Along the Allegheny River: The Southern Watershed

By Charles E. Williams

The Allegheny River of western Pennsylvania and New York rises in Potter County, Pennsylvania, and flows 320 miles to its confluence with the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh. The Allegheny s southern watershed district begins in East Brady, Pennsylvania, and ends in Pittsburgh, and it includes the historic Redbank Creek, Mahoning Creek, Crooked Creek, and Kiskiminetas River valleys. Along the Allegheny River: The Southern Watershed features over 200 vintage postcards of the landscapes, people, industries, and events that shaped the history of the southern Allegheny River Valley and of the nation. These absorbing images chronicle over 200 years of history from the frontier wars of the 18th century to the rise and growth of
the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Aug 30, 2006
• ISBN: 9781439616314

Charles E. Williams

Charles E. Williams is an ecologist, regional historian, and writer whose work focuses on the landscapes of northern Pennsylvania. He is the author of Along the Allegheny River: The Northern Watershed, Along the Allegheny River: The Southern Watershed, and Along the Bucktail Highway.

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INTRODUCTION

The Allegheny River Basin of western Pennsylvania and southwestern New York drains an area of about 11,400 square miles, of which 9,310 square miles—82 percent of the basin’s area—lie in Pennsylvania. It is a river basin of contrasts. In the north, it is a region of scenic winding creeks and rivers, abundant trout streams, deep forests, and quaint villages interspersed with the occasional small city. In the south, the Allegheny River becomes a working river. Locks and dams regulate its flow; factories, industrial centers, and large cities, like Pittsburgh and its suburbs, crowd its banks. Elsewhere in the more rural southern basin, crop and hay fields alternate with patches of woodland, creating a quilt-work landscape of varied form and texture. And the scattered oil and gas wells of the north are largely replaced in the south by the mines and tipples of the abundant fuel that spurred the Industrial Revolution and the explosive growth of the southern basin in the early 1900s: coal.

The southern basin or Southern Watershed of the Allegheny River is the focus of this book. The Southern Watershed includes the Lower Allegheny River and its major tributaries: Red Bank Creek, Mahoning Creek, Crooked Creek, and the Kiskiminetas River. Together with my previous book on the Northern Watershed, Along the Allegheny River: the Southern Watershed provides a unique pictorial history of people, places, and events in the Allegheny River Basin using vintage postcards. Postcards were the e-mail of the early 20th century. Inexpensive to buy and send, postcards were the ideal media for conveying quick notes or messages to family and friends. Arriving at a train stop on time, checking on a relative’s health, inviting a friend for a visit, or just saying hello from a vacation spot often warranted sending a postal. From a historical perspective, postcards also provide a window into the past, showing street scenes, scenic views, buildings, industries, and land uses that no longer exist or have been changed beyond recognition.

As in Along the Allegheny River: The Northern Watershed, I have organized the chapters in this book by watershed beginning with the major tributaries of the Southern Allegheny River Basin—Red Bank Creek, Mahoning Creek, Crooked Creek and the Kiskiminetas River—and ending with the Lower Allegheny River Valley. I have again followed the watershed classification of the Allegheny Watershed Atlas in organizing the five chapters of this book. Because I could find few images of people and places for the Crooked Creek Valley, I have included this watershed in a single chapter along with the Mahoning Creek Valley, the watershed immediately to the north of Crooked Creek. I have also broken up the Kiskiminetas River Valley, the largest watershed in both the northern and southern basins of the Allegheny River Valley, into two chapters—the Kiskiminetas River and Loyalhanna Creek Valleys and the Conemaugh River Valley—to better balance images and story lines. Within the chapters for tributaries, images are arranged in a downstream-upstream manner, beginning with geographic locales at or near the mouth of a tributary and ending with locales at or near its headwaters. For example, the chapter on the Red Bank Creek Valley begins with the town of New Bethlehem at the lower reaches of the creek in Clarion County and ends at Dubois near the creek’s headwaters in Clearfield County. Images for the chapter on the Lower Allegheny River Valley are organized in the opposite manner, beginning upstream near East Brady in Clarion County and ending at the river’s mouth at Pittsburgh in Allegheny County. As in my previous book, I must stress that Along the Allegheny River: The Southern Watershed is neither a comprehensive history nor a complete geography of the region. Instead it provides historical snapshots of people, places, and events in the Southern Watershed, viewed through the postcards of times past.

I should also provide some background on the history of postcards as I occasionally mention different postcard types when referring to an image in the text. Postcards in the United States developed in a series of discrete eras from about 1900 to 1940. Prior to 1898, privately printed postcards required the letter rate postage of 2¢, whereas government-printed postal cards required only 1¢ postage. Thus there was little economic incentive for buying and sending privately printed postcards at the time. Then in 1898, the private mailing card emerged, which required only 1¢ postage. Messages could only be written on the front of the card, the back being reserved for the mailing address and the required inscription, Private Mailing Card, Authorized by Act of Congress on May 19, 1898. The era of private mailing cards lasted from 1898 to 1901. The year 1901 ushered in the undivided-back postcard era, which lasted until 1907. As in private mailing cards, messages were written on the front of the card. The authorization inscription was dropped from the back of the card, which now bore the words Post Card. In 1907, the divided-back postcard era began. The back of these cards had separate fields for message and mailing address, and the front was reserved solely for an image. The divided-back postcard era ended in 1915, when threat of war with Germany, where most undivided and divided-back cards were printed, stymied imports. In 1916, postcard printing technology improved in the United States and the white border postcard era began. It lasted until 1930. These cards had a distinct white border around the image on the front of the card, hence the name. The linen postcard era began in 1930 and lasted until 1945. These cards were printed on linen-type paper and often had vivid colors. The final era, the photochrome or Modern Chrome era, began in 1939 and continues to the present. Photochrome cards sport a sharp, high-quality color or black-and-white photographic image. The majority of postcards presented in Along the Allegheny River: the Southern Watershed span the eras from 1901 to 1945. Undivided-back and divided back cards are especially well represented.

One

THE RED BANK CREEK VALLEY

About 75 miles in length from its headwaters in Jefferson County to its confluence with the Allegheny River near Wattersonville, Armstrong