Golf in Emporium

Emporium is the county seat of Cameron County, the least-populated county in Pennsylvania, where the 2020 census counted barely 4,500 residents across 394 square miles of the Allegheny Plateau. The Driftwood Branch of Sinnemahoning Creek cuts through the narrow valley where the borough sits, surrounded by the Sproul State Forest, Elk State Forest, and the Allegheny National Forest fringe — one of the most extensive blocks of public forest in the northeastern United States. Emporium Country Club is a community institution in the fullest sense: when the county has only one organized golf facility and a few thousand residents, the club functions as one of the primary social venues in a county where hunting and fishing otherwise dominate outdoor recreation. The isolation that defines Cameron County — there is no interstate highway within the county — gives Emporium a character fundamentally different from any golf community closer to Pennsylvania's population centers.