Mountain Pines Campground in Champion celebrates 100 years
Submitted
Mountain Pines Campground has Pennsylvania’s largest pool at 278 by 153 feet.
Submitted
Mountain Pines Campground in Champion is celebrating 100 years in operation.
One of the oldest campgrounds in the country is celebrating its 100th anniversary.
Mountain Pines Campground was born as the Newill’s Grove Picnic Area in 1922. It was built by Dr. Domer S. Newill as a way to give back to the community of Champion.
In those days, much like today, the Laurel Highlands was an escape from the hustle and bustle of daily life. Wealthy Pittsburgh residents made summer homes in the Laurel Highlands before the turn of the century, thanks to the nation’s first federally funded highway. The National Road, now known as Route 40, was built in 1811. Travelers followed the National Road to the mountains and traded hot summer days for mountain breezes in the days before electricity.
The campground changed owners and names over the century, but the reasons people leave the city to immerse themselves in nature stayed the same.
“Even though the campsite has changed and gotten bigger, the underlying passion is the love of the outdoors,” said Forrest Johnson, Mountain Pines’ general manager. “You’d sit around a campfire, roast marshmallows, fish, do all the things you couldn’t do in the city. People could let their kids play outside because it was a safe environment.”
Johnson saw a job posting for Mountain Pines 15 years ago, and moved from the White Mountains in New Hampshire to the Laurel Highlands. He noted the imprint the campground has left in the minds of locals.
“A lot of people I’ve run into over the years have said, ‘Oh, I learned how to skate in your skating rink. I learned how to swim in your pool,” Johnson said. “That’s a lot of people’s memory of us.”
Many locals remember it as Cutty’s Campground, owned by Bette and Clair “Curly” Shaffer from 1968 until Curly’s death in 1980.
Cutty’s became Alpine Valley in the ’80s and Mountain Pines in the ’90s. Before it was Cutty’s, it was Maple Grove, the name it was given when Linda Rose started camping there as a young mother in the mid ’60s.
She and her husband rented a pop-up camper with their 3-year-old son and parked next to her parents’ motorhome. She chuckled at a memory of her first night camping.
“At 3 o’clock in the morning, I heard this cry, and he had fallen out of the back of the camper because it was just cloth. He was wanting to get back in,” she said.
Despite the minor mishap, that night started a four-generation family tradition. Rose’s daughter, born a few years later, became a lifelong camper. One of Rose’s granddaughters got a job at the campground, and another granddaughter bought a campsite behind her grandma.
“They all grew up there. We had lots of friends, had fires together,” she said.
There were only about 100 campsites at Maple Grove. Now, there are more than 800. Rose remembers when a wooded area on the grounds was a ballfield.
“There was not one tree there. We watched those trees grow for 50 years, and now they’re huge,” she said.
She has fond memories of unconventional potlucks with about 20 campers who became lifelong friends. They would load up garbage cans with kielbasa and other favorites for a family-style feast.
She still spends summer weekends at Mountain Pines, and upgraded her campsite to a home with a deck near the pool – Pennsylvania’s largest at 278 by 153 feet.
It was built in 1938, and the nearby boardwalk was the place to be in the small town. It was lined with shops on both sides and had activities every night – skate parties for the kids and bingo for the adults. A jukebox set the stage for local teens to mix and mingle with out-of-town visitors.
While Rose and other parents were watching their kids in the pool, teens and young adults had their eyes on each other.
“There’s quite a few that met up there and got married,” Rose said.
While one generation was finding spouses, Joe Sarnelli found a business opportunity. He said the campground changed the course of his life when he took his family camping in the 1970s. The campground was packed, but there were no stores nearby.
He opened Sarnelli’s Corner Market in 1978 at the intersection of Routes 31 and 711 near the campground. It was so successful that he closed his first location, about 25 miles away in south Greensburg.
“We’ve been here on this corner 44 years,” Sarnelli said.
His customer base started with campers, but visitors come to the area year-round. Three ski resorts draw winter sports enthusiasts. The Youghiogheny River draws white water rafters, kayakers and fisherman. Bicyclists come for the Great Allegheny Passage. Hikers and backpackers visit for the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail. Rock climbers and sightseers visit Ohiopyle State Park. Architecture aficionados know the area as a mecca for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob.
Mountain Pines will hold its 100th anniversary celebration Friday and Saturday, Aug. 12 and 13, which will include fireworks and a band, Drew Nugent and the Midnight Society. Local officials will hold a ribbon cutting, and longtime campers will have the chance to reminisce.
“The campground brought us up here, and we met a lot of great people from all over,” Sarnelli said. “We have good memories with that place.”