PA Lumber Heritage Region

PA History

The Lumber Heritage Area very obviously has a focus on one particular industry, Lumber! Pennsylvania has a long and proud lumber heritage with its very meaning being “Penn’s Woods” the forests have always played a key role in Pennsylvania History. Currently Lumber is the fourth largest industry in Pennsylvania and employs roughly 10% of all Commonwealth citizens.

 

History of the Area

The Pine Creek Gorge, better known as the PA Grand Canyon.

After being dubbed a wasteland in 1784 much of the region was bought in huge tracts by wealthy land owners. In time settlers moved into the region and began to lumber to meet local building needs. Seeing the demand for lumber downstate increase, the lumber industry in north central Pennsylvania was born. Early pioneers crated crude rafts to float lumber down the west branch to Pittsburgh and early industrial towns. By the 183o’s Pennsylvania’s forests became prime timberland. Rivers became the primary means of transporting logs and products downstream. Williamsport was transformed into the Lumber Capital of the World, boasting the largest concentration of sawmills in the US as a result of the Susquehanna Log Boom.
Here, logs are corralled by the Susquehanna Log Boom near Williamsport, Pennsylvania, waiting for rafting season in the spring.

The Susquehanna Log Boom outside Williamsport, 1923.

As the early twentieth century wore on, the LHR was the site of intensive logging and frequent wildfires. Railroads soon replaced the boom as the most efficient means of transportation, boom towns subsequently popped up along the new railroads. The forests eventually bowed down to the ax with only small amounts of virgin forest left standing. By the late 1930s, a few large lumber companies and sawmills continued operation, but remained at the brink of bankruptcy. The lumber industry had packed up and headed west, leaving a bleak, barren landscape of stumps in its tracks.
Cut Hemlocks left to dry, often for months, created the misconception that they were actually left to rot, and this was often reported in the writings of the time. In actuality, dry logs were too valuable to be abandoned. Drying them made them lighter and less slippery, therefore easier to move; in addition, they floated better in the river transport systems. A former hillside forest, shown here in 1918, covered in drying logs.

A Hillside Devastated By Logging, 1918.

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