Upper Pine Bottom State Park is a Pennsylvania state park in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, 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. Though it began as a public campsite and once had a picnic pavilion, it is for day use only and its only facilities are a few picnic tables and a parking area.
Upper Pine Bottom State Park is one of the smallest state parks in Pennsylvania, and is maintained by staff from nearby Little Pine State Park. In addition to picnics, its chief use is as a parking area for local hunters, anglers, hikers, cross-country skiers, snowmobilers, and all-terrain vehicle riders. Upper Pine Bottom Run is state-approved and stocked for trout fishing in season. Second-growth forest now covers the region; the surrounding state forest and park are home to a variety of flora and fauna.
History
Native Americans Humans have lived in what is now Pennsylvania since at least 10,000 BC. The first settlers were Paleo-Indian nomadic hunters known from their stone tools. Note: For a general overview of Native American History in the West Branch Susquehanna watershed, see Retrieved on June 16, 2017. Note: ISBN refers to the Heritage Books July 1996 reprint. URL is to a scan of the 1892 version with some OCR typos. The hunter-gatherers of the Archaic period, which lasted locally from 7000 to 1000 BC, used a greater variety of more sophisticated stone artifacts. The Woodland period marked the gradual transition to semi-permanent villages and horticulture, between 1000 BC and 1500 AD. Archeological evidence found in the state from this time includes a range of pottery types and styles, burial mounds, pipes, bows and arrows, and ornaments.
Upper Pine Bottom State Park is in the West Branch Susquehanna River drainage basin, the earliest recorded inhabitants of which were the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks. They were a matriarchal society that lived in stockaded villages of large long houses. Upper Pine Bottom Run is at the southern end of the Pine Creek Gorge, and the mountains surrounding the gorge were "occasionally inhabited" by the Susquehannocks. Their numbers were greatly reduced by disease and warfare with the Five Nations of the Iroquois, and by 1675 they had died out, moved away, or been assimilated into other tribes.
After this, the lands of the West Branch Susquehanna River valley were under the nominal control of the Iroquois. They lived in long houses, primarily in what is now New York, and had a strong confederacy which gave them power beyond their numbers. The Iroquois and other tribes used the Pine Creek Path through the gorge, traveling between a path on the Genesee River in modern New York in the north, and the Great Shamokin Path along the West Branch Susquehanna River in the south. The Seneca tribe of the Iroquois believed that the Pine Creek Gorge was sacred land and never established a permanent settlement there, though they did use the path through the gorge and had seasonal hunting camps along it. Note: ISBN refers to 1998 impression
To fill the void left by the demise of the Susquehannocks, the Iroquois encouraged displaced tribes from the east to settle in the West Branch watershed, including the Shawnee and Lenape (or Delaware). Note: ISBN refers to a 1999 reprint edition. The valleys of Pine Creek and its tributaries in Cummings Township were used by the Iroquois and Algonkian tribes as a hunting ground. Historians believe that there may have been a Shawnee village and burial ground just to the north of Little Pine State Park on Little Pine Creek, just a few miles from what became Upper Pine Bottom State Park.
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) led to the migration of many Native Americans westward to the Ohio River basin. In October 1784, the United States acquired a large tract of land, including what is now Upper Pine Bottom State Park, from the Iroquois in the Second Treaty of Fort Stanwix (this acquisition is known in Pennsylvania as the Last Purchase). In the years that followed, Native Americans almost entirely left Pennsylvania; however some isolated bands of natives remained in the Pine Creek Gorge until the War of 1812.
Lumber and turnpike 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 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 to the furnace on steep mountain roads. These costs were too high, and the furnace lost almost $7,000 (approximately $ in ) 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 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 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 and charged a horse-drawn wagon $1.68 to travel the entire road. Note: URL is to an authorized reprint of the article as "History of Cherry Springs State Park" on Kevin Wigell's Astronomy Page 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 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 left barren. In the spring of 1894 a fire burned in what is now Tiadaghton State Forest along Route 44 to near Haneyville. In the summer of 1908 the area around the park burned again, in a fire that stretched from Galeton to Jersey Shore. The soil was depleted of nutrients, fires baked the ground hard, and jungles of blueberries, blackberries, and mountain laurel covered the clearcut land, which became known as the "Pennsylvania Desert". Disastrous floods swept the area periodically and much of the wildlife was wiped out.
State forest and park
As the timber was exhausted and the land burned, many companies simply abandoned their holdings. Conservationists like Joseph Rothrock became concerned that the forests would not regrow if they were not managed properly. They called for the state to purchase land from the lumber companies and for a change in the philosophy of forest management. In 1895 Rothrock was appointed the first commissioner of the Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters, the forerunner of today's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. In 1897 the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed legislation which authorized the purchase of "unseated lands for forest reservations" and the first Pennsylvania state forest lands were acquired the following year.
On July 13, 1898, the state bought a tract of land in Cummings Township for $72.99 ($ in terms). This was the first purchase for what became Tiadaghton State Forest, which surrounds Upper Pine Bottom State Park. Most of the major purchases for it were made between 1900 and 1935. , the Tiadaghton State Forest covered , chiefly in Lycoming County with small tracts in Clinton, Potter, Tioga, and Union Counties. The largest section of the state forest covers in the Pine Creek valley (and encircles the park). Note: The print version is a map on one side, with a guide to the state forest and its resources on the other side