Jamestown Campground

Pymatuning is the biggest lake in Pennsylvania by shoreline and the strangest by reputation: a 17,000-acre reservoir raised in 1934 over a glacial swamp, with a spillway where the carp pile up so thick that ducks walk across their backs. Jamestown Campground sits on the eastern shore at the southern end, the largest campground in the park and one of the largest in the state system.

The sites run in numbered loops through the oaks above the water, from the cabins at the point down to the beach and the launch. The map shows every one of them the way the office hands it to you at check-in — except cut into birch, with the shoreline, the loop roads and the facilities engraved to scale, and a feet ruler around the frame so you can actually see how far the walk to the showers is.