Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-08-14

utter absence of this great bounty was not
only a surprise, but bitter disappointment.
But, knowing that in the huckleberry coun-
tries they had left the bushes bearing this
fruit invariably came into existence where
pine timber had been cleared away and the
ground burned over, they lived in the as
surance that they would see the familiar
foliage springing from. the soil after they
had cleared their mountain land and put it
to the fire.
Headwaters Of tho Allegheny.
Such result did follow down on the
Sinnemahoning and other waters flowing
into the Susquehanna, but nowhere on the
watershed of the Allegheny river, embrac-
ing the greater part of Potter county, did
the eagerly awaited huckleberry bushes
push their heads above the soil the AK and
brush fire had opened to the sun; nor, with
the exception OF an inconsiderable tract in
the northwest corner of the county, have
they ever appeared anywhere in the county
where the headsprings of the Allegheny
drain the land. Why this should have been
no one has as yet given any satisfactory ex-
PLANTATION.
But the early settlers solaced themselves
that if they had been bereft of huckleber-
ries they were at the same time spared the
annoyance and danger of rattlesnakes, ac-
cepting as true the apparent fact that
wherever there are huckleberries there will
rattlesnakes be found as well. There is not
now, nor has there ever been, a rattlesnake
along the Allegheny waters in Potter
county, while over the dividing ridges,
along the Susquehanna waters, that venom
Gus reptile seems to find congenial and pro-
life homes
1t is now quarter of century since the
last of the great pine forests of Potter
county disappeared, and among the last of
them to fall was the vast tract that Law be-
tween Pine creek on the south and south
west, the Genesee Fork on the west and
Phoenix creek on the east, in Pike town.
ship. This forest crowned the steep mount
ain that rises in that broad area, its summit
being a table land many thousand acres in
extent.
Developments of q HuokIeberry Patch.
The great canons of Pine Creek are on one
side, and the deep defiles of Phoenix Creek
on the other. This mountain has an eleva-
tion of 1000 feet above tide When these
primitive pines had gone the way of all
their giant fellows, q second growth of pines
grew rapidly in their places, but of an en-
tirely different variety. They were known
as jack pines, and were SO full of pitch that
they were cut and converted into tar, hun
dreds of tar kilns being erected on the sum-
init, the ruins Of many of which are to-day
found among the brakes and rocks. With |
the disappearance of the jack pines this !
great mountain became treeless, |
for bush fires that no one cared to |
control. Then the discovery was made,
after one Of these early spring fires had
swept over the barren, that huckleberry
bushes had come up through the black ashes
the pine had left on the stony soil-the low
bushes Of the genuine, rich pulped, full
favored early blue huckleberry; thousands
upon thousands of acres of them, growing
as thickly as timothy stalks in meadow.
This would have been matter for no sur
prise in the adjoining counties of Clinton
and Cameron. The surprising thing in
those counties would have been, rather, the
of huckleberry bushes on
he burned pine barrens But in Potter
county, where the berries had persstently
refused to grow before, this sudden appear
snce of the bushes on the great pine bar
ems of the Pine creek waters was as sur
'rising as if oil had been struck on the
solated summit, after the drill had failed
o find it elsewhere in the country.
Known as Bucklsberry HrI.
The crop of berries that ripened on those
'riginal bushes was enormous, and in no
eason since then has the huckleberry crop
IN the great hill tailed. The rock-ribbed
soon received the name of Huckle-
'erry Hill, and as such it is known to-day,
tanding unique in its isolation as the only
pot between the far-off waters of the Sinne-
on the South and the great spread
# the Genesee on the north, and between
he Allegheny portage watershed on the
rest and the Cbemung valley on the east,
1here the huckleberry grows and ripens as
does in all the surrounding counties out
ide those boundary lines
The annual pilgrimage OF this furnace