Trails and Treasures Home Page  Road Trips  Buffalo, NW Pennsylvania, NE Ohio (May, 2006)

Presque Isle State Park

Presque Isle is really a peninsula which essentially creates Erie Bay.  At the time of the War of 1812 only five hundred people lived in Erie, but control of the waters of Lake Erie was strategically important.  To establish a presence on the lake, a fleet of six ships were built in Erie Bay to which another three were added from Buffalo.  In August, 1813 Commodore Oliver Perry set sail with his fleet from Erie, and on September 10, 1813, he defeated the British fleet at Put-in-Bay near Sandusky, Ohio.  Perry returned to Erie on the U.S. Brig Niagara with the captured British vessels, where he and his men spent a difficult winter at Misery Bay on Presque Isle.  The Perry monument at Crystal Point was built in 1926 to commemorate the 1813 victory.

Today, the park is a year-round playground with beautiful beaches and miles of multi-use trails--and quite a few geocaches.  With limited time available, I only managed to do two.

Unfortunately, the lighthouse is not open to the public.