Plunketts Creek is an approximately 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 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 (although one has since changed its name). 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. Tourism, hunting, and fishing have long been important in the region, and the year-round population of Plunketts Creek Township is increasing much faster than that of either Lycoming or Sullivan County.
Name Plunketts Creek is named for Colonel William Plunkett, a physician, who was the first president judge of Northumberland County after it was formed in 1772. During conflicts with Native Americans, he treated wounded settlers and fought the natives. Plunkett led a Pennsylvania expedition in the Pennamite–Yankee War to forcibly remove settlers from Connecticut, who had claimed and settled on lands also claimed by Pennsylvania. For his services, Plunkett was granted six tracts of land totaling on November 14, 1776, although the land was not actually surveyed until September 1783. Plunkett's land included the creek's mouth, so Plunketts Creek was given his name. Note: ISBN refers to the Heritage Books July 1996 reprint. URL is to a scan of the 1892 version with some OCR typos.
During the American Revolution, Plunkett did not actively support the revolution and thus was suspected of being sympathetic to the British Empire. He died in 1791, aged about 100, and was buried in Northumberland, without a grave marker or monument (except for the creek that bears his name). Lycoming County was formed from Northumberland County in 1795. When Plunketts Creek Township was formed in Lycoming County in 1838, the original name proposed was "Plunkett Township" but the lingering suspicions of his British sympathies led to that name being rejected. Naming the township for the creek was an acceptable compromise.
Plunketts Creek Township was originally much larger than it is now, and two other townships were formed from parts of it. When Sullivan County was formed from Lycoming County on March 15, 1847, Plunketts Creek Township was divided between the counties, with each having a township of the same name. This led to some confusion and in 1856 the citizens of Sullivan County petitioned the state legislature to change the name of their Plunketts Creek Township to Hillsgrove Township, for Hillsgrove, the main village and post office in the township. In 1866, Cascade Township was formed from parts of Hepburn and Plunketts Creek Townships in Lycoming County.
According to Meginness (1892), Colonel Plunkett actually spelled his last name "Plunket", but the current spelling was established "by custom and the courts". As of 2018, it is the only stream officially named "Plunketts Creek" on USGS maps of the United States and in the USGS Geographic Names Information System. (There is a "Plunkett Creek" in Tennessee which has "Plunketts Creek" as an official variant name). The possessive apostrophe is not part of the official name of the creek, although records from the 19th century often spell it as "Plunkett's Creek". No Native American name for Plunketts Creek is known. Two streams in the watershed have given their names to roads in Plunketts Creek Township: Engle Run Drive and Mock Run Road.
Course The source of Plunketts Creek is 1440 ft (439 m) above sea level, northwest of the unincorporated village of Hillsgrove and just south of the Loyalsock State Forest in Hillsgrove Township, Sullivan County. The source is a pond just north of Pennsylvania Route 4010 (the road between the villages of Proctor and Hillsgrove) and Plunketts Creek crosses the road twice, then receives two unnamed tributaries on the right bank as it flows generally southwest about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) to the Lycoming County line.
The creek continues southwest as it enters Plunketts Creek Township and receives Reibsan Run on the left bank, 4.70 miles (7.56 km2) upstream from the mouth. It next receives Mock Creek at the hamlet of Hoppestown (4.24 miles (6.82 km) from the mouth), then Wolf Run (2.72 miles (4.38 km) from the mouth), both on the right bank. At the village of Proctor, Plunketts Creek receives King Run (1.66 miles (2.67 km)) on the right bank, then turns south towards Loyalsock Creek. It flows through the Pennsylvania Game Commission's Northcentral Game Farm, then receives the unnamed tributary in Coal Mine Hollow on the right bank and Dry Run on the left bank (0.82 miles (1.32 km) and 0.17 miles (0.27 km), respectively). It finally enters the village of Barbours, where its mouth is on the right bank of Loyalsock Creek at 725 feet (221 m).
Lycoming County is about 130 miles (209 km) northwest of Philadelphia and 165 miles (266 km) east-northeast of Pittsburgh. Although Plunketts Creek is 6.2 miles (10.0 km) long,}U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. The National Map , accessed August 8, 2011 the direct distance between the source and the mouth is only 4.1 miles (6.6 km). From the mouth of Plunketts Creek it is 19.50 miles (31.38 km2) along Loyalsock Creek to its confluence with the West Branch Susquehanna River at Montoursville. The elevation at the source is 1440 feet (439 m), while the mouth is at an elevation of 725 feet (221 m). The difference in elevation, 715 feet (218 m), divided by the length of the creek of 6.2 miles (10.0 km) gives the average drop in elevation per unit length of creek or relief ratio of 115.3 feet/mile (21.8 m/km). For comparison, the relief ratio of Wallis Run (the next watershed to the southwest) is 110.9 feet/mile (21.0 m/km), while Loyalsock Creek's is only 28.0 feet/mile (5.33 m/km).
Floods
Plunketts Creek can vary greatly in depth, depending on the season and recent precipitation. Its water level is typically highest (perhaps 3 feet (1 m) deep) in spring or for a few days after a heavy rain, and lowest in late summer, when it can shrink to a trickle. While there is no stream gauge on Plunketts Creek, a rough estimate of the creek's water level may be found from the stream gauge on the Loyalsock Creek bridge in Barbours, just downstream of the mouth. Lycoming County operates this gauge as part of the county-wide flood warning system. It only measures the water height (not discharge), and measured a record gauge height of on September 7, 2011.
The September 2011 flood was caused by remnants of Tropical Storm Lee, which dumped of rainfall in the nearby village of Shunk in Fox Township in Sullivan County (just north of the creek's source). The 2011 flooding caused widespread damage in Proctor and Barbours and destroyed a small stone bridge on Wallis Run Road in Proctor over King Run, a tributary of Plunketts Creek. The Barbours Fire Hall became an "emergency relief center offering food, shelter and supplies to victims of the flood". Further downstream on the Loyalsock, the flooding badly damaged the historic Hillsgrove Covered Bridge, washed out sections of Pennsylvania Route 87 along the creek, and destroyed the Pennsylvania Route 973 and Lycoming Valley Railroad bridges over the creek near and in Montoursville.
The previous record flood reached on the Loyalsock flood gauge at Barbours on January 19–20, 1996. This major flood resulted from heavy rain, snow melt, and ice dams, which caused millions of dollars of damage throughout Lycoming County, and six deaths on Lycoming Creek in and near Williamsport. On Plunketts Creek, the flood heavily damaged and later caused the demolition of Plunketts Creek Bridge No. 3, a mid-19th century stone arch bridge listed on the National Register of Historic Places. For images of six black and white photographs of the bridge and the report, see . The flood waters were 4 feet (1.2 m) deep in Barbours and it was called the village's "worst flood in history" at the time.
Geology
Plunketts Creek is in the southern edge of the dissected Allegheny Plateau, near the Allegheny Front. The underlying bedrock is sandstone and shale, mostly from the Mississippian sub-period, with rock from the Devonian period in the north of the watershed. The northern edge of the Plunketts Creek drainage basin is formed by Burnetts Ridge and Popple Ridge. Plunketts Creek flows along the north side of Camp Mountain and, on turning south at Proctor, forms a water gap between it and Cove Mountain (to the west).
The watershed has no oil or conventional natural gas fields. However, a potentially large source of natural gas is the Marcellus shale, which lies 1.5 to 2.0 miles (2.4 to 3.2 km) below the surface here and stretches from New York through Pennsylvania to Ohio and West Virginia. Estimates of the total natural gas in the black shale from the Devonian period range from 168 to 516 trillion cubic feet (4.76 to 14.6 trillion m3), with at least 10 percent considered recoverable.
The Pennsylvania Bureau of Topographic and Geologic Survey's "Distribution of Pennsylvania Coals" map shows no major deposits of coal in the Plunketts Creek watershed, and only one deposit nearby in the Loyalsock Creek watershed (in southern Plunketts Creek Township). However, Meginness (1892) refers to coal mines in Plunketts Creek Township, and there is an unnamed tributary of Plunketts Creek in "Coal Mine Hollow" on the right bank between Dry Run and King Run, so it seems a small coal mine operated there in the past.
Much of the Plunketts Creek valley (and those of its tributaries) is composed of various glacial deposits. Closer to the mouth, there are large deposits of alluvium, as well as alluvial fan and alluvial terraces. Many of the glacial deposits are associated with the Wisconsin glaciation, with stratified drift and till, as well as outwash present. The alluvium is "10 feet (3 m) or more thick in the lower reaches of the Plunketts Creek valley", but only "6 feet (2 m) thick in headward tributary valleys". The outwash is described as "stratified sand and gravel that form terrace remnants along the flanks of Loyalsock Creek and Plunketts Creek valleys".
Watershed
The Plunketts Creek watershed drains parts of Cascade, McNett, and Plunketts Creek townships in Lycoming County, and Fox and Hillsgrove Townships in Sullivan County (with most of the watershed in Plunketts Creek Township). The drainage basin area is , accounting for 4.78% of the Loyalsock Creek watershed. Bear Creek, whose mouth is also within the village of Barbours but on the opposite (left) bank, is the nearest major creek at 0.52 miles (0.84 km) downstream, as measured along Loyalsock Creek. (It is also known as "Big Bear Creek" as it is the watershed upstream of "Little Bear Creek".) The neighboring major watersheds on the same bank are Wallis Run (9.56 miles (15.39 km) downstream) and Mill Creek (at the village of Hillsgrove, 9.16 miles (14.74 km) upstream). Pleasant Stream, a tributary of Lycoming Creek, is the watershed to the north.