Best Equestrian Camping near Allegheny National Forest

This campground is within Allegheny National Forest near the town of Warren and Tidouette. The sites are few but spacious. Good for car camping, though I’m sure a smaller RVcould get by. Each site has a fire ring. Two sites have Adirondack type shelters. The night sky is promising but light pollution from Warren inhibits a truly awesome night sky. There is a vault toilet. No showers. No water either. Bring what you need! The closest town is about 30 minutes away. Lots of critter life. My dogs loved it here. We spent all days exploring the nearby trails and creeks. Price was cheap. No frills but a quiet respite for sure.

Allegheny National Forest is Pennsylvania's only National Forest and a gem of a location for outdoor recreation. Hearts Content itself is a well-maintained, very quiet campground with some of the most private sites we've experienced in 15 years of regular car camping.

Site A02 is very nice for privacy, one of the three front sites which means a bit of road traffic for other arriving campers, but covered by dense old-growth forest on all three sides and well set off the road. Ample tree coverage means an excellent shade canopy, but not-so-great if you're powering your rig with solar.

Clean, good-tasting drinking water at several community water spigots are available, and the central grassy area even contains a clean and well-maintained playground.

The campground itself is actually across the road from the Recreation Area. The Recreation Area is home to 3 nice hiking trails, including one all-season trail that converts to a cross-country skiing trail in the snowy months, as well as some picnic tables and a restroom.

The campground has a couple pit toilets that have been very well maintained by campground hosts each year we've been there. Zero smell or problems here, they appear to be looked after daily. They are still pit toilets so this is not exactly a luxury affair, but as pit toilets go, these definitely suffice.

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INTERNET: One bar of usable Verizon 4G LTE and T-Mobile 4G LTE suitable for slow web browsing and e-mail, but little else. Because of the very dense tree cover here, Starlink is not really a viable option. The most southern facing sites have more of a clearing which may work for Starlink, but are smaller, less private, and also face the group campsite which is well trafficked by Boy Scout troops and other summer camp gatherings, so you're upping your noise quite a bit.

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MAJOR PROS: This is a great campground to just enjoy camping. Set some 15 miles back in old growth forest, the most private of the campsites provide a very pleasant wilderness experience but still some well-maintained amenities like fresh drinking water and good pit toilets. In our experience camping here several times over several years, weekdays are very quiet at this location, perhaps the quietest of any campground of this size and caliber we've experienced anywhere. It's only really Friday evenings and Saturdays where you'll see more than 3-4 other campers in this place.

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The closest nearby town is Warren, PA a small but service-rich town set on the Allegheny River that provides all the necessary stuff - a Wal Mart,  a Lowes, and plenty of restaurants and little shops. Warren is the longtime home of a refinery of some sort and on days when the downwind is blowing especially strong, you can catch the faint whiff of a funky but ambiguous smell of…something?

Cell service kicks up to 5G on T-Mobile in Warren itself, but you're still stuck on 4G with Verizon, as of summer 2022.

Back to the campground, I would highly recommend this place for people who can get out there on weekdays and enjoy peace and quiet. Firewood is available for sale at the Camp Host campsite, but there's so much downed wood behind just about every site that purchasing wood really isn't necessary: you can keep a hot fire going all night, for free, just by cleaning out the underbrush.

This is such a pretty, quiet campsite that during weekdays the area deer will often approach from the woods behind the campsites to feast on low hanging leaves. We've seen dozens of them who will get within 10-20 yards of you for a snack later into the night. While never getting too close, it does make for a pleasant wildlife viewing opportunity.

We really like this place. No showers or other running-water facilities and limited internet service prevent this place from being a perfect 5. It is also a bit of a drive into town for provisions or daily ingress if you need these amenities. That aside, tent, trailer or RV, you are likely to enjoy your experience here if you enjoy camping at all.

This equestrian campground also has 2 non-equestrian sites, one which is reservable. There is no potable water but there is a river and a non-potable pump. There is a permanent toilet usually stocked with TP. Carry out all garbage. No electrical hookups.

Traditional camp sites have space for multiple tents and 2 cars. Each has a picnic table and a fire pit with moveable cooking surface. We’ve never had an issue with bears or other wildlife where food and trash are concerned but we store in the cars at night to be safe. The area is usually damp so don’t count in being able to find much dry wood - we stop before driving in for wood.

Trails galore! Mushrooms everywhere! Quiet and no cellular to distract.

Campground Review

I can honestly say that Oil Creek Family Campground is the best private campground that we have ever camped at. Especially if you’re camping with kids, it offers everything that you would want for a ‘great American summer’ style camping experience, without being a cookie-cutter big-name private campground chain. They have a large pool; a few llamas that the kids can feed and pet; a 27-hole disc golf course (recently expanded from 18 hole) primarily in the woods near and around the campground property; a small pond for sunfish / bass fishing; a dog ‘playground’ (enclosed area with some obstacles); a well-maintained hedge maze; a pavilion with ping pong, a pool table, and foosball; a DVD rental program at the main office with about 300 movies; and a small camp store with a small selection of books that you can borrow. They also provide weekly entertainment for the kids, e.g. rock painting or special guests. This weekend, for instance was ‘Jungle Terry and his amazing exotic animal family.’ We don’t typically spend a ton of time actually AT the campgrounds when we’re camping, but we did this weekend - and we had a blast on the disc golf course, fishing in the pond, and playing ping pong. The kids had an awesome time in the pool for hours and running around with the other kids in the maze. And everyone agreed that it was a perfect way to wrap up the summer before the school year starts.

We have a pop-up and my parents (whom we were camping with for the weekend) use a tent, so we had two water+electric sites in the tent camping area away from the RVs: sites A7 and A8. The sites in this area are well-maintained and LARGE, with plenty of room for a pop-up or multiple tents plus one or two vehicles, plus lots of room around the fire ring. There are smaller bathrooms placed around the campground as well as a center bathhouse located adjacent to the pavilion with 2 shower stalls and an additional toilet per gender.

We chose this campground due to its proximity to Oil Creek State Park. The state park itself does not have a campground, and OCFC is right next door - in fact, the campground hiking trail loop has a very short connecting piece to the 36-mile Gerard hiking trail that runs through the park. The park is beautiful with a lot of history (it is the site of the world’s first commercial oil well, and where the oil industry began in the United States around 1860) and Oil Creek - which is really a river - runs right down the middle of the park. It is a stocked creek and it’s great for both trout and bass fishing. Some parts of the creek also have a lot of northern water snakes (we saw 4 near the Blood Farm day use area) which was cool to see.

Overall: fantastic campground in a beautiful part of Pennsylvania - and we will absolutely be back.

Product Review

As a Ranger for The Dyrt, I get occasionally receive products to test or gift cards for new companies to check out.  Over the past weekend, we tried out one of the Mountain House favorites, freeze-dried Lasagna with Meat Sauce in the #10 can. Lasagna is not exactly a typical camping food, so the fact that we could easily make enough lasagna to feed a group of six people (4 adults and 2 kids) just by heating up some water was wonderful! We made the entire can (boil 8 cups of water, pour it into the can itself, stir a lot to mix up all of the freeze-dried ingredients, and let it sit for ten minutes - EASY) along with some crescent-roll wrapped hot dogs over the fire and it was like a gourmet camping meal. Everyone loved the lasagna - even the two picky kids!

Small and limited, Hearts Content offers serene quiet evenings.i was lucky enough to get a site that provided an additional shelter that provided cover from the extensive rain we received one night. The canopy is dense here. The tent sites are moderately sized and there would be no problem bringing the largest of tents. Though I stayed here alone with just me and the two dogs, there is enough room at some for entire families. Water is available. Showers are not. Bathrooms are if the privy type but are well kept by the host. Firewood and ice is also available from the host. The great thing about this site is it lends availability to the rest of the National Forest. I spent a week here and barely scratched the surface on what was available for hiking and discovering. Go to nearby town of Warren or Tidouette for supplies. (Stop at the store just outside of Tidouette just across from DG- they have the best deli sandwiches around)