Whipple Dam: the CCC lake on Laurel Run

Whipple Dam State Park covers 244 acres of Jackson Township, ringed by Rothrock State Forest, according to the nomination stamped in at the National Register in January 1987. The lake at its center is man-made, and the nomination says the dam holding it is the third on the site: the first, it says, was built by the Whipple family to run a sawmill, the state replaced it in 1927, and the CCC replaced that one in 1936. The 1991 county inventory of engineering and industrial sites tells the early part differently, saying Laurel Run was once dammed near the present dam to power Little's, or Lytle's, sawmill.

The CCC is why the day use area was listed. "CCC Camp S-60 developed Whipple Dam State Park between 1933 and late 1941. The present dam, constructed by the CCC in 1936, is the third dam at this site" (nomination, p1). The form counts ten buildings and nine structures around the lake, all contributing: a clapboard concession building, a log storage building with saddle corners and white cement chinking, eight latrines, three picnic pavilions on log columns and stone piers, the large gabled one with a stone fireplace on its rear wall, and four small shelters, one on stone piers that carry a fixed picnic table and benches. The last two structures are the dam, with its offset spillway, and a small steel automobile bridge with stone abutments and a wooden deck.

The nomination calls this the rustic style the National Park Service espoused, built of local, natural materials to blend with the natural environment, and says the district appears to meet Criteria A and C as work of the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal relief effort that employed thousands of jobless young men.

The inventory adds what the form leaves out. The dam impounds Laurel Run. The site had no power lines, so the dam was designed with a small plant to light the park, obsolete once rural electric lines reached the area in the early 1940s. The inventory also names the man behind the name: Osgood Whipple, the last private owner of the tract. The 1897 Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia of the Juniata Valley says Whipple was born in Westford, Vermont, served in the First Vermont Cavalry, and in 1878 bought 1,400 acres in Jackson Township of timber land, cleared land and mills. By 1897 he was proprietor of the McAlevys Fort Hotel.

CCC Camp S-60 developed Whipple Dam State Park between 1933 and late 1941. The present dam, constructed by the CCC in 1936, is the third dam at this site.National Register of Historic Places nomination, Whipple Dam State Park Day Use District (reference 87000109), p1 · character 2,085 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · National Register of Historic Places nomination, read in full

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