HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania is spending $45 million to add new state parks at a nature preserve in Tunkhannock, on Big Elk Creek in the Philadelphia suburbs and along the Susquehanna River near Wrightsville, officials were set to announce Tuesday.

The additions to the state’s 121-park system will be an existing nearly 700-acre nature preserve on the Vosburg Neck in Wyoming County, a 1,700-acre tract in Chester County and some 1,100 acres in York County.

The expansion was funded in the state budget that passed in July. They are the first new state parks in Pennsylvania since 2005, not counting Washington Crossing in Bucks County, which was transferred from the state Historical and Museum Commission.

The Vosburg Neck property, known as the Howland Preserve and owned by the North Branch Land Trust, is bordered by an oxbow turn in the Susquehanna River and includes an extensive trail system.

In Chester County, the new park will include 3.5 miles of Big Elk Creek, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay at Elk River. Officials say the creek was long used by indigenous people and was an area of considerable activity for the Underground Railroad.

“There’s going to be a lot of history, a lot of stories to tell,” said Conservation and Natural Resources Secretary Cindy Adams Dunn. “And part of the park planning in that one will be, what’s the best way for us to do that?”