Closed for the season. Pennsylvania runs the Worlds End swim area from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day, sunrise to sunset, and outside that window the beach is shut. Plan a trip here between late May and early September or the water is off limits.

The listing name points at the wrong building. The visitors center is a 4,300 square foot facility that opened in 2002 near the park entrance, and nobody swims there. The actual swimming hole sits about 300 yards downstream of the park office on Cabin Bridge Road, where a seven foot dam built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s backs Loyalsock Creek up into a pool of roughly one acre. The CCC crews blasted bedrock out of the creek bed to deepen it. A gravel and sand beach lines the bank, a stone beach house and concession stand stand just above it, and a boat chute notches the dam at the downstream end.

Nothing costs anything to get in. DCNR states plainly that there are no entrance fees or day use fees for any state park in Pennsylvania, so parking, the beach and the water are free. Money only changes hands for camping, the cabins and reservation fees.

There has been no lifeguard on this beach since 2008. You swim at your own risk and the posted rules at the beach are the ones that apply. Swimming is also confined to the marked area: 17 Pa. Code section 11.217 makes swimming outside a designated swimming area a violation in every Pennsylvania state park, which means the rest of Loyalsock Creek inside the park boundary is not a legal alternative. That includes the waterfall on High Rock Run reached by the one mile High Rock Trail and the pools scattered through the Rock Garden. Those are worth the walk, but they are for looking at.

The creek itself is the thing to respect. Loyalsock drains steep forested ground upstream, and DCNR warns paddlers that the water level fluctuates rapidly and to check conditions before driving in. The same warning applies to swimmers. Rain in the headwaters arrives here within hours and the pool can go from a flat green swimming hole to pushy brown current. The park's flood record is long: the August 1933 flood wrecked the newly built CCC camp, another came in 1936, and 1972, 1975, 1996 and 2011 all set marks. Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee hit within eleven days of each other in 2011 and campers had to be evacuated.

Water temperature is the other thing people are not ready for. This is a shaded mountain stream at about 1,175 feet of elevation and it stays cold through August. Paddlers get the creek in spring, March through May, when it runs Class II to III plus with harder sections, and DCNR says outright that it is not suitable for open canoes. In summer the beach reach is closed to boats. Access is off PA Route 154 in Sullivan County, a few miles south of Forksville, with day use parking a short walk from the sand.