The Club House was the center of activity for members and guests of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club at Lake Conemaugh. The club's first summer season at Lake Conemaugh was 1881. The structure was built in two sections.
The original portion of the club house contained seventeen bedrooms and opened in 1881. It contained a kitchen, dining room, and bedrooms. An addition was completed around 1887. David Knox Miller, nephew of member Philander Knox, was the architect for the addition. It was three stories and had forty eight rooms. Sixteen cottages lined the shore of Lake Conemaugh.
On March 5, 1886, The Altoona Times published an article providing a summary of a South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club meeting. In included a description of what the building would be like. The article said, in part:
"It will be furnished handsomely and will be arranged with all modern conveniences. It will be ready for occupancy early the coming season, and it is generally supposed it will be made one of the most fashionable resorts in the country."
With a membership to the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, members were entitled to a two week stay per season at the Club House. Fees for room and board at the Club House were $1.60 per day for members and $2.50 for guests. According to the Rules and Regulations that were posted at the club, "No family, whether guests' or members', shall occupy more than one front room in the Club House, unless occupying four or more rooms in all, when they shall be entitled to two front rooms." Whether members or guests were staying at the Club House, or their cottage, everyone took their meals together in the dining room at the Club House that could accommodate 150 people.
In 1889, indoor plumbing was in the process of being installed at the clubhouse and cottages. A $36,000 mortgage was taken out on the Club House in May 1889, possibly to pay for the scheduled upgrades that summer.
After the flood, the Club House and cottages were known as the "Johnstown Colony." People in need of shelter occupied the structures.
A public auction was held on February 25, 1904. After the auction, the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club’s holdings in Cambria County ceased. The Johnstown Tribune said:
“In the list of things to be disposed of are fifty-bedroom suites, many yards of carpet, silverware and tableware with the club monogram engraved there on, many odd pieces of furniture and bric-a-brac. At the time of the Great Flood, the clubhouse remained open, but has been since occupied only by a caretaker, and now the real estate and clubhouse, together with a number of cottages, having been sold to a syndicate of Cambria County persons, the club’s Trustee, E. B. Alsop, of Pittsburg has ordered all the personal effects disposed of.”
In 2006, the National Park Service acquired several cottages and the Club House. They were donated by the 1889 South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club Historical Preservation Society.
