Pocono Lake sits at a seam. On one side of Route 940, a gated community with two private lakes and a full-time recreation calendar. On the other, a 5,440-acre state park with a lake almost as big as the community's entire footprint. The two systems are roughly two miles apart, and most people who live here quietly toggle between them all summer without ever writing down the pattern.
If you've been here a few seasons, you already know which one to point out-of-town guests toward on a Saturday. If you're newer, the rhythm takes a summer or two to click.
This is what the rhythm actually looks like.
The Two-Mile Seam
The reason Pocono Lake has this split personality is elevation and history, not marketing. The Pocono Plateau sits at roughly 2,000 feet, and Tobyhanna Lake itself runs about ten to twelve degrees cooler than Stroudsburg twenty miles away, according to Tobyhanna's park manager Justin Waid. That temperature gap is why the man-made lakes exist here at all. From about 1900 to 1936, this whole stretch of the plateau was ice country. Shallow water froze fast, harvesters cut it twice a winter, and the railroads carried it south.
Arrowhead Lake's origin story is the same one. Its lakes started as ice-industry ponds after a nearby rail line went in during the late 1800s, sat in private business-retreat hands through the mid-century, and got sold off as building lots in 1963 before homeowners organized the community association in 1967. Tobyhanna went a different direction. It spent the first half of the twentieth century as an artillery training range, then became a state park after 1950.
Same water table. Same cold air. Two very different property lines.
Behind the Gate
Arrowhead Lake Community Association is a private, gated community with two entrances, a Member Services building at the main gate, and enough amenity infrastructure that residents joke about not needing to leave for a whole weekend. Two lakes with four beaches. Three heated pools. Tennis and basketball courts. A rustic Lodge with a fitness room, library, pool tables, and a catering hall that hosts the calendar of movie nights, poker nights, bonfires, and night-swimming events that keep the community engaged year-round.
The scale is the thing worth understanding. Most gated Pocono communities have one lake and one clubhouse. Arrowhead has two lakes, non-motorized boating on both, and enough separation between the two gates that you can live on the back half and rarely see the front. One long-time community observer notes that outside of the big summer holidays, you can walk the lake and see nobody.
The other thing worth knowing is that the golf cart is not decorative here. It is the actual vehicle residents use to move between pool, beach, and the Island venue where the summer events cluster. By late October the same carts show up in the community's Halloween parade, lining up at the Lodge at 11:30 a.m. before rolling through to Trunk or Treat at the Island. That kind of continuity, summer amenity into fall tradition, is what people mean when they call Arrowhead a neighborhood rather than a resort.
Across Route 940
Tobyhanna State Park is the other half of the equation, and it operates on completely different rules. The park spans 5,440 acres mostly in Coolbaugh Township, with a 170-acre lake at its center, according to the Pennsylvania DCNR. Boats can use electric motors only. Sixty overnight mooring spaces are available under permit. Rowboats and canoes rent daily from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day, weather permitting.
The lake itself is shallow. Average depth three feet, maximum nine, which is why it warms enough to swim by late June and why the sandy beach opens from 8 a.m. to sunset from late May to mid-September. That shallowness is also why waterfowl and shorebirds hold on it, why a bald eagle nest sits within view of the shoreline, and why the fishing has the range it does. The lake is stocked with trout each spring, and the ADA-accessible fishing pier means residents who've aged out of scrambling down a bank still have a place to cast.
The trail network is the piece most Arrowhead residents underuse. The Lakeside Trail loops the water and takes about two and a half hours at a walking pace. The more demanding Yellow Trail runs 3.3 miles one-way with rock-hop stream crossings. The Frank Gantz Trail links directly to Gouldsboro State Park next door, so a determined morning gets you both lakes in one hike.
| Arrowhead Lake | Tobyhanna State Park | |
|---|---|---|
| Access | Private, gated, resident and guest only | Public, open sunrise to sunset year-round |
| Lake size | Two lakes, non-motorized | 170-acre lake, electric motors only |
| Beaches | Four | One sandy beach, late May to mid-September |
| Trails | Community paths, golf-cart friendly | Lakeside loop plus Yellow, Frank Gantz to Gouldsboro |
| Camping | No | 140-site campground, five group tenting sites |
| Winter | Pools closed, Lodge open, holiday events | Ice fishing, snowmobiling, 1.2-acre skating area |
The Food Rotation
The dining pattern locals settle into is not what you'd guess from a search engine, because most of what shows up when you search Pocono Lake restaurants is either Mount Pocono casino dining or resort-adjacent food that doesn't factor into a Tuesday night.
The closest thing to a real neighborhood spot is Pinewood Deli, just outside Arrowhead's main gate. Deli sandwiches, breakfast, and the kind of pinch-hitter grocery inventory that saves you a trip when you forgot the bread. The nearest full grocery is Ahart's Market in Blakeslee, with the Mount Pocono Walmart as the backup.
For sit-down evenings closer to Tobyhanna, one local hiker recommends two spots: Brookside Inn, about a half-mile past the Tobyhanna train station on the main road, and Bailey's, another few miles down Route 611. Both are inside a fifteen-minute drive from the state park entrance, which matters after a full afternoon on the water.
The more interesting recent shift is at Grange Valley Lakeside Inn & Winery, on the Memorytown site a short drive toward Mount Pocono. The property rebuilt itself from the Memorytown legacy into a lakeside restaurant with its own on-site cabins and cottages, and rolled out its Spring/Summer 2026 menu this season with a weekly Thursday event they call Steak on the Lake. Caesar, a 14-ounce rib-eye with smashed potatoes, broccolini, herb butter, and demi-glace, 5 to 9 p.m., reservations strongly recommended. Dog-friendly patio, first-come, first-served outside. It is the closest thing this end of the Poconos has to a standing weekly dinner reservation.
The History That Explains Both Lakes
The reason to bother knowing the ice-harvest story is that it explains why you can stand on Tobyhanna's beach and see something that looks like a purpose-built recreational lake but is actually a shallow industrial pond that got promoted. Local history groups still keep the tradition alive at Mill Pond Number One, just down the road from Tobyhanna State Park, using some of the original equipment.
The other piece of history worth carrying with you: Tobyhanna's artillery-range past means the DCNR still advises visitors staying on marked trails in the more remote sections. Waid points out that the odds of finding unexploded ordnance are almost zero if you stay on trail, in the day-use areas, or in the campground. Which is where nearly everyone stays anyway.
The One Thing Newcomers Miss
The mistake newer residents make is treating the two lake systems as substitutes. They are not. Arrowhead is for the weekly rhythm, the Wednesday pool afternoon, the Friday bonfire, the golf-cart run to the Island for a movie night. Tobyhanna is for the reset, the long paddle on a weekday morning when the surface is glass, the trout run in April, the September afternoon when the plateau turns and everything empties out.
The residents who get the most out of Pocono Lake use both. They know when the Arrowhead pool crowd peaks and when the Tobyhanna beach is quiet. They read both calendars.
That's what living between two lakes actually looks like.
If you're thinking about a home in Pocono Lake, Arrowhead Lake, or anywhere along this stretch of the plateau, or you already own here and are weighing what's next, I'd be glad to talk through what the market is doing and what the right move looks like for your situation. Reach out through Suzanne Kasperski to schedule a free consultation.
