page_title: Plunketts Creek (Loyalsock Creek tributary)
section_title: Decline and renewal
hierarchical_section_title: Plunketts Creek (Loyalsock Creek tributary) / History / Decline and renewal
caption_attribution_description: Northcentral State Game Farm pheasant huts and enclosures, along Plunketts Creek, in Plunketts Creek Township, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, United States
context_page_description: Plunketts Creek is an approximately 6.2-mile-long tributary of Loyalsock Creek in Lycoming and Sullivan counties in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Two unincorporated villages and a hamlet are on the creek, and its watershed drains 23.6 square miles in parts of five townships. The creek is a part of the Chesapeake Bay drainage basin via Loyalsock Creek and the West Branch Susquehanna and Susquehanna Rivers.
  Plunketts Creek's name comes from the first owner of the land including the creek's mouth, and the creek has given its name to two townships. The creek flows southwest and then south through the dissected Allegheny Plateau, through rock from the Mississippian sub-period and Devonian period. Much of the Plunketts Creek valley is composed of various glacial deposits, chiefly alluvium.
  Although the Plunketts Creek watershed was clear-cut and home to a tannery, sawmills, and a coal mine in the nineteenth century, today it is heavily wooded and known for its high water quality, fishing, and other recreational opportunities. The watershed now includes parts of the Loyalsock State Forest, Pennsylvania State Game Lands, and a State Game Farm for raising pheasant.
context_section_description: The lumber boom on Plunketts Creek ended when the virgin timber ran out. By 1898, the old growth hemlock was exhausted and the Proctor tannery, then owned by the Elk Tanning Company, was closed and dismantled. Lumbering continued in the watershed, but the last logs were floated down Plunketts Creek to the Loyalsock in 1905. The Susquehanna and Eagles Mere Railroad was abandoned in sections between 1922 and 1930, as the lumber it was built to transport was depleted. The CPL logging railroad and their Masten sawmills were abandoned in 1930. Without timber, the populations of Proctor and Barbours declined. The Barbours post office closed in the 1930s and the Proctor post office closed on July 1, 1953. Both villages also lost their schools and almost all of their businesses. Proctor celebrated its centennial in 1968, and a 1970 newspaper article on its thirty-ninth annual "Proctor Homecoming" reunion called it a "near-deserted old tannery town". In the 1980s, the last store in Barbours closed, and the former hotel (which had become a hunting club) was torn down to make way for a new bridge across Loyalsock Creek.
  Second growth forests have since covered most of the clear-cut land. The beginnings of today's protected areas were established in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Pennsylvania's state legislature authorized the acquisition of abandoned clear-cut land in 1897, creating the state forest system. The Game Commission began acquiring property for State Game Lands in 1920, and established the Northcentral State Game Farm on Plunketts Creek in 1945 to raise wild turkey. It was converted to Ringneck pheasant production in 1981, and, as of 2007, it is one of four Pennsylvania state game farms producing about 200,000 pheasants each year for release on land open to public hunting. The Northcentral State Game Farm is in the Plunketts Creek valley just south of Proctor, and a part of it is on the right bank of Loyalsock Creek downstream of the confluence. The Loyalsock State Game Farm is 13 miles (21 km) downstream on Loyalsock Creek, at the village of Loyalsockville. When a May 2007 fire destroyed a brooder house there just days before 18,000 pheasant chicks were due to hatch, the eggs were transferred to the nearby Northcentral State Game Farm without reduction in the production goal.
  As of 2007, Proctor has two separate businesses: a general store (which also sells gasoline) and a bed and breakfast. The church which used to host the annual "Proctor Homecoming" reunions still stands, but is closed. Barbours has no store or gas station, but does have one church. Barbours is home to the Plunketts Creek Township Volunteer Fire Company and township municipal building (which houses a small branch library). Since 1967, Barbours has been home to Pneu-Dart, which makes tranquilizer darts and guns for livestock and wildlife capture and control. In 1997, Pneu-Dart had eight employees. Today much of Plunketts Creek's watershed is wooded and protected as part of Loyalsock State Forest or Pennsylvania State Game Lands No. 134. Pennsylvania's state forests and game lands are managed, and small-scale lumbering operations continue in the watershed today. Barbours has one sawmill, in 1997 it had thirty contract loggers and fifteen employees, with $1.2 million in annual gross sales.
  Plunketts Creek has been a place for lumber and tourism since its villages were founded. Before the advent of automobiles, the area was quite isolated and the 16 mile (26 km) trip to Montoursville took at least three hours (today it takes less than half an hour). Residents who used to work locally now commute to Williamsport. "Cabin people" have seasonally increased the population for years, but increasing numbers now live there year-round. From 1950 to 2000, the population of Plunketts Creek Township increased 80.6 percent from 427 to 771 (for comparison, in the same period Lycoming County's population increased by only 18.6 percent, while Sullivan County's declined by 2.9 percent). Tourists still come too: the opening weekend of the trout season 
caption: The Plunketts Creek valley looking southwest, with the Northcentral State Game Farm pheasant enclosures. Coal Mine Hollow in Cove Mountain is at left.
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