HESSTON (TNS) — On a blustery Memorial Day weekend, customers trickled into Seven Points Bait and Grocery looking for fingerling trout and nightcrawlers, for scoops of sweet and salty caramel ice cream and propane refills.

They browsed the racks of tourist sweatshirts, too, most of them emblazoned with “Raystown Lake” across the front.

Judy Norris, 81, has owned the store by Pennsylvania’s largest lake for 49 years, though, and she’s seen enough seasonal Saturdays to know the foot traffic wasn’t adding up as summer unofficially kicked off.

“We’re way off, maybe 40 to 50% down,” Norris said, beside the bait tank. “This is Memorial Day weekend. You normally can’t move in here. The parking lot is usually jammed.”

Just down the road, along the shore of the lake in Huntingdon County, gates to some U.S. Army Corps of Engineers campgrounds were shut, and the hundreds of campsites beyond them sat vacant. The playgrounds were empty. A headline on a local newspaper at Norris’ store spelled it out: “Campground closures impact businesses.”

In March, the Army Corps’ Baltimore office announced that 300 of its campsites on the 8,600-acre lake would be closed indefinitely due to “executive-order driven staffing shortages.” Those staffing shortages would require the Army Corps to focus on “dam operations for flood protection and emergency response readiness” ahead of the 2025 season.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has targeted cutbacks at a slew of government agencies, including the Army Corps.

The lake’s Seven Points, Susquehannock, and Nancy’s Boat-to-Shore Campgrounds — all popular and often booked out far ahead of summer — were closed, and the Army Corps began refunding campers who had made reservations.

In addition, farther north in Tioga County, Tompkins Campground on Tioga-Hammond and Cowanesque Lakes also closed, along with its swim beach and boat ramp. Tompkins has approximately 125 sites.

Norris’ business is seasonal, following the campground schedule, and she assumed, then hoped, that the situation would be resolved before Memorial Day. She reached out to elected officials and the Army Corps, to no avail.

“This affects the entire county, not just us,” Norris said. “This is recreation. We’re talking about campsites. This isn’t hurting anyone, and it’s not going to save the government any money by closing these campgrounds.”

Norris said the Raystown campsites make money for the Army Corps, and, according to the agency’s “Value to the Nation” report, visitors within 30 miles of the lake spent $62.7 million there in 2023. Of the 1.2 million visitors that year, 313,135 were “campers/overnight visitors.”

Last week, Army Corps spokeswoman Cynthia Mitchell said there had been no change to the campground shutdown order. If there are staffing issues at Raystown, Norris and other business owners have wondered why a portion of the campgrounds could be closed, instead of all of them.

Mitchell said the Army Corps “explored all available resource options prior to making the decision to close access to Raystown’s campsites.”

Norris said she has had to reduce staffing plans for the summer as a result of the shutdowns.

“There is absolutely a trickle-down effect to all of this,” she said.

Tourism officials in the region have been reminding the public that Raystown Lake — its trails, boat launches, and concessions — remain open for summer, but acknowledged the pain of the campground closures.

“Yes, it is definitely having an impact here,” said Matt Price, executive director of Raystown Lake Region. “But there are dozens of private and state campgrounds where people can stay to get close to the lake.”

Day-use facilities remain open at Raystown Lake, and there are other options for camping nearby, including waterfront tent and RV sites and rooms at the Lodge at Raystown Lake.

Raystown Lake was created by a hydroelectric dam process in 1973, and unlike other large bodies of water in Pennsylvania, like Lake Wallenpaupack and Harveys and Conneaut Lakes, it has seen almost no development. There is not a single house on its 118 miles of shoreline. Raystown is the only lake in Pennsylvania where visitors can rent houseboats, though many of them anchor at Nancy’s Boat-to-Shore Campground, which is now closed.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources found that camping reservations for state parks skyrocketed in the wake of Army Corps closures. Trough Creek State Park, just a few miles from Raystown Lake, saw a whopping 189% increase in camping reservations.

“The federal government may have shuttered their campsites — but ours are open and ready for you,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro wrote on X in April.

Across the street from Seven Points, at Backwoods Smoke Shack, manager Kris Paterson said tourists, including campers, are the lifeblood of the family’s seasonal BBQ business.

“Is this hurting our business? Yeah it’s hurting our business,” she said. “It could destroy us this summer. We get a lot of campers here, all summer.”

Owner Brian Paterson, 37, Kris’ son, said business is down up to 45% from this time last year.

“That’s hundreds of families not coming through here every weekend,” he said. “This will put a hurting on us. If they don’t do anything soon, this summer is ruined.”

Brian Paterson said he reached out to “everyone” in office for answers.

“And we’ve gotten nothing,” he said.

Pennsylvania U.S. Sens. Dave McCormick and John Fetterman did not return requests for comment.

Huntingdon County voted overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump and other Republicans in the last three presidential election cycles. Norris — who did not vote for Trump and doesn’t support him — pointed out that no one in Huntingdon County voted for Musk or DOGE.

“People are wondering what we did to him to deserve this,” Norris said of Musk. “I wish I had clout and could go down there and tell them, ‘This is what you did to the people who voted for you.'”