Traveling Through a Rugged Region

Traveling Through a Rugged Region. The Timber Trail. , For thousands of years, Native Americans traversed this region in dugout canoes and over a far-reaching network of footpaths. White settlers followed and expanded these woodland paths. Until the late 1800s, rivers reigned as the region's transportation highways. Lumbermen floated millions of logs to mills and markets on the West Branch of the Susquehanna. During the mid-1800s, the West Branch Canal moved people and goods up and downriver. , Heyday of the Railroad Era , Though Lycoming County's first railroad tracks were laid in 1839, it wasn't until the 1860s that railroads made a real impact, ushering in the end of water-based transportation. Locomotives penetrated deep into remote reaches of the Lumber Heritage Region, hauling away coal, logs, lumber, tanning bark, charcoal, and crude oil and bringing settlers and goods to growing communities. , By the 1930s, automobiles began to eclipse rail travel, and paved roads gradually replaced dirt. This change in transportation has allowed, in more recent years, for some railroad paths to evolve into recreation trails, like the Pine Creek and Lycoming Creek Rail Trails. Other railway paths have faded into the landscape, their grades hidden by lush forest growth. The newly opened Peter Herdic Transportation Museum near West Fourth Street in Williamsport provides a broad and comprehensive look at all forms of transportation through the Lumber Heritage Region., Wilderness Interpreter , When explorers and missionaries crossed the wilds of north-central Pennsylvania in the early 1700s, many stopped in a Delaware Indian village called Otstonwakin, just east of present-day Williamsport, to meet with Madam Montour. Born in 1667 to a Frenchman and his Algonquian wife, Madam Montour spoke five languages, including English, Algonquin, and Iroquois. She served as an interpreter in tribal negotiations, as did her son Andrew. The borough of Montoursville still bears their name.