7 Best Lakeside Towns in The Poconos

The lakeside towns in the Poconos sit on a mix of large reservoir lakes and smaller forested ponds, each with a different scale and a different anchor. Lake Wallenpaupack at Hawley is the headliner: 5,700 acres of water and 52 miles of shoreline, the second-largest lake entirely contained in Pennsylvania. Lake Naomi at Pocono Pines runs as a private community lake. Promised Land State Park outside Greentown carries two undeveloped lakes inside its 3,000 acres. Smaller ponds and reservoirs anchor Gouldsboro, Lake Harmony, White Haven, and Greeley. The seven towns below are the practical lakeside stops, each with a walkable centre and direct water access close at hand.

Hawley

Hawley sits at the northern edge of Lake Wallenpaupack, a 5,700-acre reservoir created in 1926 when Pennsylvania Power & Light dammed the Wallenpaupack Creek for hydroelectric generation. The lake runs 13 miles long with 52 miles of shoreline and is the second-largest lake entirely contained within Pennsylvania, after Raystown Lake. Recreation areas at Caffrey, Ironwood Point, Ledgedale, Wilsonville, and Mangan Cove provide public boat launches, with smallmouth bass, walleye, and bluegill the principal sport fisheries. The 2.6-mile Wallenpaupack Lake Trail runs along the northeast shore south of town and offers consistent lake views for hikers and cyclists.

The Hawley Silk Mill, a three-to-five-story bluestone building completed in 1881 by Dexter, Lambert & Company, is the town's most distinctive piece of architecture and the largest laid bluestone structure anywhere (a local-superlative claim, but a credible one). The mill operated as a silk factory until 1956 and was adaptively renovated in 2011 by the firm of Peter Bohlin (the architect behind Apple's flagship glass-cube stores) into the current mixed-use complex of shops, restaurants, art galleries, the Cocoon Coffee House, and Hopping Eagle Brewing Company. The mill anchors the downtown shopping district along Welwood Avenue.

Pocono Pines

Pocono Pines is built around Lake Naomi, a 277-acre private lake at the heart of the Lake Naomi Club community. The lake's access is restricted to club members, but the surrounding wooded landscape supports public hiking, swimming, and kayaking at nearby state and county facilities. Sailing, canoeing, kayaking, and fishing happen on Lake Naomi in summer, with a substantial year-round resident population of around 1,000 supplemented heavily by seasonal homeowners. The Pinecrest Lake Golf Club, less than five minutes from town, runs the local public golf option. Pocono Pines also sits within easy driving range of Tobyhanna State Park (a 5,440-acre park with its own 170-acre lake) for visitors looking for non-member-restricted lake access.

Gouldsboro

Gouldsboro State Park covers the 250-acre Gouldsboro Lake along with surrounding hardwood and hemlock forest on the western edge of the village. The park sits off State Route 507 about a mile from the town centre and runs year-round with day-use facilities for hiking, swimming (in the designated beach area through summer), and non-motorised boating (electric motors only). The Frank Gantz Trail on the lake's western shore is the principal hiking access; Beaver Bridge on the south side of the lake is the standard viewpoint. The village itself runs as a quiet residential community of about 600 residents on Lake Watawga and Snag Pond. The park is pet-friendly and includes accessible parking and beach access.

Lake Harmony

Lake Harmony pairs a summer water-sports lake with two of the closest downhill ski areas to the Philadelphia and New York metros, Jack Frost and Big Boulder. The two ski areas run as a single operation under one ownership, with Big Boulder running the country's oldest snowmaking system (in continuous operation since 1956) and Jack Frost running the higher-vertical terrain on the next ridge. In summer, Lake Harmony itself and the adjacent Big Boulder Lake handle the swimming, kayaking, and chartered fishing trade, with largemouth bass, pickerel, and smallmouth in the lakes. Hickory Run State Park, a 15,990-acre state park immediately south of the village, runs over 40 miles of hiking trails and the unusual Boulder Field, a 16-acre level expanse of glacially-deposited sandstone boulders that has been designated a National Natural Landmark.

Greentown

Greentown sits at the centre of Promised Land State Park, a 3,000-acre Civilian Conservation Corps-era park surrounded by the larger 12,464-acre Delaware State Forest. The park's two lakes (Promised Land Lake and the smaller Lower Lake) support electric-motor-only fishing, paddling, and swimming, with brown bullhead, perch, pickerel, and largemouth bass the principal catches. Trails inside the park include the 1.4-mile Little Falls Trail and the Conservation Island Nature Trail just over a mile long; the latter loops a small island in Promised Land Lake reachable by a footbridge. The Masker Museum inside the park interprets the Civilian Conservation Corps work that built the park's stone-and-wood infrastructure in the 1930s and runs natural-history exhibits on the surrounding hardwood ecosystem.

White Haven

White Haven is a borough on the Lehigh River at the southern tip of the Poconos and the closest practical base for Lehigh Gorge State Park, which protects a 4,500-acre stretch of the river canyon and runs the popular Lehigh Gorge Trail along an old rail-grade for 26 miles between White Haven and Jim Thorpe. The trail is the local anchor for hiking, mountain biking, and whitewater-rafting put-in access through the gorge. Within the borough itself, the 22-acre spring-fed Lake Agmar adds a quieter small-lake setting close to the downtown streets. Hickory Run State Park, on the other side of the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, contains Hawk Falls, one of the most accessible waterfalls in the Poconos: a 25-foot natural cascade reachable by a short half-mile trail off PA 534.

Greeley

Greeley is best known regionally for the cluster of long-running summer camps strung along Lake Greeley and its neighbouring waters. Lake Greeley Camp (operating since 1959), Camp Shohola (a boys' camp founded in 1943), and Pine Forest Camp on Lake Greeley all draw families from the New York and Philadelphia metro areas every summer. Outside the camp scene, the principal local site is Minisink Battleground Park about ten minutes east, on the New York side of the Delaware River. The park preserves the site of the Battle of Minisink on July 22, 1779, one of the few Revolutionary War engagements fought in the upper Delaware valley and a major loss for the Orange County militia under Lt. Col. Benjamin Tusten against a combined force of Loyalist Rangers and Iroquois under Joseph Brant. The park is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and runs interpretive trails over the original battlefield.

Where the Poconos Meet the Water

The seven towns above cover the lakeside spread of the Poconos at different scales. Hawley's Lake Wallenpaupack carries the regional headline at 5,700 acres of working reservoir, with the established marina-and-boating infrastructure to match. Pocono Pines, Lake Harmony, and Greeley anchor the private-community and summer-camp end of the lake scene, with restricted access to their main lakes balanced by extensive state-park alternatives nearby. Gouldsboro, Greentown, and White Haven all sit at the door of significant state parks (Gouldsboro State Park, Promised Land State Park, Lehigh Gorge State Park respectively) that handle the public-access water and trail load. Across all seven, the practical pattern is the same: a small downtown, a substantial waterfront within walking or short driving distance, and the surrounding state-park and state-forest network supplying the longer trails and quieter coves.