Pine Creek Gorge · PA-414 & PA-287

The floor of the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania: you leave Waterville on PA-44, pick up PA-414 at Jersey Mills and follow Pine Creek through Slate Run, Cedar Run and Blackwell, climb to Morris, cross to Wellsboro on PA-287 and finish on the canyon rim at Leonard Harrison State Park. It's 55 miles, and the canyon stretch is narrow, with tight curves and almost no shoulder. Fuel in Wellsboro or before you drop in, since there are almost no services on the canyon floor. PA-660 to the park is a dead end, so you come back the way you came.

Pine Creek Gorge is known as the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania: about 47 miles long and up to 1,450 feet deep near Waterville, where this route begins. It was carved after the last ice age, when glacial debris dammed Pine Creek, which used to flow northeast, and the meltwater forced it south. PA-414 runs along the bottom of the gorge through Jersey Mills and Slate Run, and its first stretch is narrow and rugged. Beside the creek runs the Pine Creek Rail Trail, 64 miles of old railroad bed, with access areas along the way such as Blackwell.

From Blackwell the route climbs out to Morris and heads north on PA-287 to Wellsboro, then west on PA-660, a paved road that dead-ends at Leonard Harrison State Park, about 10 miles from town. There, on the east rim, the canyon is more than 800 feet deep and the views are the most famous in the gorge. The park's environmental center opens from summer through the fall foliage season. Wellsboro is the place to fuel up and eat.