The Indian Steps is part of a nice 5 mile hike, starting at the Indian Steps and making a loop. Park along Harry's Valley Road and climb the Indian Steps. Add your rock to the pile at the top. After the climb, turn left, following the Mid State Trail. Enjoy the vistas and the foundation of an old firetower along the top. Notice the railroad track used as a sign. When the trail reaches the dirt road turn left onto the road. A little ways down when the road makes a switchback, keep straight onto the grassy Pump Station Road and back to the trailhead on Harry's Valley Road.
The Indian Steps were probably not built by indians, these steps made of stone climb up the south face of Tussey Mountain. Here's some lore according to Tom Thwaites about the trail: "The Indian Steps seem to be a mystery of Penn's Woods. Nobody today can explain their location (up a mountainside) or say with certainty who built them. According to one legend the steps were built by the Kishacoquillas tribe over 300 years ago, but Paul Wallace, in his book Indian Paths of Pennsylvania, does not even mention them. However, their existence prior to 1911 is documented."
"The location is unusual because Native American paths usually took easier routes and an easy route ran across Tussey Mountain less than 5 km away. Called the Standing Stone Path (now called PA 26) and listed by Wallace it passed through the gap between Leading and Rudy Ridges just above Monroe Furnace. Indeed, the best preserved steps of all continue up the northwest flank of Leading Ridge and stop, suspiciously, at the boundary of state forest land on the ridgetop. On Leading Ridge their route parallels a number of old boundary lines, and it seems likely that the Indian Steps were a white man's boundary line in the 19th century."
Or should credit go to the Civilian Conservation Corps, as mapmaker Michael Hermann once suggested in his “Lizard Tracks” hiking columns. In 1998, he interviewed a then-97-year-old man who recalled the long rock staircases being built in the 1930s to repair an original log skid trail.
What do you think?