get you one.
No availability snapshot inside the last 36 hours, so this page draws nothing rather than ageing a reading into fiction.
Watch for a cancellation
Full? Watch it.
One email when a night opens, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We read recreation.gov once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time a site in your window is free for the nights you asked for.
Scanners that check every few minutes exist, and most of them charge. This one is free, it reads the same calendar, and it won’t always be first.
We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.
Every line of the receipt · 12
What you actually pay
Who keeps the booking fee
The agency’s own policy text says the reservation fee and the cancellation processing fee are “retained by the reservation service contractor”, and that a campground concessionaire will decline to refund them because “they did not receive these fees”. Recreation.gov is run under contract by Booz Allen Hamilton. What share of your booking fee the contractor keeps isn’t published in any federal dataset we can read, so we print no number for it. Our reporting on the contract →
How we know this receipt · 4
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · record Aug 23, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
59 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 46 mapped sitesAll 59 records
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 51 of the 59 sites listed. A site with no reading is unknown, never far.
Measured shade is NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC) read at the site’s own coordinate, 27% canopy or more, and only for the sites the agency gave no Shade value. It never changes the agency’s own shaded count beside it.
| BPAV | 001 | day use | 15 ft | 189 ft | 1,016 ft | |||
| GRP | UGA | group standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 703 ft | 335 ft | 1,015 ft | ||
| MANAGEMENT SITES3 | 027 | type not stated | 461 ft | 355 ft | ||||
| MANAGEMENT SITES3 | XXX | unnamed record | 40 ft | yes | ||||
| MANAGEMENT SITES3 | XXX1 | unnamed record | ||||||
| MANAGEMENT SITES4 | 002 | type not stated | 291 ft | 1,062 ft | ||||
| MANAGEMENT SITES4 | 003 | type not stated | 367 ft | 1,134 ft | ||||
| MANAGEMENT SITES4 | 026 | type not stated | 514 ft | 323 ft | ||||
| MANAGEMENT SITES4 | XXXX | unnamed record | 40 ft | yes | ||||
| NONE | 025 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 158 ft | 548 ft | 334 ft | ||
| NONE | 028 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 97 ft | 509 ft | 377 ft | ||
| NONE | 029 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 112 ft | 633 ft | 281 ft | ||
| NONE | 030 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 97 ft | 581 ft | 393 ft | ||
| NONE | 031 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 101 ft | 666 ft | 419 ft | ||
| NONE | 032 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 119 ft | 863 ft | 314 ft | ||
| NONE | 035 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 68 ft | 937 ft | 251 ft | ||
| NONE | 036 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 68 ft | 987 ft | 252 ft | ||
| NONE | 037 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 87 ft | 1,037 ft | 255 ft | ||
| NONE | 038 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 98 ft | 963 ft | 154 ft | ||
| NONE | 039 | tent only nonelectric | 15 ft | 115 ft | 1,080 ft | 268 ft | ||
| NONE | 040 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 86 ft | 1,019 ft | 220 ft | ||
| NONE | 041 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 65 ft | 598 ft | 222 ft | ||
| NONE | 042 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 93 ft | 630 ft | 191 ft | ||
| NONE | 043 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 65 ft | 661 ft | 158 ft | ||
| NONE | 044 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 92 ft | 722 ft | 122 ft | ||
| NONE | 045 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 76 ft | 732 ft | 82 ft | |
| NONE | 046 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 98 ft | 920 ft | 117 ft | ||
| NONE | 047 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 86 ft | 993 ft | 233 ft | ||
| NONE | 048 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | yes | 99 ft | 895 ft | 161 ft | |
| NONE | 049 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 84 ft | 907 ft | 271 ft | ||
| NONE | 050 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 84 ft | 827 ft | 266 ft | ||
| NONE | 051 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 110 ft | 811 ft | 376 ft | ||
| PAVI | LGA | group tent only area nonelectric | 15 ft | 785 ft | 68 ft | 839 ft | ||
| S&P | S&P Double Nonelectric | standard nonelectric | ||||||
| S&P | S&P Standard Electric | standard nonelectric | ||||||
| S&P | S&P Standard Nonelectric | standard nonelectric | ||||||
| S&P | S&P Tent Only Nonelectric | tent only nonelectric | ||||||
| TWIN | 004 | standard electric | 35 ft | 15 amp | 70 ft | 330 ft | 1,132 ft | |
| TWIN | 005 | standard electric | 30 ft | 15 amp | 70 ft | 398 ft | 1,197 ft | |
| TWIN | 006 | standard electric | 25 ft | 15 amp | 119 ft | 488 ft | 1,252 ft | |
| TWIN | 007 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | yes | 108 ft | 622 ft | 1,435 ft | |
| TWIN | 008 | standard electric | 40 ft | 15 amp | 72 ft | 707 ft | 1,549 ft | |
| TWIN | 009 | standard electric | 20 ft | 15 amp | yes | 72 ft | 648 ft | 1,539 ft |
| TWIN | 010 | standard electric | 25 ft | 15 amp | 82 ft | 754 ft | 1,641 ft | |
| TWIN | 011 | standard electric | 30 ft | 15 amp | 74 ft | 699 ft | 1,637 ft | |
| TWIN | 012 | standard electric | 30 ft | 15 amp | 136 ft | 761 ft | 1,758 ft | |
| TWIN | 014 | standard electric | 25 ft | 15 amp | 74 ft | 628 ft | 1,597 ft | |
| TWIN | 015 | standard electric | 20 ft | 15 amp | 92 ft | 529 ft | 1,559 ft | |
| TWIN | 016 | standard electric | 20 ft | 15 amp | 88 ft | 471 ft | 1,469 ft | |
| TWIN | 017 | standard electric | 25 ft | 15 amp | 57 ft | 577 ft | 1,467 ft | |
| TWIN | 018 | standard electric | 35 ft | 15 amp | 57 ft | 542 ft | 1,476 ft | |
| TWIN | 019 | standard electric | 25 ft | 15 amp | 79 ft | 430 ft | 1,355 ft | |
| TWIN | 020 | standard electric | 25 ft | 15 amp | 77 ft | 386 ft | 1,393 ft | |
| TWIN | 021 | standard electric | 25 ft | 15 amp | 77 ft | 317 ft | 1,325 ft | |
| TWIN | 022 | standard electric | 25 ft | 15 amp | 79 ft | 361 ft | 1,288 ft | |
| TWIN | 023 | standard electric | 25 ft | 15 amp | 95 ft | 270 ft | 1,190 ft | |
| TWIN | 024 | standard electric | 30 ft | 15 amp | 94 ft | 242 ft | 1,241 ft | |
| TWIN LAKES (PA) | XXXXX | unnamed record | 40 ft | yes | ||||
| UDBL | 033 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 119 ft | 794 ft | 205 ft |
The agency files 5 more records here that aren’t sites for the night: 1 it files as day use and 4 it types MANAGEMENT rather than a campsite. They’re in the table above, marked for what they are, and none of them is counted as a site.
25 of 59 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
East Branch Campground9.1 mi
Red Bridge (PA)Allegheny National Forest · 13 mi
KiasuthaAllegheny National Forest · 14 mi
Kelly Pines CampgroundAllegheny National Forest · 16 mi
Morrison Boat Access CampgroundAllegheny National Forest · 17 mi
DewdropAllegheny National Forest · 18 miThe PA DOT has issued a detour for camping rigs over 5 tons for Wilson Run Bridge on Township Road providing access from Highway 321 to Twin Lakes. The alternate route is Forest Road 191 heading west from the campground.
Northwest PA on State Route 321 about 8 miles south of Kane, PA. From State Route 321 at large campground sign, turn onto Forest Road 191. Go 2 miles on Forest Road 191 to the campground. Railroad underpass on entrance road restricts vehicle height to less than 10 feet.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for James City, PA
Typical weather
Typical October night 35°F, day 59°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical February night 13°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.
Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or more
A normal is the 1991-2020 average for the month, not a forecast: about half of all Julys are colder than the July line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.
The land, and who answers for it
what threatens it · who answers for it
What threatens this place
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Twin Lakes (PA) is in Pennsylvania’s 15th congressional district. Its representative, Glenn Thompson (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →