page_title: Upper Pine Bottom State Park
section_title: Lumber and turnpike
hierarchical_section_title: Upper Pine Bottom State Park / History / Lumber and turnpike
caption_attribution_description: Pennsylvania Route 44 from Upper Pine Bottom State Park, Cummings Township, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, USA
context_page_description: Upper Pine Bottom State Park is a 5-acre Pennsylvania state park in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania in the United States. The park is in Cummings Township on Pennsylvania Route 44 and is surrounded by the Tiadaghton State Forest. It is on Upper Pine Bottom Run, which gave the park its name and is a tributary of Pine Creek. Upper Pine Bottom State Park is in the Pine Creek Gorge, where the streams have cut through five major rock formations from the Devonian and Carboniferous periods.
  The earliest recorded inhabitants of the area were the Susquehannocks, followed by the Iroquois, Lenape, and Shawnee. Upper Pine Bottom Run was the site of a furnace for pig iron in 1814, the first sawmill was built on it in 1815, and in 1825 an earlier bridle path across its headwaters became a turnpike. The lumber industry led to the clearcutting of the area in the 19th century. The state forest was started in 1898 and the park was formed from it by 1923 as a Class B public camp. The Civilian Conservation Corps had a camp on the run and improved the park in the 1930s, but it was not transferred to the Bureau of State Parks until 1962.
context_section_description: The land that became Cummings Township was first settled by European Americans in 1784. Lycoming County was formed from a part of Northumberland County on April 13, 1795. Upper Pine Bottom Run was originally "famed for the wonderful white pine forest that clothed all the bottomlands", and the region was covered with eastern white pine and eastern hemlock trees, which lumbermen harvested. To accommodate larger-scale lumber operations and the large quantities of pine logs which these floated downstream to the West Branch Susquehanna River, the Pennsylvania General Assembly declared  Pine Creek a public highway on March 16, 1798.
  The area surrounding Upper Pine Bottom State Park has been a wilderness for much of its history. In 1806–1807 a bridle path was cut through the woods just west of the source of Upper Pine Bottom Run as part of a 72-mile (116 km) path between Jersey Shore (to the south, at the mouth of Pine Creek) and Coudersport (to the northwest, on the Allegheny River in Potter County). The bridle path was widened to a road to accommodate wagons in 1812.
  The new road soon brought industry to the region. The discovery of iron ore along the road led seven men to form a company to manufacture iron. In 1814 they built a furnace to produce pig iron on Upper Pine Bottom Run. It took one to two days to haul the ore to the furnace, and other supplies had to be transported 15 miles (24 km) to the furnace on steep mountain roads. These costs were too high, and the furnace lost almost $7,000 (approximately $112,000 in 2020) before closing in 1817. The ruins of the iron furnace were visible through much of the 19th century.
  The first two sawmills were built on Upper Pine Bottom Run in 1815 and 1817. In 1817, Michael and Henry Wolf also arrived in the area from Berks County and built a sawmill near the mouth of Little Pine Creek, which is 1.8 miles (2.9 km) downstream Pine Creek from the mouth of Upper Pine Bottom Run. The Wolfs' sawmill and the land they cleared for farming helped establish the unincorporated village of Waterville, which became the most significant population center in Cummings Township, and is about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) southeast of Upper Pine Bottom State Park.
  The Jersey Shore and Coudersport Turnpike was built along the former bridle path between 1825 and 1834. The turnpike, which operated until 1860, had toll booths every 5 miles (8 km) and charged a horse-drawn wagon $1.68 to travel the entire road. A post office was established in nearby Waterville in 1849; early businesses there included two stores and a hotel, which still stands. Pennsylvania Route 44, which passes through the park, still follows the course of the former path and turnpike between Haneyville (at the western end of Upper Pine Bottom Run) and Coudersport (to the north).
  Economic development and increased settlement led the Pennsylvania General Assembly to establish Cummings Township in 1832 from land taken from parts of Mifflin and Brown Townships. The new township was named for John Cummings, who was an associate judge in the local court system at the time. Early industry in the township included lumber and quarries for flag and building stone. In 1839 Clinton County was formed from the western part of Lycoming County, with much of the eastern border of the new county formed by the turnpike.
  In 1851 the Susquehanna Boom opened on the West Branch Susquehanna River at Williamsport. The log boom, a series of artificial islands with chains between them to catch logs, led to an expansion of the lumber industry and to Williamsport's nickname, "Lumber Capital of the World". In 1852, the 3 miles (4.8 km) of Upper Pine Bottom Run upstream of the mouth were made a public highway by the state legislature, and by 1888 the West Branch Lumber Company owned the headwaters of Upper Pine Bottom Run.
  The lumber era did not last; the old-growth forests were clearcut by the early 20th century and the Pine Creek Gorge was stripped bare. Nothing was left except the discarded, dried-out tree tops, which became a fire hazard, so much of the land burned and was
caption: Pennsylvania Route 44 passes through the park, and was the scene of a wildfire in 1894.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot A400", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2008:09:20 16:16:37", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "196", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "2548", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5658", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "19/5", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:09:20 16:16:37", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:09:20 16:16:37", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "189/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "123/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "123/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash fired, auto mode, red-eye reduction mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "189/32", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2048", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1536", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "2048", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "1536", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1860", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "81920/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "1536000/131", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}