Barree township

Penn State Built A Lake In Stone Valley

In December 1956, Penn State president Eric A. Walker announced a plan for a man-made lake on the university's land in Stone Valley. A $250,000 dam on Shaver Creek would make a 70-acre lake for swimming, boating and fishing, right beside the camps the university already ran there for students in mineral industries, civil engineering and forestry. The university owned more than 6,000 acres there.

Much of the money came from gifts. The Penn State Foundation, the alumni fund raising agency, voted $5,000 for engineering tests and borings. A Parents' Fund asked parents to buy shares in the Stone Valley Recreation Area, and by November 1957, 450 of them had given $4,000. The dam itself, the Daily Collegian reported in 1960, was made possible largely by gifts through the Alumni Fund.

The work went slowly. In September 1958 a decision to put a hydraulics testing building on top of the dam held up the start. The state permit came at the start of April 1959. By then trees and stumps had been cleared from the dam site, largely by the 491st Engineering Battalion, the local Army Reserve unit, and fraternity and sorority members were to help clear sticks and debris as Greek Week work projects.

By May 1960 the dam was finished and the lake was full. The university would not open it to students until 1961, because it took a summer for the twigs and debris left on the bottom to float to the top. The area was expected to open April 15, 1961, for fishing season, with bass and trout already stocked, and that year's senior class gave a boat dock and landing area as its gift.

The engineer who directed the design and construction of the dam was Lawrence J. Perez of the civil engineering faculty. The reservoir, 72 acres when it was finished, appears in federal place name records today as Lake Perez, in Huntingdon County.

Checked and confirmed. Confirmed 2026-10-31 against the sources listed: every factual sentence was tied to a word-for-word passage in its source. Where sources disagreed on a number, the number was left out.

Sources

Checked 2026-10-31 · County histories and primary sources, read in full

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Photographs from Barree township

The remains of Monroe Furnace, the charcoal iron stack northwest of McAlevys Fort.Smallbones · stg02

Monroe Furnace listed on the NRHP on November 13, 1989 This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 9001818 (Wikidata). at the junction of Pennsylvania Route 26 and Legislative Route 31076,Photograph by the Wikimedia Commons contributor Smallbones, 2016-09-02. Released under CC0, a public domain dedication · Monroe Furnace ruins.jpg

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