Using River Travel to Improve the Interior of Pennsylvania

An earlier Susquehanna Footprints post entitled Early Transportation on The North Branch of the Susquehanna River, noted that from 1762 to 1825, most of the conveyance of goods or persons was carried on the Susquehanna River (as well as the Juniata). There were few if any roads, and what trails there were along the river and through the wilderness were paths.

We add to that story, using references outlined in the Chapter Internal Improvements in the History of That Part of the Susquehanna and Juniata Valleys Embraced in the Counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union and Snyder. The authors stressed the importance of using the waters of the Susquehanna and Juniata to develop the interior of Pennsylvania.

“A convention was held at Paxtang on the 19th of October 1780, to take measures for the improvement of the Susquehanna River. Charles Smith, Anthony Selin, William Wilson, Frederick Antes, Aaron Levy, Andrew Straub and others were delegates. They resolved to solicit subscriptions, to be received in money, grain or produce of any kind, to be paid in at Boyd & Wilson's store, in Northumberland; Teutzer & Derr's mill, at Derrstown (now Lewisburg); Selin & Snyder's, in Penn township (now Selinsgrove). Nothing further has been learned of their success. Three of these men here named were founders of towns, Selin of Selinsgrove, Aaron Levy of Aaronsburg, and Straub of Straubstown (now Freeburg).

In the year 1796, Zachariah Poulson, an editor and printer in Philadelphia, published a pamphlet entitled, " Description of the River Susquehanna, with observations on the present state of its trade and navigation, and their practicable and probable improvements." It contains an account of the river and the advantages to be derived from its improvement, from which the following is quoted: " The West Branch of the Susquehanna is at present navigable for boats of ten tons about one hundred and fifty miles from its mouth to Sunbury. A person who had been with a boat of that burthen (obsolete word for tonnage of a boat), laden with provisions for the surveyors in the western part of Pennsylvania, informed Mr. Cooper, of Manchester, England (who had been gathering information concerning America), that he stopped at the Whetstone Quarry, in the forks of Sunbury, and could have gone fifteen miles further."

Of the Juniata River the writer (Poulson) says, "It flows through the Allegheny Mountains from the west, pursues an irregular and winding course into the Susquehanna through a mountainous, broken, but cultivable country. It is navigable one hundred and twenty miles from its mouth, and forms, with the Susquehanna, the most important of all the communications between Lake Erie with the western country and the Atlantic. In the spring of one thousand seven hundred and ninety-five, Mr. Kryder came down from his mill, near the Standing Stone on Juniata, in the neighborhood of Huntingdon, and about eighty-six miles from the Susquehanna, in a flat-bottomed boat, with one hundred and seventy barrels of flour. He passed Wright's Ferry in the morning. He was at Havre de Grace with time enough in the evening of the same day to put his flour on board a shallop, (an open wooden workboat such as a barge, dory, or rowboat), which delivered it at Baltimore the next day at twelve o'clock."

The chapter continues, “In a note to the " Description of the Susquehanna" 1796, boats, known as arks, were valuable forms of river transportation. The boats which come down the Susquehanna in the spring are from fifty to seventy feet long, and about fifteen feet wide, carrying from one to three hundred barrels of flour, and navigated by four men. They are built, without any iron or caulking, of two-inch plank, jointed and pinned in a frame, and draw from twelve to eighteen inches of water. These boats, not being intended to return, are sold as plank and scantling nearly at their original cost. Behind these smaller boats, from five to eight tons burthen, may be towed for the purpose of carrying up returns. Neither these boats nor any other calculated for the Susquehanna can navigate the bay any further than Havre de Grace.

The smaller boats here mentioned were known as keelboats and were brought back up the rivers by the use of setting poles. They were used on return trips for the transportation of groceries, hardware, iron, gypsum and general merchandise. Gypsum was used as a fertilizer. The first shipments down the rivers were of lumber, of which Poulson says : " Large quantities have been brought down the Susquehanna from the distance of three hundred miles above its mouth during the freshets of spring, and rafts of boards, masts and all kinds of timber have been floated from the State of New York and the head-waters of the Susquehanna, as well as down the Tioga and Juniata branches for several hundred miles in their different windings."

In addition, the writers said, “In the year 1790, "The Society for the Improvement of Roads and Inland Navigation " estimated that " one hundred and fifty thousand bushels of grain had been brought down the Susquehanna" that year, . . . and of that amount " Juniata, (the lands on the banks of which are but in an infant state of cultivation,) afforded a considerable portion." The report of the society also stated that “In the year 1788 large quantities of wheat and flour were carried up the river for the use of settlers in Northumberland County (which then embraced, west of the river, all of Union and Snyder Counties and a considerable region to the northward and westward. In 1790, after the month of March, thirty thousand bushels of wheat returned down the stream from the same county.

The rapid settlement of the interior of the State and the cultivation of the lands demanded an outlet to market, and every step taken towards the improvement of inland navigation was an incentive for agricultural improvement. In January 1791, Penn's Creek, in Snyder and Union Counties, Little Juniata, in Perry County, Conococheague, Spring Creek and Tuscarora, in Juniata County, were all declared public highways.”

Further improvements to the state’s transportation system would come when ground was broken in 1826 for a canal system in various sections of Pennsylvania.