The Lumber Era: Log Drives on Sinnemahoning Creek
Sinnemahoning's quiet hides a big story. A century and a half ago, the creek outside your door carried whole forests downstream to the sawmills. Then the timber ran out. Floods tore through the valley, and the state answered with a dam on the First Fork. The lake behind that dam became a state park where elk and bald eagles now live. Here's how the valley got from there to here.
When the Creek Carried the Forest
Picture an early spring morning on the Sinnemahoning more than 150 years ago. Snowmelt has pushed the creek to the top of its banks. Thousands of logs, each stamped with its owner's brand, are riding the current toward the West Branch of the Susquehanna.
Rafts First
Commercial lumbering started here early. Around 1822, an operator named Shepherd began cutting on the Sinnemahoning, mostly rafting squared, hand-hewn timber downriver. For decades, rafts were how the forest reached market. In April 1861, men from the area used the same skill to build rafts and float off to the Civil War as the famous Bucktails.
Splash Dams and the Spring Drive
In 1851, a permanent log boom went into operation across the West Branch at Williamsport, built to catch and sort loose logs for the mills. Through the winter, "woodhicks" felled trees, marked each log with a company brand, and slid the logs down iced hillsides to the streams.
Small runs were too shallow to float logs, so loggers built splash dams. These were timber cribs filled with rock and earth, with a large gate. When the pond filled, the gate opened, and the rush of water (the "splash") carried the logs downstream. Logs from the Bennett's Branch country moved from splash dam to splash dam, then down the Sinnemahoning toward Williamsport.
The best-documented drive came in the spring of 1868, after a winter of unusually deep snow. John DuBois and Hiram Woodward moved more than 200,000 logs, carrying eighteen different brands, from the headwaters of Sinnemahoning Creek to the Williamsport boom. That's more than a hundred miles of flood-swollen water. The crews were fed from floating cook-houses called arks. Historian Samuel King wrote that drives like this one ran from 1850 to 1909.
Boom Years
White pine lumbering on the Sinnemahoning was at its peak from about 1865 to 1885. Hemlock came next, and its bark fed the tanneries. Frank Goodyear's Sinnemahoning Valley Railroad opened in 1885, and by 1900 his Buffalo & Susquehanna line reached Sinnemahoning and met the Philadelphia & Erie. In Emporium, sawmills and tanneries were the biggest industries, and the town's population grew almost 86 percent during the 1880s.
When the Timber Ran Out
By the turn of the century, most of the timber was gone, leaving bare hillsides open to erosion and wildfire. Railroads replaced the drives, and the Williamsport boom was taken down in 1909. By about 1910, the lumber era was over. The Commonwealth bought the cut-over land for state forest. That's the land that has grown back green around you today.
Stand where the log drives ran. Book Resting Eagle Cabin and see the valley for yourself.
More Sinnemahoning history: The Floods | The George B. Stevenson Dam | Sinnemahoning State Park
Sources
Aldrich, History of Clearfield County (1887), ch. 11, transcribed at pa-roots: https://www.pa-roots.com/clearfield/aldrich/chap11.html
PA Wilds, "Cameron County: Cultivating connection and culture": https://pawilds.com/cameron-county-cultivating-connection-and-culture/
Samuel A. King, "A Log Drive to Williamsport in 1868," Pennsylvania History: https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/view/22869
PA DCNR, History of Parker Dam State Park: https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dcnr/recreation/where-to-go/state-parks/find-a-park/parker-dam-state-park/history
Central Pennsylvania History blog, "Wykoff Run Splash Dam": https://centralpahistory.blogspot.com/2020/06/wykoff-run-splash-dam-cameron-county.html
Cameron County Historical Society / Cameron County News, "Story of the Sinnamahone": https://cameroncountynews.blogspot.com/2018/05/story-of-sinnamahone.html
Allegany County Historical Society, "Sinnemahoning Valley Railroad": https://www.alleganyhistory.org/culture/transportation/railroads/miscl-railroads/2801-sinnemahoning-valley-railroad
New York Railroad Archive, "Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad": https://nyrails.org/railroads/buffalo-and-susquehanna-railroad/
Library of Congress, Cameron County Press title essay: https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83032040/
PA DCNR, History of Sinnemahoning State Park: https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dcnr/recreation/where-to-go/state-parks/find-a-park/sinnemahoning-state-park/history
Penn State University Libraries, Craig R. Humphrey collection: https://archives.libraries.psu.edu/repositories/3/resources/302
Pete Bennett, "The Village of Sinnamahoning, PA," Highland Gazette (May 1996), via the Cameron County Genealogy Project: https://sites.rootsweb.com/~pacamero/township/gibson/sinngaz.html