Ohiopyle State Park offers glimpse into past with newly themed escape room
Visitors to Ohiopyle State Park now have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the hustle and bustle of what life was like during the park鈥檚 鈥渞esort era鈥� days, thanks to an escape room located at the train station along the bike trail downtown.
In June, the park鈥檚 鈥淕reat Escape Room鈥� introduced a new theme based on a 1910 Chamber of Commerce meeting that took place in Ohiopyle. The attraction gives participants a chance to solve puzzles while learning about the history of the western train station around the turn of the 20th century.
鈥淚t was the resort era in Ohiopyle,鈥� said Barbara Wallace, Environmental Education Specialist for the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. 鈥淭he Ferncliff area and the town of Ohiopyle was kind of the resort 鈥� where all the wealthy folks in Pittsburgh visited during the industrial times from the late 1800s to the 1920s. It was their playground.鈥�
For many tourists during that time period, Ohiopyle was an ideal place to escape the smog of the cities while enjoying the area鈥檚 attractions, such as the boardwalk, dancing pavilions, bowling alleys, fountains and tennis courts.
The idea to incorporate an escape room at the park came after Wallace and her fellow team of educators at the park sought to find a way for visitors to engage in a piece of 鈥渓iving history.鈥�
Themed as a train station when it originally opened five years ago, the escape room was considered a hit with more than 200 people visiting the puzzle room from 2020 to 2022.
Not wanting to rest on its laurels, the park鈥檚 education team decided to reinvent the puzzle room with a theme more specific to the region. After shutting down for 18 months while the department implemented the redesigned interactive puzzle, the escape room now allows visitors to experience the glamor of Ohiopyle during the peak of the resort era.
鈥淭his room is more of a Great Gatsby kind of fancy, early 1900s decor,鈥� Wallace said. 鈥淲hich is very different from the Western Maryland Train station, which was more about railroads where we had the room staged like a train-station waiting room.鈥�
The escape room enables visitors to immerse themselves in the Western Maryland Railroad鈥檚 history while seeing the impact the station had on the area more than a century ago.
鈥淪tanding there showing slides is not exciting, but if you like solving puzzles and learning about the different buildings and the different classes of people that were there, this makes it a little bit more fun and a little bit more of an active history,鈥� Wallace said.
The escape room, located at the Western Maryland Railway along the bike trail in downtown Ohiopyle, is free and takes around 90 minutes to complete. There are no specific times for the escape room, so to take advantage of the free escape room, email the park at ohiopylegreatescape@gmail.com.