Columbia: Waterfalls, Hiking Trails, and History

When looking for a hotel in Columbia, you can plan your trip around your interests: hiking trails with waterfalls, waterways for fishing and boating, museums, and covered bridges each offer a different focus. This makes it easy to decide in advance whether you’d like to spend most of your time outdoors, exploring regional history, or doing both.

Hiking Among Waterfalls and Woodland Trails

The Glens Natural Area in Ricketts Glen State Park is a National Natural Landmark. The park covers 13,193 acres and extends across Luzerne, Sullivan, and Columbia Counties. The Glens Natural Area is home to the Falls Trail System: The trail is 7.2 miles long and passes 21 free-flowing waterfalls, including 94-foot Ganoga Falls.

When planning, trail conditions matter as well as distance: The terrain is steep and slippery, and sturdy footwear is recommended. This gives you practical guidance before you add this waterfall hike to your trip.

The Roaring Creek Tract in Weiser State Forest, in southern Columbia County, offers a different kind of trail. The tract covers 9,020 acres, and its approximately 40 miles of multi-use trails are designated for hiking, mountain biking, and cross-country skiing. These figures describe different planning options: The Falls Trail is a single hiking route with waterfalls, while Roaring Creek Tract has a longer trail network for three listed activities. This can help you decide whether a specific waterfall route or a choice of activities better suits your travel plans.

Fishing and Boating on the Water

Briar Creek Lake is a 51-acre reservoir in Columbia County, managed for public fishing and boating. The lake is also designated as a stocked trout water with a year-round fishing season. For a stay focused on fishing or boating, this waterway offers different options from the hiking areas, with water activities and fishing taking center stage.

Fishing Creek also runs through Columbia County from north to south and is considered one of Pennsylvania’s best trout streams. This means trout fishing features both in the description of a managed reservoir and in that of a local stream. The two names refer to different waterways: Briar Creek Lake is also designated for boating, while Fishing Creek is described as a trout stream.

Museums and Regional History

The Bloomsburg Children’s Museum offers more than 50 interactive exhibits, games, and activities for visitors ages 1 to 101. The Eastern Woodlands Longhouse exhibit shows how Indigenous peoples in Pennsylvania lived in the past. The museum thus combines hands-on activities with a specific historical topic.

The free exhibits at the Columbia County Historical & Genealogical Society change over time. They cover the county’s history, as well as its businesses, people, and objects. If you’re interested in a particular topic, it’s worth checking the current exhibit focus before your visit, since the selection isn’t fixed.

The Bartlow Prototype International Harvester Dealership Building Museum is located in Millville. It is a unique part of Central Pennsylvania’s agricultural history. This adds the history of agriculture to the museum topics of people, businesses, and ways of life in the past.

Covered Bridges in Columbia County and the Region

Columbia County alone has 19 covered bridges. The East & West Paden Bridges are known as “The Twin Bridges”; their connected spans make them one of only two such bridge groups in the country. You can also explore covered bridges beyond the county line: A free brochure about the covered bridges of Columbia and Montour Counties includes all 25 bridges in the region, along with a detailed road map with turn-by-turn directions.

This gives you a clear range of interests to choose from during your stay: a waterfall hike, trails for different activities, time on the water, or museums and bridge history. If you’re mainly interested in hiking trails, the different distance details can help you plan. For a focus on culture or history, the museums offer changing county exhibits, an exhibit about the past ways of life of Indigenous peoples, and a connection to regional agricultural history.

Explore More Destinations

Explore more destinations: Lime Ridge, Centralia, Berwick, Numidia, Mifflinville, Orangeville, Bloomsburg and Lawrence County.

For the main travel overview: Pennsylvania.