Paddle the West Branch of the Susquehanna River where immense log drives once flowed. Gaze upon distant galaxies in ink-black skies. Search for traces of a logging ghost town. Watch an osprey plunge into the Allegheny River and emerge with a fish . . . — — Map (db m191950) HM
Getting goods and people to and from Williamsport in the early 1800s was no easy feat. Roads were few and often impassible. The West Branch of the Susquehanna served as a "water highway" for Williamsport's citizens — who numbered just 60 in 1806. . . . — — Map (db m191999) HM
Risk-taking entrepreneurs, Williamsport's lumber barons orchestrated the industry that put Williamsport on the map. They amassed phenomenal wealth, and their enterprise built Williamsport's economy, financed its hallmark architecture, and forged . . . — — Map (db m191988) HM
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 . . . — — Map (db m191998) HM
Daring, brawn, and skill — that's what Pennsylvania rivermen needed to deliver timber to market in the early 1800s. Men felled immense Eastern white pines, fastened them together into log rafts, and rode them down river to be used for shipbuilding . . . — — Map (db m191997) HM
How did Williamsport evolve from a pioneer outpost to a thriving city boasting more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the world? Lumber. In 1838, a single, water-powered sawmill operated in Williamsport. By 1873, thirty-seven sawmills, . . . — — Map (db m191996) HM
In a Susquehanna River log drive, tens of thousands of logs floated downstream like a freight train on water. Without some means of diverting them to riverside millyards, they'd surge right out to the Chesapeake Bay. Williamsport, settled along a . . . — — Map (db m191994) HM
A natural part of river life, floods reshape a river's contours and spread nutrients throughout the floodplain. Along the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, thousands of years of periodic flooding created a fertile valley where massive white . . . — — Map (db m191991) HM
Though it's hard to imagine when looking at today's verdant forests and clear-flowing streams, in the early 1900s, intensive logging had ravaged north-central Pennsylvania's seemingly limitless forests. Rain eroded treeless hillsides, depleting the . . . — — Map (db m191989) HM
Fortunately, here in the Lumber Heritage Region both the forests and the forest industry have recovered from the unsustainable logging of the late 1800s and early 1900s. The state's single most valuable natural resource, trees now yield one billion . . . — — Map (db m191982) HM
"…Whereas the workingmen in the sawmills of the city of Williamsport work from 11½ to 12 hours per day, a period longer than that worked by other workingmen in the United States, which is an injury to the human system… Resolved: that 10 hours is . . . — — Map (db m191957) HM
