Living in Harveys Lake, PA — Life on Pennsylvania’s Largest Natural Lake

Some towns have a park at their center. Harveys Lake has 600-plus acres of water. This Back Mountain borough wraps entirely around its namesake — Pennsylvania’s largest natural lake by volume, a glacial lake more than 100 feet deep — and life here is organized around it: boats in the driveway, lakeside dinner tables, fireworks over the water every Fourth of July.

Once a bustling resort destination, Harveys Lake today is a genuine year-round community about 25 minutes from Wilkes-Barre, where lakefront estates, restored farmhouses and classic cottages share the same shoreline road.

Food & Drink

• Grotto Pizza & Grand Slam Sports Bar — the lakeside landmark on Lakeside Drive, with a marina-view dining room and summer patio, serving a NEPA pizza recipe with roots back to 1953.
• Lakeside Skillet — lakefront home-style breakfast and lunch seven days a week, with seafood dinners Friday and Saturday.
• The Beaumont Inn — the historic fine-dining inn on 50 acres, minutes away toward Dallas.
• Fishtales, Sportsman’s Bar & Grill and Villa Roma — the local bar-and-grill and Italian circuit around the lake.
• The Lands at Hillside Farms — the nonprofit dairy farm in nearby Shavertown whose farm-made ice cream is a Back Mountain institution.

Things to Do

The lake is the amenity: swimming, waterskiing, sailing, fishing (including an annual pickerel tournament), even scuba diving. The Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission maintains a free public boat launch off Lakeside Drive with two paved ramps, and two marinas serve the lake — one hosting an annual August boat show. The Harveys Lake Yacht Club has run sailing races here since 1959. Every Independence Day, fireworks light up the water for the borough’s signature summer celebration.

Outdoors & Parks

Beyond the lake itself, Ricketts Glen State Park — home to 22 named waterfalls along its famous Falls Trail, topped by 94-foot Ganoga Falls — is a countryside drive west on Route 118. Frances Slocum State Park’s lake and trails are minutes toward Wyoming. This corner of Luzerne County is as close as the Wyoming Valley gets to full-time vacation country.

Gyms & Fitness

The Dallas–Shavertown corridor 10 to 15 minutes away covers fitness: Anytime Fitness with 24/7 access, Odyssey Fitness, Back Mountain Fitness, Danko’s All American Fitness and NEPA CrossFit.

Schools

Harveys Lake is served by the Lake-Lehman School District, with Lake-Noxen Elementary located right in the borough and a roughly 13:1 student-teacher ratio district-wide (Niche, 2026). Misericordia University is 15 minutes away in Dallas.

School Performance

State assessment results for the high school serving Harveys Lake, from the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Future Ready PA Index, 2024–25 school year:

• Lake-Lehman Junior/Senior High School — Keystone Literature 54.7% proficient or advanced (statewide 49.9%) · Keystone Algebra I 34.7% (statewide 41.7%) · four-year graduation rate 96.5% (statewide 88.0%)

Source: Pennsylvania Department of Education, Future Ready PA Index, 2024–25. We publish these same three measures, from this same source, on every community page in this guide.

Everyday Essentials

Groceries and daily retail run through the Dallas–Shavertown corridor minutes away; Wilkes-Barre’s hospitals are about 30 minutes.

The Homes

The range here is unlike anywhere else in the valley: classic cottages and restored Victorians and farmhouses on one end, high-end lakefront estates with private docks and boathouses on the other. True waterfront inventory is scarce — often only a handful of lakefront listings exist at any moment — so lake buyers who move fast get the dock.