This season, Keen Lake Camping & Cottages Resort is celebrating its 70th year of hosting family memories in Waymart. With a passion for providing an incredible camping experience on their private 90-acre lake, the Keen family has a rich local history that includes eight generations of family involvement and two generations of operating as a premier camping destination in the Pocono Mountains. James & Dorothy Keen started the campground back in 1954, and today, three of their seven daughters maintain the core operations of the resort: Jennifer Wertz, JimAnn Petroski, and Janet Keen. Together, they’ve continued in their parents’ footsteps of creating a welcoming atmosphere of relaxation, reconnecting, and gathering as family at Keen Lake.
Generations of Keens have called the lake home since 1815. In the mid-1800s, the canoe-shaped lake took on a different form with the construction of its famous dam and trestle to support the passage of the new steam engines, changing it into the butterfly shape it maintains today and forming the iconic ‘Hermit Island’ in the lake’s center. There are many similar touchstones to local history all over the property, such as the The Schoolhouse vacation rental, which originally served as a schoolhouse for the local area in the mid-19th century, and the Pre-Civil War Barn rental, which was built as a blacksmith shop around the same time. (The barn still has its original beams, and you can even see where horses used to nuzzle at the woodwork on the interior of the building!) And much like the lake itself, the Keen family is part of the story of Waymart through years of service to local boards, committees, and county functions. Even today, the sisters remain active in local and extra-local business and marketing endeavors for the region.
Jennifer credits a great deal of the resort’s success to the community she’s been a part of her whole life. “Waymart and Wayne County are my home,” she says. “We succeed together, and we are invested in lifting each other up. What we have here is special, and it’s been such a joy to share it both with our friends and neighbors and with the folks who travel from hours away to experience what we grew up with. Camping is good for the soul, and so is being part of a place that welcomes you like family no matter where you come from.”
You’ll hear no disagreement from JimAnn. “Everything we do here is about family,” she says with pride. “We have people working with us whose parents were employees too. Two of our summer employees are girls whose mom worked for us in the 90’s, and we have a brother and sister who have been a part of our team for six years. Our own family has certainly been a part of our journey. Our sisters—Judith, Jane, Joyce, and Jeanne—although not owners have jumped in to help whenever we have asked. Our daughters and sons have also been part of the team and our grandson/nephew Teddy has joined the activity team. All of these wonderful souls have contributed to our success.”
And for her part, Janet believes the thread that runs through it all is that the lake brings people together around the same things that it did 150 years ago. “Our guests are what make us special,” she admits. “We’ve played host to generations of families, and we all have pictures of our grandparents and great-grandparents boating and enjoying the same things by the lake that our guests do today. Our memories are incomplete without the camping families with whom we shared our childhood.”
With seventy years in the books as a premier destination in the Poconos, Keen Lake Resort and the Keen sisters show no signs of slowing down. In recent years, the campground has expanded to include gorgeous lakeside glamping tents, renovations to several vacation rentals, improvements to the grounds and beach area, among other upgrades. Still, Janet maintains that the lake and the people will always be what draws families from near and far. “You feel like family as soon as you get here, both from us and from our other guests,” she says warmly. “That’s what makes this place sparkle.”