A high school student named Josie Varrassa spent part of this year putting perennials in the ground behind Pavilion #3 at Community Park. It was her Girl Scout Gold Award project, the highest rank the organization gives, and it's now a small pollinator garden with a mailbox out front holding printed information about why bees and butterflies need the plants she chose. The borough newsletter thanked her for it in July, in the same issue where it announced a part-time zoning officer opening that's still unfilled, reminded residents that Port Matilda has no local ordinance covering fireworks (call the state police if it's a problem), and noted that 2026 dog licenses are still available at the Borough Office.
That newsletter is a good map of what this town actually runs. It's short. It's mostly reminders and thank-yous. And it says almost nothing about the two biggest reasons an early-fall weekend here doesn't feel small at all.
What the Borough Newsletter Covers
Port Matilda's population sits at 568 as of this year, down slightly from 588 in 2020. The borough office handles zoning, dog licenses, and a newsletter that goes out roughly monthly, with a September 15 deadline for anything residents want included in October's issue. Council thanked a Girl Scout for adding a garden to the park. The office is also mid-transition at the top: Mayor Greg Harpster now signs off on borough business after Ida Lively's twelve years in the role, a tenure long enough that her name still shows up in the year-end newsletter as a matter of course.
None of that is a criticism. It's just scale. A town this size runs on volunteers, part-time postings, and a newsletter that fits on one page. What it doesn't run, and doesn't need to, is the two things that actually fill a resident's October weekend.
The Mountain Nobody Mentions From the Road
Skytop Mountain Golf Club sits a few minutes outside town, carved into 270 acres of forest on the side of Skytop Mountain, and most people driving past on the way to somewhere else have no idea it's there. It opened in 2006 under its original name, Freestone, a reference to the streams cut through the property by watershed runoff. Designer Jim Polinchok laid the front nine along Bald Eagle Creek on the flatter valley floor, then sent the back nine up the mountainside, where the terrain does most of the work. Hole 16 is a 191-yard par 3 that drops 100 feet from tee to green. Golfers who've played it describe fairways so isolated by trees on both sides that it can feel like having the whole mountain to yourself, even on a busy Saturday.
This isn't a resort clubhouse operation. There's no restaurant, just hot dogs and snacks at the pro shop, and that's been true since it opened. It's a full 18-hole, par-72 course in the hills outside a town of 568 people, open to the public, and it gives the Port Matilda area a regional draw that sits comfortably alongside the borough's own community-scale work.
Fifteen Miles of Trail Ten Minutes Up the Road
The same pattern holds at Bald Eagle State Park, reached from town by taking I-99 to Exit 61, then following Route 220-ALT onto Route 150. The park covers 5,900 acres around the 1,730-acre Foster Joseph Sayers Reservoir, and none of that acreage belongs to Port Matilda's tax base or falls under its zoning office. It's simply the closest exit off the interstate, which makes the borough more of a gateway than a destination in its own right.
Late September through October is the window locals and visitors both point to for this park, when foliage color peaks and daytime temperatures stay comfortable enough for a full loop without the summer crowds at the beach. A few specific trails are worth knowing by name rather than just "the park has trails":
- Butterfly Trail, an easy 1.5-mile out-and-back from the beach day-use area to the Frog Pond, flat enough for families and popular with birders
- Swamp Oak Trail, which passes Pennsylvania's largest swamp white oak tree near the modern campground, a specimen worth the stop on its own
- Skyline Drive Trail, which connects to both of the above and runs along the lake
None of this required a Port Matilda zoning decision or a line item in the borough budget. It was built and is maintained by the state, and it will still be there whether or not the part-time zoning post gets filled this quarter.
What's Actually Open on Plank Road
The eating and drinking options inside the borough itself are fewer and more specific than what shows up when you search the wider State College area. Port Matilda Hotel & Tavern, on Plank Road, has been serving the fish fry and burger crowd long enough that its Yelp listing still promotes a "new menu" as a selling point rather than a novelty. Zola New World Bistro, over on Picadilly Road, runs a bar with leather couches and a French-influenced menu that reads more like a destination restaurant than a small-town stop. Brother's Pizza on Halfmoon Valley Road covers the pizza and casual end of things, and Lykens Market's Port Matilda location handles groceries and deli orders for people who'd rather cook at home after a hike.
Together with the golf course and the state park, they round out a fall weekend that can start with a hike and end with dinner close to home.
The Gap Is the Point
Add it up and the shape of the town becomes clear. The newsletter covers a Girl Scout's pollinator garden, a mayoral handoff, a zoning post, dog licenses, and fireworks reporting procedures. Those are the neighborly, community-level details the borough shares with residents this season. Everything else, the mountainside golf course with its 100-foot drop on 16, the 5,900 acres of state park fifteen minutes up Route 150, the tavern with the new menu on Plank Road, exists and operates on its own schedule, each run by its own organization and open to residents alongside everything the borough provides.
Port Matilda's borough government keeps a focused set of local responsibilities, and the town sits next to infrastructure built at a much larger scale that happens to use Port Matilda as its front door. The pollinator garden behind Pavilion #3 will keep growing regardless of who holds the mayor's office next. So will everything else around it.
If you're curious what else sits just outside Port Matilda's borders, or want a longer conversation about the area beyond this fall's newsletter, Theresa Layton is happy to talk through it.
