Cherry Springs State Park
[adsense]
History
Native Americans
Archeological evidence shows that 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. 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.
Map of the park and its facilities
Historical records show that the earliest known inhabitants of the West Branch Susquehanna River drainage basin, which includes Cherry Springs State Park, were the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks. They were a matriarchal society that lived in large long houses in stockaded villages. Decimated by disease and warfare with the Five Nations of the Iroquois, by 1675 they had died out, moved away, or been assimilated into other tribes. Another name for the tribe is “Susquehanna”, and both the river and the Susquehannock State Forest which almost completely surrounds the park are named for them.
After the departure of the Susquehannocks, the lands of the West Branch Susquehanna River valley were under the nominal control of the Iroquois, who lived in long houses, primarily in what is now upstate New York, and had a strong confederacy which gave them power beyond their numbers. The Seneca, members of the Iroquois Confederacy, hunted in the area of what is now Cherry Springs State Park. Their nearest villages were 51 miles (82 km) to the northeast at modern Painted Post, New York, and 43 miles (69 km) to the southeast at what is now Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. The Seneca had temporary hunting camps to the east in the area of Pine Creek Gorge. To fill the void left by the demise of the Susquehannocks, the Iroquois also encouraged displaced tribes from the east to settle in the West Branch watershed, including the Lenape (or Delaware) and Shawnee.
The Seneca allowed very few travelers to pass through the area and kept non-native settlement to a minimum. The French and Indian War (17541763) led to the migration of many Native Americans westward to the Ohio River basin, and more departed after the American Revolutionary War (17751783). The United States acquired the Last Purchase, including what is now Cherry Springs State Park, from the Iroquois in the second Treaty of Fort Stanwix in October 1784. In the years that followed, Native Americans almost entirely left Pennsylvania.
Pioneers and lumber
Potter County was formed from part of Lycoming County on March 26, 1804, but the difficult terrain and thick old-growth forest prevented the new county from being settled by European-Americans until 1808. Prior to the arrival of William Penn and his Quaker colonists in 1682, up to 90 percent of what is now Pennsylvania was covered with woods: more than 31,000 square miles (80,000 km2) of Eastern White Pine, Eastern Hemlock, and a mix of hardwoods. The forests in and near the three original counties, Philadelphia, Bucks, and Chester, were the first to be harvested, as the early settlers used the readily available timber and cleared land for agriculture. By the time of the American Revolution, logging had reached the interior and mountainous regions, and became a leading industry in Pennsylvania. Trees furnished fuel to heat homes, tannin for the state’s many tanneries, and wood for construction, furniture, and barrel making. Large areas of forest were harvested by colliers to fire iron furnaces. Rifle stocks and shingles were made from Pennsylvania timber, as were a wide variety of household utensils, and the first Conestoga wagons.
The CCC built this replica of the Cherry Springs Hotel, the tavern built by Jonathan Edgcomb in 1818.
The area surrounding Cherry Springs State Park has been a wilderness for much of its history. A bridle path was cut through the woods in 18061807, and was widened to accommodate wagons in 1812. (Modern Pennsylvania Route 44, which passes through the park, follows the course of this path between Jersey Shore and Coudersport.) In 1818 the Ceres Land Company, which owned much of the land in Potter County and sought to open the area to settlement, hired an early settler, Jonathan Edgcomb, to build a tavern or hotel for travelers at the site of the park. The hotel was in a very remote location 16 miles (26 km) south of Coudersport, and its visitors were few, occasional wandering travelers or Native Americans.
Edgcomb and his wife received 100 acres (40 ha) of land in exchange for building the hotel and running it for three years. When the contract expired in 1821, they sold their land and left the area, but the hotel and land that Edgcomb had cleared became known as “Edgcomb’s Clearing”. The Jersey Shore and Coudersport Turnpike was constructed along the wagon path between 1825 and 1834, and tolls were collected for travel on the road until 1860. The park is in West Branch Township, which was incorporated from Eulalia Township in 1856. A post office was opened at Edgcomb’s Clearing in 1873; the locals petitioned the United States Post Office to change the name to “Cherryville”, for a nearby group of Black Cherry trees. However, since there was already a Cherryville, Pennsylvania, post office in Lehigh Township in Northampton County, the name “Cherry Spring” was chosen as a compromise. In time an “s” was added, hence the name “Cherry Springs”. There are also at least two springs in the park.
In 1874 a new, larger hotel was built on the other side of the road from the original tavern. It provided accommodations for wealthy summer visitors from Coudersport. This part of Potter County became known for an abundance of game and fish, and attracted hunters and anglers who also stayed at the Cherry Springs Hotel. This era as a “sportsmen paradise” was not to last, as the more profitable lumber industry came to West Branch and surrounding townships, which were home to “some of the tallest, straightest timber left standing” along the East Coast of the United States.
When lumbermen reached the Cherry Springs area in the late 1880s, Eastern White Pine and Eastern Hemlock covered the surrounding mountains. Lumberjacks harvested the trees and sent them down the creeks to the West Branch Susquehanna River to the Susquehanna Boom and sawmills at Williamsport. Clearcutting allowed silt to choke the streams, and nothing was left except the dried-out tree tops, which became a fire hazard. As a result, large swaths of land burned and were left barren, and much of the central part of the state became known as the “Pennsylvania Desert”. The Cherry Springs Hotel itself burned in 1897 and the property was abandoned.
Civilian Conservation Corps
As the timber was exhausted and the land burned, many companies simply abandoned their holdings. 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. The first land for the Susquehannock State Forest was acquired in 1901; the cost for the major acquisitions was an average of .50 per acre (.18 per ha). This is roughly equivalent to per acre (7 per ha) in 2010 terms. As of 2003, the Susquehannock State Forest, which almost entirely surrounds the park, covered 265,000 acres (107,000 ha), chiefly in Potter County with small tracts in Clinton and McKean counties.
“The largest and most unique of the CCC-built picnic pavilions” in Pennsylvania was constructed in 1939.
Top: highway side; bottom: Astronomy Field side.
The park traces its existence back to 1922, when the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry established three scenic areas in state forests as part of a “plan for retaining their natural beauty”. One of these was the 6.5-mile (10.5 km) “Cherry Springs Scenic Drive” on the old Coudersport-Jersey Shore Turnpike. That same year, one of 16 ”Class B” public campgrounds in the state forests was located on Cherry Springs Drive.[b] These campgrounds were free for the public to use and all had potable water, picnic tables, a fire place, garbage can, and a latrine. The land where the hotel sat was purchased by the state in 1932.
Like many state parks in north central Pennsylvania, development of the facilities at Cherry Springs was the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a work relief program for young men from unemployed families. Established in 1933 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation, the CCC was designed to combat unemployment during the Great Depression. It operated in every U.S. state, and established ten CCC camps in the Susquehannock State Forest, of which eight were in Potter County.
Cherry Springs was home to CCC Camp S-136-Pa, which was established on May 27, 1933. According to the camp’s 1936 History: “Through the efforts of the [CCC] enrollees Cherry Springs Park, formerly a clearing, has been transformed into a park of which the people of Potter County can be proud of.”[sic] A historic recreation of the original tavern was built, as were a rifle range, picnic tables and shelters, roads, and hiking trails. The young men of the CCC camps worked to clear brush from the woods as a fire prevention measure. After clearing the woods, they planted stands of Norway Spruce and white pine, as well as an apple orchard. Camp-136-Pa closed on July 10, 1937.
The other CCC-built picnic pavilion has a hexagonal roof and