{"id":603,"slug":"poe-mills-pennsylvania","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Poe Paddy State Park is what a Pennsylvania lumber town looks like after the lumber runs out. The park's campgrounds and picnic grounds occupy the site of Poe Mills, a company town that counted more than three hundred residents by 1890, when the hemlock and pine of the Seven Mountains country were still worth a fortune.","The town existed for one reason: a steam sawmill powered by dammed Poe Creek, which gave the settlement its payroll and its name. When the timber was gone the town went with it — the standard Pennsylvania sequence, cut over and cleared out."]},{"heading":"The second life","paragraphs":["What the mill town left behind, the federal government rebuilt. Civilian Conservation Corps crews developed the site as a state park in the 1930s, part of the same New Deal-era reclamation that turned scores of exhausted Pennsylvania lumber tracts into public forest.","No haunting claims attach to this file; it documents an emptied town inside a public park, kept in the ghost-town ledger because the emptying itself is on record."]}],"name":"Poe Mills","aliases":[],"type":"GHOST_TOWN","type_label":"Ghost Town","cats":["GHOST_TOWN"],"groups":["ghost-towns"],"desc":"Former lumber town now within Poe Paddy State Park.","full_desc":"Poe Mills is a ghost town in Pennsylvania. Former lumber town now within Poe Paddy State Park. Poe Paddy State Park occupies the former lumber town of Poe Mills, which exceeded three hundred residents in 1890. A steam sawmill used dammed Poe Creek. Civilian Conservation Corps workers later built park facilities.","address":null,"city":"Coburn","county":"Centre","state":"Pennsylvania","postal":null,"region":"Northeast","lat":40.86612,"lon":-77.463863,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":"State park","research_notes":"Former town site is distinguished from nearby Poe Valley State Park. No paranormal claim supplied by this historical source; exact mill and settlement geometry remains unverified.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":59.3,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.35,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"Poe Paddy State Park occupies the former lumber town of Poe Mills, which exceeded three hundred residents in 1890. A steam sawmill used dammed Poe Creek. Civilian Conservation Corps workers later built park facilities. A ghost town's file is unusual: the emptiness itself is documented, and this entry is part of that record. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The detail is preserved in 'History of Poe Paddy State Park'. It is the kind of fact the rest of the dossier leans on.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"History of Poe Paddy State Park","url":"https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dcnr/recreation/where-to-go/state-parks/find-a-park/poe-paddy-state-park/history","publisher":"Pennsylvania DCNR","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Site is largely open-air; some buildings may be unsafe or on private land. Check local conditions before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"History of Poe Paddy State Park","url":"https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dcnr/recreation/where-to-go/state-parks/find-a-park/poe-paddy-state-park/history","publisher":"Pennsylvania DCNR","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":0,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}