PIKE COUNTY – New Yorkers and New Jersians have long known the heavily forested towns around the Pocono Mountains as a summer playground.

But after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a flood of weary city-dwellers wanted quieter lives year-round, and they found comfortable lakeside homes in rural Pennsylvania for a fraction of the cost of cramped quarters 70 miles away in lower Manhattan.

The influx continued until construction finally slowed a few years ago, around the time of the economic recession, recalled Milford resident John Longendorfer, an 84-year-old gallery owner.

Mary Lister said she left crime and noise in New Jersey to move out into the dark woods of Hawley, and the Friday night ambush of a state police barracks about 10 miles from her new home doesn't change her feelings about the place where she found sanctuary.

"It's just a reminder that things can happen anywhere," she said. "Things happen every day in New Jersey."

Police on Sunday continued their search for the unidentified person or people who shot and killed one trooper and wounded a second at the Blooming Grove barracks along Route 402.

Police established a checkpoint along the winding mountain road in front of the barracks, stopping every car to ask questions including whether they had traveled the road Friday night.

Crews searched the forest near the barracks on foot as a police helicopter passed overhead.

"It's scary," said Joyce Morris, who moved from Long Island and into her home on McConnell Lake about eight years ago. "Years ago, there was nothing like this."

With a lack of new information coming from police, residents are creating their own theories about how and why this happened, she said.

People have gossiped about a vendetta against the police, she said, but she believes the killer was probably either a mentally ill person or a person with a drug problem.

There aren't enough local social services to help people with mental health issues, homelessness, and other problems, she said.

Several residents said there's a heroin epidemic in the area, and Morris said she's particularly concerned about young people who get bored in a place where one has to drive about 30 minutes to find a bowling alley, she said.

"We just got our first movie theater three or four years ago," she said.

Before the theater came, people had to drive about 45 minutes to theaters in Scranton, she said.