This Pennsylvania State Forest is located in parts of Cumberland, Adams and Fayette counties. The land in this area was owned by iron companies from the mid 1700's until the early 1900's. When mining gave out, the state bought the properties, including the historic Pine Grove Furnace, which it turned into a State Park. The PA DCNR web site lists the Michaux State Forest as 85,000 acres.
Starting in 1931 the CCC built many of the roads and early buildings. During World War II the Intelligence Department of the Army operated a POW camp at Michaux which housed 1500 German and Japanese prisoners.
You can check the map of the Michaux State Forest on the PA DCNR web site. You'll see that it is quite a huge piece of property. It contains both Pine Grove Furnace State Park and Caledonia State Park.
Michaux borders the Kings Gap Environmental Center which is located in Penn, Dickinson and Cooke townships of Cumberland County Pennsylvania. Kings Gap is a 1,454 acre state park built on the South Mountain Ridge. The land is part of a 2,700 acre parcel that was owned by Pennsylvania businessman James Cameron. He built a large mansion at Kings Gap in 1908. After his death in 1949 the land was sold to the CH Masland Carpet Company, located in Carlisle. The state purchased the land for the park in 1973.
The view from the mansion at Kings Gap is spectacular, and even more so from a geological and geographical viewpoint. The mansion is built on the South Mountain which is an extension of the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia and Tennessee. Looking west from the patio of the mansion you look directly across the Cumberland Valley, part of the Great Valley that runs all the way to Alabama, and on the other side you can see the eastern ridge of the Appalachian mountains looming like a wall along the valleys west side. Not sure if this is the narrowest point, but it perfectly illustrates these two old mountain ranges, separated by an ancient valley. In fact, the Blue Ridge was originally the western face of the Appalachians, but the Great Valley formed and split them apart, all the way to Roanoke Virginia.
