Following months of closure and uncertainty, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Tuesday that there will be a phased reopening of the campgrounds at Raystown Lake starting on Friday. Susquehannock and Nancy’s Boat-to-Shore Campgrounds will open this week, followed by Seven Points Campground on Friday, September 5.
The federal government had approved an exemption to the hiring freeze at Raystown Lake in May, but final approval didn’t come until August, the end of the summer tourism season.
Raystown Lake historically brings in more than a million dollars in revenue to the local economy every year, according to the Huntingdon County Visitors Bureau.
“I don’t think it’s too late,” said Matt Price, the bureau’s executive director, when asked if opening now means missing out on this year’s tourism revenue. “I mean, at this point, anything is better than nothing.”
Price said while tourism does drop off in the fall, there are still a lot of visitors on weekends.
“And I think because of the suppressed demand over the summer, I think we’ll see a pretty strong fall,” Price said.
Price said sales at the gift shop in the Seven Points visitors center were down nearly 50% during the campground closures. But, he said those closures led to an unintended side effect. The biggest portion of revenue to the Huntingdon County Visitors Bureau is from hotel taxes.
“Because a lot of the people that would normally camp and not pay room taxes were displaced into hotels and vacation rentals and they were paying room taxes on their stay, so that helped us indirectly,” Price said. “But, we would much rather have business as usual.”
Price said that income from hotel taxes helped offset the loss from gift shop sales. But he said local businesses likely suffered a net loss during the campground closures.
Several local businesses in the area say they’ve seen fewer visitors this summer, impacting their bottom line. But Price said there have been some positives to the closure of the federally-owned campgrounds.
“The private campgrounds have been discovered, and then the vacation rental homes in the area also kind of got discovered because if people couldn’t find camping, that was kind of their next choice,” Price said.
John Lantz is one of those people who went to a private campground after his reservation was canceled in July. He lives in Delaware, but has family in Tyrone and said he’s camped at Seven Points for 20 years.
“I don’t think we’ve missed a year (at the Raystown Lake USACE campground),” Lantz said.
Lantz worried he would break his decades-long streak of staying at Seven Points, but he booked a reservation in October after hearing about the campground reopening.
Lantz said he gets a senior citizen discount when reserving at federal campgrounds. He had to pay double the rate he usually pays in order to stay at a private campground in July during the cancelation.
Lantz said he was also frustrated as to why Raystown Lake closed its campgrounds when others across the country did not, or reopened sooner than Raystown. He pointed to Tompkins Campground at the Tioga-Hammond and Cowanesque Lake that reopened on June 30 under the same waiver granted to Raystown.
“I’m not blaming Seven Points staff or anything like that, but we’ve camped at probably a half a dozen Army Corps campgrounds across the country,” Lantz said. “And every single one of them, except for Seven Points, has been able to open.”
Raystown Lake heavily relies on seasonal employees as there are only three full-time rangers. USACE said in a press release during the original closure announcement that the staffing shortage would prohibit safe operations of campgrounds.
While Price with the Huntingdon County Visitors Bureau said he’s relieved the campgrounds are finally reopening, he does worry a similar situation could happen again next year. He said the federal hiring freeze keeps getting extended and he isn’t sure if the exemption waiver at Raystown Lake will still be in place.
