Early settlers of the Susquehanna Valley were always ready to share their stories, whether dealing with the Indians, hardships, or encounters with wild animals. Bears, panthers, wolves, elk and buffalo were all main characters in those stories, some true, some partly true, some embellished to the point of disbelief. Among the stories published in newspapers over the years focused on the movements of the “packet boat” wolf. 

At one time, the wolf population in areas such as the West Branch Valley was plentiful. Jacob Quiggle lived in the Lock Haven area, dying at the age of 90 in 1911. He often told how his father would go at sunset to his back door near Pine Station, Clinton County, and imitate the barking of a wolf. The wolves would answer it from the summit of the mountain, first one, then two, until the entire pack would yell in chorus. If he continued his imitation long enough, the animals would descend into the valley and even come to the edge of his fields.

By the time canal boats arrived, the wolf population had become scarce, the bounty hunters and the farmers, who set poison, having pretty well succeeded in either killing or driving them into the Black Forest and to the North and Seven Mountains. In the 1840s, there were no longer packs of wolves. They traveled singly or in pairs. We pick up the story of the “packet boat” wolf from a story in the Selinsgrove Times-Tribune.

“Then it began to be noticed that a wolf was following the night packet boat. The animal used the old Indian trail which ran along the top of Bald Eagle Mountain, near Lock Haven. It took the trail soon after the boat left Williamsport and did not give it up until at the right side of Castanea Gap, which is located near Lock Haven. From the top of the mountain the wolf could see the lights of the boat down in the valley. Whenever the wolf neared a gap, it would give some unearthly howls, and every dog in the valley usually answered.

People seldom heard the wolf in the summer months when the days were long. However, people presumed he followed the boat, because they heard him on stormy nights. People assigned many causes for his nightly trip. The chief thought was that he was charmed with the lights. Others were that he was driven by hunger or that the motion of the boat looked to him like some great animal.

“Some thought him a fantasy, although huge marks were tracked in the snow. When all this started, farmers in the valley were too much occupied with their work to pay attention to an animal who as as they knew harmed one or anything.. Then as time went on the "packet boat wolf" became so well known that a number of hunters vied with each other to get him. These brave nimrods posted themselves along a path on the mountain summits awaiting his arrival. They were always disappointed to see the packet boat pass them, and then to hear the wolf from another mountain top.

“The hunters waited night after night. It seemed like wasted time. Then they set a number of traps along the trail baited with poisons, but the packet boat wolf always managed to dodge the trap. If the wolf was as hungry as people said, it was strange he did not take the veal and mutton filled with strychnine. The trappers found other animals dead near the traps.

“One time when a large number of hunters were out on the mountains west of Aughanbaugh's Gap, driving deer, they noticed the packet boat coming up the valley. They quickly formed a human cordon across the mountaintop and down its sides. The wolf would have to turn back or go thru them. Much to their anger, they heard the familiar barking after the boat had passed coming from the extreme end of the mountain, to the west. The wolf seemed to have a charmed life, and then when the hunters talked it over all agreed that no one had ever seen the wolf.

“Perhaps after all it was not a wolf. As the mountains were full of wolves in those days, it might have been a different wolf every night. There were some people who liked to hear the packet boat wolf nightly, and there were those who shivered at the sound. This condition lasted for years.”

An 1847 flood tore up portions of the canal that had to be rebuilt, and the wolf story quieted down. When canal traffic resumed. Folks once again hoped for the return of the packet boat wolf. 

Over in Nipponose Valley near Antes Creek lived Jacob Steyne, a farmer. He raised many sheep, which he pastured in the woods on the mountainsides. His daughter Caroline was one of those fortunate people who can always make friends with animals, wild or tame. Her pets were wild animals, having at different times been baby bears and deer. One evening late in October, she with her little brother and sister started for the woodland for the sheep.

On their way they saw a large black wolf seated on its haunches under an apple tree. The animal looked at the children. Caroline was nine years old at the time. She sent her little brother and sister home and then began picking wild asters, gradually walking nearer the large wolf. She was not in the least afraid.

When she reached home, her father asked her why she lingered in the woods so late. She told him about the big black wolf she had seen.

He said, "And you did not run for your life?" To which she replied, "I surely did not, for if I had the wolf would have been scared." The father then called his dogs and armed with his gun started out for the wolf. He first gathered seven neighbors. At Bastress Road the dogs got the scent, and up the mountain they went. On the topmost peak the dogs cornered their victim, but he broke thru.

After leading the dogs a merry chase for five miles, the wolf came back in the direction of the hunters.. Nearer and nearer came the wolf with the dogs yelping at his back. Two of the men, expert shots, fired at thirty feet.

The wolf, followed by the dogs, darted down into a ravine. There was nothing for the hunters to do but scramble down the gorge. It was now the hour that hunters call "the hour between dog and wolf." The dogs were barking wildly. The wolf must be at bay. As the tired hunters came in sight they saw two thin trails of blood, side by side, in the sand and mud. The hunters were almost upon the wolf and dogs before they saw them. The wolf was propped up against a tree, his forefeet covered with blood, snapping at the dogs, game to the end. The first man on the scene leveled his rifle. There was a loud report, and the wolf lay dead. The hunters examined the wolf's body carefully.

The animal, from tip to tip, was within three inches of six feet and was estimated to weigh 100 pounds. With both fore shoulders broken, it had run down a mountainside and perished only when exhausted."

That night, when the Williamsport-Lock Haven packet-boat made its initial trip after the repairs to the canal consequent to the great flood, no barking wolf followed its lights from the distant summits of the “dark and sombre ridge” of the Bald Eagles. Night followed night, but they never heard the packet-wolf again.