Leonard Harrison State Park is known for its views of the Pine Creek Gorge, and offers hiking, fishing and hunting, whitewater boating, and camping.

Archeological evidence found in the state from this time includes a range of pottery types and styles, burial mounds, pipes, bows and arrows, and ornaments.

[4] Leonard Harrison State Park is in the West Branch Susquehanna River drainage basin, the earliest recorded inhabitants of which were the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks.

[6] They were a matriarchal society that lived in stockaded villages of large longhouses,[5] and "occasionally inhabited" the mountains surrounding the Pine Creek Gorge.

[10][11] To fill the void left by the demise of the Susquehannocks, the Iroquois encouraged displaced tribes from the east to settle in the West Branch watershed, including the Shawnee and Lenape (or Delaware).

[13] The forests near the three original counties, Philadelphia, Bucks, and Chester, were the first to be harvested, as the early settlers used the readily available timber to build homes, barns, and ships, and cleared the land for agriculture.

The demand for wood products slowly increased and by the time of the American Revolution the lumber industry had reached the interior and mountainous regions of Pennsylvania.

[13] Trees were used to furnish fuel to heat homes, tannin for the many tanneries that were spread throughout the state, and wood for construction, furniture, and barrel making.

The west rim, which became Colton Point State Park, had a logging railroad by 1903, which was able to harvest lumber on Fourmile Run that had been previously inaccessible.

The soil was depleted of nutrients, fires baked the ground hard, and jungles of blueberries, blackberries, and mountain laurel covered the clearcut land, which became known as the "Pennsylvania Desert".

[15] George Washington Sears, an early conservationist who wrote under the pen name "Nessmuk", was one of the first to criticize Pennsylvania lumbering and its destruction of forests and creeks.

[16] In his 1884 book Woodcraft he wrote of the Pine Creek watershed where A huge tannery ... poisons and blackens the stream with chemicals, bark and ooze.

At least he reached "The Point", which he wrote was "the jutting terminus of a high ridge which not only commands a capital view of the opposite mountain, but also of the Pine Creek Valley, up and down for miles".

[18] The creation of the park was the work of Leonard Harrison, a former lumberman and businessman from Wellsboro who owned a substantial amount of land in the Pine Creek Gorge.

[26][27] In 1936 Larry Woodin of Wellsboro and other Tioga County business owners began a tourism campaign to promote the Pine Creek Gorge as "The Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania".

Greyhound Bus Lines featured a view of the canyon from a Leonard Harrison lookout on the back cover of its Atlantic Coast timetable.

However, there was much local opposition to its inclusion on the state's list, based at least partly on mistaken fears that protection would involve seizure of private property and restricted access.

It protected the creek from dam-building and water withdrawals for power plants, and added public access points to reduce abuse of private property.

Pine Creek had flowed northeasterly until then, but was dammed by rocks, soil, ice, and other debris deposited by the receding Laurentide Continental Glacier.

The high mountains to the east of the sea gradually eroded, causing a buildup of sediment made up primarily of clay, sand and gravel.

Tremendous pressure on the sediment caused the formation of the rocks that are found today in the Pine Creek drainage basin: sandstone, shale, conglomerates, limestone, and coal.

The youngest of these, which forms the highest points in the park and along the gorge, is the early Pennsylvanian Pottsville Formation, a gray conglomerate that may contain sandstone, siltstone, and shale, as well as anthracite coal.

Pine Creek was home to large predators such as wolves, lynx, wolverines, panthers, fishers, foxes and bobcats, all save the last three now locally extinct.

Centuries of accumulated organic matter in the forest soil caused slow percolation of rainfall into the creeks and runs, so they flowed more evenly year-round.

[61] In 1988 the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources, precursor to the DCNR, described it as about 95% State owned, unroaded, and designated the Pine Creek Gorge Natural Area.

It is a place of unique geologic history and contains some rare plant communities, an old growth hemlock stand, ... active bald eagle nest[s] ... and is a major site of river otter reintroduction.

[62] Leonard Harrison State Park's extensive forest cover makes it a habitat for "big woods" wildlife, including white-tailed deer, black bear, wild turkey, red and gray squirrels.

[59] Leonard Harrison State Park is part of Important Bird Area #28, which encompasses 31,790 acres (12,860 ha) of both publicly and private held land.

The state has renovated the park camping area since 2003, building modern bathrooms with flush toilets and hot showers, and no longer considers it "rustic".

The common game species are ruffed grouse, eastern gray squirrel, wild turkey, white-tailed deer, and black bear; however, hunting groundhog is prohibited.