Pine Creek

About

Pine Creek, Pennsylvania — PA Grand Canyon, 47-Mile Gorge, Tiadaghton SF. The gauge tells the working paddler most of what he needs. USGS station 01549700 averages 780 CFS, with a historical flow near 720, and the water reads best between 300 and 1,500 — a Class I–II run across most of its 73 miles through Tioga and Lycoming counties. The river divides into three natural sections: Ansonia to Tiadaghton, 28 miles of upper gorge and the most scenic stretch; Tiadaghton to Blackwell, 25 miles of mid-gorge classic; and Blackwell to Waterville, 18 miles of lower gorge shadowed by rail-trail.

Before any of that, the gorge belonged to the Seneca Nation, the westernmost of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, Confederacy. They used the canyon as a travel corridor and hunting ground and called the region 'Tiadaghton' — a name that survives on the state forest and on the river's own sections. Settlement came slowly and painfully. People pushed onto Pine Creek's banks several years before the Revolution, though many abandoned their improvements before the fighting ended. By 1775 the first laid-out road through Pine Creek Township was little more than a bridle path, yet it marked a determined push into the wild interior.

When peace allowed, the settlers returned around 1785. Among the earliest was Claudius Boatman, who filed for land along Pine Creek in October 1785 and likely moved his family in by spring 1786. Within a generation the creek's tributaries became the engine of a booming timber industry. John and James English raised the first sawmills along Little Pine Creek in 1809, launching a wood-cutting enterprise that would run for decades.

That enterprise defined the valley. From the 1850s through 1920, Pine Creek was one of the most heavily used log-drive routes in Pennsylvania history, with millions of board feet of white pine driven each year to the Williamsport mills. By 1880 Williamsport was the richest city per capita in the country. The drives culminated every spring at the Jersey Shore boom. For a century the log rafts rode the current downstream, until 1909, when the last raft floated down Little Pine Creek and the great lumber era passed quietly into memory.

What the loggers left behind became recreation. In 2012 the completion of the Pine Creek Rail-Trail on the former Jersey Shore, Pine Creek & Buffalo Railroad bed created a 62-mile pathway through the gorge, uniquely suited to paddle-and-bike combinations. The river is now the heart of Tiadaghton State Forest, carries the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon designation, and runs a wild brown and rainbow trout fishery. The lower river downstream of the gorge is a designated Pennsylvania Scenic River, and PA DCNR's 2016 Pine Creek Corridor Management Plan governs its use. Outfitters like Pine Creek Outfitters run gorge canoe trips and rail-trail shuttles, while Wolfe's General Store handles rentals and camping at Blackwell — the same current, put to gentler work.