The Susquehanna River ( ; Lenape: ) is a major river located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, crossing three lower Northeast states (New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland). At long, it is the longest river on the East Coast of the United States. By watershed area, it is the 16th-largest river in the United States,Susquehanna River Trail Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, accessed March 25, 2010.Susquehanna River , Green Works Radio, accessed March 25, 2010. and also the longest river in the early 21st-century continental United States without commercial boat traffic.
The Susquehanna River forms from two main branches: the North Branch, which rises in Cooperstown, New York, and is regarded by federal mapmakers as the main branch or headwaters, and the West Branch, which rises in western Pennsylvania and joins the main branch near Northumberland in central Pennsylvania.
The river drains , including nearly half of the land area of Pennsylvania. The drainage basin includes portions of the Allegheny Plateau region of the Appalachian Mountains, cutting through a succession of water gaps in a broad zigzag course to flow across the rural heartland of southeastern Pennsylvania and northeastern Maryland in the lateral near-parallel array of mountain ridges. The river empties into the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay at Perryville and Havre de Grace, Maryland, providing half of the bay's freshwater inflow. The bay lies in the flooded valley, or ria, of the Susquehanna.
Geology The Susquehanna River is likely an old river, cutting across the grain of ancient rift basins in the Piedmont as well as faults and folds of the Appalachians. It may have been established during the late Jurassic, Cretaceous or Tertiary Periods, tens to more than one hundred million years ago, when southeasterly drainage to the Atlantic Ocean Basin was established. The list of rivers by age gives its age as 270-340 million years.
Course Both branches and the lower Susquehanna were part of important regional transportation corridors. The river was extensively used for muscle-powered ferries, boats, and canal boat shipping of bulk goods in the brief decades before the Pennsylvania Canal system was eclipsed by the coming of age of steam-powered railways. While the railroad industry has been less prevalent since the closures and mergers of the 1950s–1960s, a wide-ranging rail transportation infrastructure still operates along the river's shores.
North Branch Susquehanna Also called the Main Branch Susquehanna, the longer branch of the river rises at the outlet of Otsego Lake in Cooperstown, New York. From there, the north branch of the river runs west-southwest through rural farmland and dairy country, receiving the Unadilla River at Sidney. It dips south into Pennsylvania briefly to turn sharply 90 degrees west at Susquehanna and again 90 degrees north at Great Bend hooking back into New York. It receives the Chenango in downtown Binghamton. After meandering westwards, it turns south crossing the line again through the twin towns of Waverly, New York, and Sayre, Pennsylvania, and their large right bank railyard, once briefly holding the largest structure in the United States devoted to the maintenance and construction of railroad locomotives.Lehigh Valley Railroad's Engine refurbishment and construction work at Sayre yard.
A couple of miles south, in Athens Township, Pennsylvania, it receives the Chemung from the northwest. It makes a right-angle curve between Sayre and Towanda to cut through the Endless Mountains in the Allegheny Plateau of Pennsylvania. It receives the Lackawanna River southwest of Scranton and turns sharply to the southwest, flowing through the former anthracite industrial heartland in the mountain ridges of northeastern Pennsylvania, past Pittston City (Greater Pittston), Wilkes-Barre, Nanticoke, Shickshinny, Berwick, Bloomsburg, and Danville, before receiving the West Branch at Northumberland.
West Branch Susquehanna
The origin of the official West Branch is near Elmora, Pennsylvania, in northern Cambria County near the contemporary and US Route 219297 Mitchel Rd, Carrolltown, Cambria County, PA 15722 Lat,Lng: 40.584789, -78.718370 per BING Maps (locally Plank Road). It travels northeasterly through the towns of Northern Cambria, Cherry Tree, Burnside, Mahaffey and Curwensville (where the river is dammed to form a lake), into and through Clearfield, where it receives Clearfield Creek.
The West Branch turns to the southeast and passes Karthaus (at Mosquito Creek), Keating (at Sinnemahoning Creek), Renovo and Lock Haven, where it receives Bald Eagle Creek. At Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, Pine Creek, the largest tributary of the West Branch Susquehanna River, is received. Pine Creek has the largest watershed of all the West Branch’s tributaries. It passes Williamsport, where both Lycoming Creek and Loyalsock Creek empty into it, then turns south, passing Lewisburg, before joining the North Branch flowing from the northwest at Northumberland.
Main Susquehanna flow
Downstream from the confluence of its branches in Northumberland, the river flows south past Selinsgrove, where it is joined by its Penns Creek tributary, and cuts through a water gap at the western end of Mahantongo Mountain. It receives the Juniata River from the northwest at Duncannon, then passes through its last water gap, the Susquehanna Gap through the Blue Mountain Ridge, just northwest of Harrisburg.
Downtown Harrisburg developed on the east side of the river, which is nearly a mile wide here. Harrisburg is the largest city located on the lower river, which flows southeast across South Central Pennsylvania, forming the border between York and Lancaster counties, and receiving Swatara Creek from the northeast. It crosses into northern Maryland approximately northeast of Baltimore and is joined by Octoraro Creek from the northeast and Deer Creek from the northwest. The river enters the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay at Havre de Grace. Concord Point Light was built here in 1827 to accommodate the increasing navigational traffic.
Naming "Susquehanna" may come from the Lenape word siskëwahane, meaning "Muddy River". Alternatively, it may come from another Lenape term, Sisa'we'hak'hanna, which means "Oyster River".Brinton, Daniel G., C.F. Denke, and Albert Anthony. A Lenâpé – English Dictionary. Biblio Bazaar, 2009. , p. 132. Oyster beds were widespread in the bay near the mouth of the river, which the Lenape farmed. They left oyster shell middens at their villages."History on the Half-Shell: The Story of New York City and Its Oysters." (n.d.), New York Public Library blog. Retrieved May 20, 2017, from https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/06/01/history-half-shell-intertwined-story-new-york-city-and-its-oysters A third account translates "Susquehanna" from the Susquehannock language, of the Iroquoian family, as "the stream that falls toward the south" or "long-crooked-river".
The Lenape are an Algonquian-speaking Native American people who had communities ranging from coastal Connecticut through New York and Long Island, and further south into New Jersey and Delaware in the mid-Atlantic area. Their settlements in Pennsylvania included Con'esto'ga ("Roof-place" or "town", modern Washington Boro, Lancaster County), also called Ka'ot'sch'ie'ra ("Place-crawfish", modern Chickisalunga, Lancaster County), or Gasch'guch'sa ("Great-fall-in-river", modern Conewago Falls, Lancaster County). They were called Minquas ("quite different"), or Sisa'we'hak'hanna'lenno'wak ("Oyster-river-people") by others.Brinton, Daniel G., C.F. Denke, and Albert Anthony. A Lenâpé – English Dictionary. Biblio Bazaar, 2009. , pp. 81, 85,132. The Lenape also called the area Sisa'we'hak'hanna'unk ("Oyster-river-place").Zeisberger, David. Indian Dictionary: English, German, Iroquois—The Onondaga and Algonquin—The Delaware. Harvard University Press, 1887. , pp. 48, 161, and 222.
History
The Susquehanna River has played an important role in the history of the United States. In the late 17th century, William Penn, the founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, negotiated with the Lenape (Delaware) to allow European settlement along the lower Delaware River—part of Lenapehoking, the ancestral homeland of the Lenape. He then negotiated with the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) to open land for settlement along the Susquehanna. In the first half of the 18th century, thousands of German and Scots-Irish immigrants flooded into the lower Susquehanna River valley and established farms and villages. By the late 18th century, the river became an important transportation corridor as goods and foodstuffs were brought to markets downriver. In the early 19th century, the construction of canals beside the river allowed anthracite coal mined in Northeastern Pennsylvania to be shipped downriver to ports and cities along the Atlantic coast.
17th century
At the time of European contact, the lower valley was occupied by the Susquehannock. They were first described by John Smith, who explored the upper reaches of Chesapeake Bay in 1608. The Susquehannock were active in the fur trade and established trading relationships with Virginia, New Sweden and New Netherland. They were in conflict with Maryland until a treaty was negotiated in 1652, and were the target of intermittent attacks by the Haudenosaunee. By the 1670s, their population had declined sharply as a result of disease and war. Some Susquehannock migrated south into Maryland while others were absorbed by the Haudenosaunee. In the late 1680s, a remnant group of Susquehannock established a settlement on the Conestoga River and became known as the Conestoga.
In 1615, French explorer Étienne Brûlé may have descended the Susquehanna River from its confluence with the Chemung River to Chesapeake Bay. Although he left no written record, Brûlé later reported to Samuel de Champlain that he had travelled "along a river which discharges on the coast of Florida," and that he had "proceeded along the said river to the sea, past islands and the coasts near them."
In the first half of the 17th century, the North Branch of the Susquehanna River may have been the home of the Scahentoarrhonon. The name appears in the Jesuit Relations in a list of Iroquoian-speaking nations and has been translated as "Nation of the Great Meadow." Pioneer ethnolinguist J. N. B. Hewitt believed that this referred to the Wyoming Valley and that the area was known as Scahentowanen by the Haudenosaunee. Archaeologists, however, have not been able to find any evidence of permanent Indigenous occupation in this area during the 17th century.
18th century
Following the demise of the Susquehannock, the Haudenosaunee claimed control of the Susquehanna River valley by right of conquest. They allowed displaced Lenape, Shawnee, Conoy, Nanticoke, and Mahican groups fleeing European encroachment to settle in the Wyoming Valley and at Shamokin, located near the confluence of the West and North Branches. In 1728, the Haudenosaunee sent the Oneida leader Shikellamy to oversee the new settlements. Moravian missionaries began visiting the region in the 1740s and worked among these communities. Notable among the missionaries was David Zeisberger, who would spend more than sixty years living among the Lenape.