Kinzua Point Information Center

The Kinzua Point Information Center is staffed seasonally by the Warren County Visitors Bureau to provide information about the forest and other local attractions. During the summer season, Wi-Fi access is provided by Warren County Chamber of Business and Industry. Located near the Kinzua Dam, and across from Longhouse National Scenic Byway, the information center faces the location of the former town on Kinzua and looks out over the expansive Allegheny Reservoir.

The Kinzua Dam is one of the largest dams east of the Mississippi River. The dam provides flood control and hydro-electric power generation, along with creating Allegheny Reservoir, the second deepest lake in Pennsylvania. The dam is managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The dam was built after a flood in 1936 flooded the Pittsburgh metro area. The flood prompted the creation of the Flood Control Acts of 1936 and 1938 by Congress, which authorized building the dam.

There was considerable opposition to the dam, the flooding behind the dam forced numerous communities to move and thousands of acres of fertile farmland to be buried underwater. More than 600 families were displaced by the dam, including those in the town of Kinzua and Corydon in Pennsylvania and Onoville and Quaker Bridge, located in New York.

Nearly one-third of the ceded territory of the Seneca Nation, granted under the Treaty of Canandaigua, signed by President Washington, was condemned from the building of the dam, an area totaling 10,000 acres. The government set aside 305 acres of land for the Seneca resettlement in the New York communities of Steamburg and Jimerson Town, to partially compensate for the loss of the communities.

The dam also forced the displacement of Camp Olmstead, owned by the Chief Cornplanter Council of the Boy Scouts of America. The campsite was moved up the hillside and now sits on the shoreline of the Allegheny Reservoir where it is still in use today.

At a Glance