History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania, Part 168

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co.
Number of Pages: 1438

USA > Pennsylvania > Monroe County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 168
USA > Pennsylvania > Pike County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 168
USA > Pennsylvania > Wayne County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 168

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The contract for the construction of the Southern Division-the original Delaware and Cobb's Gap Railroad-was put under way in June, 1853. As heretofore explained, this sec- tion, sixty-one miles in length, extended from Scranton, through Cobb's Gap, and so on in a general sontheasterly direction, through the western part of Luzerne (now Lackawanna) County and across the county of Monroc, through the Delaware Water Gap, to a point on the river five miles below, where it connected with the Warren Railroad of New Jersey. Going by this railroad nineteen miles to New Hampton Summit, and there making connec- tion by the Central Railroad of New Jersey with Jersey City, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company found a market for the product of the extensive coal-fields of which it had become possessed, and a few years later the relations between the Lackawanna Valley and the sea-board were rendered still more intimate by the leasing of the Morris and Essex Railroad.

MONROE COUNTY.

1033

ISAAC TRISBAUGH PUTERBAUGH, who for over forty years has been identified with the management of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, and officially connected therewith, was born in Nescopeck township, Luzerne County, Pa., December 22, 1822. His early opportunities for book knowledge were very limited, and confined to the district school. At the age of ten years he went to live with his brother, Samuel H., a miller, at

quaintance of Miss Elizabeth George, a daugliter of Henry and Catherine George, of Nanticoke, Luzerne County, Pa., whom he married in 1843. The result of this union was one son, Harrison S. Puterbaugh, a conductor on the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad since 1871, and who married May Lungar, of New Hampton, N. J., and one daughter, Alice, who died at the age of four years.

Soon after his marriage Mr. Puterbaugh

HI. Peterlaugh

Pittston, Pa., and remained with him there and at Mchoopany for three years, which was followed by one year's service on the farm of Bishop Jennings. Going to Wilkes-Barre, hc apprenticed himself to Hugh Fell, a wheel- wright, for three years, and upon the death of Mr. Fell, carried on the business on his own account for two years thereafter in the same shop, and for some time afterwards in a shop built by himself.

removed to Scranton, then a small hamlet of a few houses, at the time of the construction of the Northern Division of the Delaware, Lacka- wanna and Western Railroad. There he en- tered the employ of the company, and at first engaged in building cars to be run on the road, and subsequently served as conductor on coal, passenger and other trains until 1865. For one year he had taken up his residence at Great Bend, where the death of both his wife and

While in Wilkes-Barre he formed the ac- | young daughter occurred. In 1865 he re-

101

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WAYNE, PIKE AND MONROE COUNTIES, PENNSYLVANIA.

moved to East Stroudsburg, then a part of Stroud township, where he has continued his official relations with the company, and acted as dispatcher of trains, looking after wreckages and employees, and after the general busi- ness of that division of the road. His identi- fication with the workings of the road since its construction has made his name familiar all along the line, and wherever known, his in- tegrity of purpose, his conscientious regard for the rights of others and his sound judgment and discretion in the management of men have gained for him the confidence and favorable opinion of all.

(the subject of this sketch), Margaret and Eliza- beth. Of these, only Isaac T. Puterbaugh survives in 1886. The family is of German origin.

CHAPTER VII.

TOPOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY.

THE first thing to be noticed in Monroe County topography is the uniformity of its mountain, and consequent drainage systems.

However, to the eye of the mere landscape hunter, as he surveys, from some height, a wild diversity of hill and vale, of jutting crags and unexpected " knobs," of billowy ridges, scatter- ing lakes and meandering streams, there appears rather a class of natural beauty, than any sug- gestion of order, or of methodical arrangement ; nevertheless, to the more patent and analytical investigation of the student of nature, the lead- ing topographical features of the county will present themselves as parts of one harmonious design.

Since his residence at East Stroudsburg he has been closely identified with the growth and prosperity of the place, and a contributor to its various interests. Upon the erection of the borough of East Stroudsburg, in 1871, he was chosen its first chief burgess on the Democratic ticket, and by re-election served in that capacity for two years. He has served also as auditor and school director of the borough for several terms. Very soon after settling at East Stroudsburg, Mr. Puterbaugh bought the property where the Traversing the county in a northeast and southwest direction run three, and, in tlie west end of the county, four, parallel ranges of mountains, or hills, and these determine the courses of the numerous creeks and rivers of the county. Lackawanna House now stands, on Crystal Street, and subsequently furnished the means to build the present hotel, and built the house occupied by Dr. Lewis Bush, adjoining the hotel. On the corner of Cortland and Starbird Streets he erected the residence now occupied First, on the north, we have the high table- lands of the Pocono Plateau, elevated above tide-water from one thousand five hundred to two thousand feet, and along which, and back from the southern escarpment ten or twelve miles, runs the northern boundary line of the county. by A. C. Loder, ticket agent at East Strouds- burg, and in 1882 he erected the residence of liis son on Cortland Street. He is one of the charter members of the First National Bank of Stroudsburg and was for some time one of its directors, and he is the treasurer of the fund for the erection of the silk manufactory at East South from the precipitous southern escarp- ment of the mountain a rolling plain extends six to eight miles, to Godfrey's Ridge in the east and to Wire Ridge in the west end of the county. This rolling country lies at an eleva- tion above tide of from one thousand to four hundred feet, the decline being gradual from the north to the south. Stroudsburg, in process of construction in 1886. His father, George Puterbaugh, was a farmer in Nescopeck township, and died in Dallas town- ship, in the same county, at the advanced age of over four-score years. His mother, Effie Henry, was a native of New England, and removed with her parents to Nescopeck town- ship. She died about two years before her We now come to the second notable elevation in Monroe County topography-Godfrey's Ridge, otherwise known geographically as husband. Both were members of the Presby- terian Church. Their children were Andrew, George, John, Joseph, Samuel H., Isaac T. ! Walpack Ridge, and also known locally as

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MONROE COUNTY.

Fox Hill, Chestnut Hill Mountain and Doden- dorf Mountain, the last two names being applied in Ross and Eldred townships to detached elevations which are really continuations of the same ridge. The next important range south is the Blue, or Kittatinny Mountain, along the crest of which, for about twenty miles, runs a between Godfrey's Ridge and the Blue Moun- tain. Cherry Creek pursues a northeasterly course, emptying into the Delaware just below the mouth of Brodhead's Creek and just above the Delaware Water Gap. Aquanchicola Creek flows southwest, along the westward extension of the same valley, and empties into portion of the southern line of the county. | the Lehigh River at Lehigh Gap, in Carbon County.

The fourth elevation above referred to as giving character to the drainage is Wire Ridge, ex- tending in a westerly or southwesterly direction from the west line of Hamilton township, and bisecting the western extension of the Strouds- burg Valley.

From the numerous springs, or spring-fed ponds upon the Pocono Plateau, or its southern slope, most of the streams that traverse the county, and ultimately find an outlet, either through the Delaware Water Gap or the Lehigh Gap, have their rise. These streams, commenc- ing at the eastern or Pike County line, and naming them in their order, are :

Big Bushkill, which in the lower portion of its course forms the boundary between Monroe and Pike Counties, Marshall's Creek, Brod- head's Creek, Pocono Creek and McMichael's Creek. All of thesc rise in the Pocono region, and pursuing a general course of south to south- east, empty, either directly or indirectly, into the Delaware River, which, from the eastern line of the county to the Delaware Water Gap, flows along the northern foot of the Blue Mountain, and forms the remaining portion of the southern boundary of the county. The Pocono Creek empties into McMichael's Creek, and McMichael's into Brodhead's Creek at Stroudsburg, and all of the streams above mentioned, in their course from the Pocono Mountain to the Delaware River, cut through the hard rocks of the intervening ridges, forming thus those wild gorges and magnificent cataracts and cascades which have been the wonder and delight of many generations, both civilized and uncivilized.

Cherry Creek and Aquanchicola Creck Icad a more quiet life, and have a less romatic his- tory. They head near together in the neigli- borhood of the Wind Gap, and flow in opposite directions along the narrow valley which lies

Pohopoco or Big Creek and Frantz's Creek rise in the western part of the county and flow southwest across the Carbon County line ; the former along the north side of Wire Ridge, emptying into the Lehigh River, car Weiss- port, and the latter along the south side of the same ridge; but at Little Gap, in Carbon Coun- ty, it cuts through Godfrey's Ridge on the south and empties into the Aquanchicola.

Besides these streams, which traverse the low- land districts of the county, there are three or four belonging entirely, so far as their relations to Monroe County are concerned, to the Pocono Plateau, viz .: The Tobyhanna, which riscs near the north line of the county, pursues a general southwest course to the Little Tunkhan- nock, which here forms the line between Mon- roe and Carbon, and here, mingling its waters with the latter stream, the two combined con- tinue the northwest course of the Little Tunk- hannock, emptying into the Lehigh River near Stoddardsville.

The Tunkhannock, or Big Tunkhannock,1 rises near the middle of the Plateau, flows southwest and empties into the Tobyhanna, near the middle of its course. The Little Tunk- hannock, before referred to, rises near the south- ern edge of the Plateau, flows through Long Pond, in Tunkhannock township,-the pond being a mere lateral expansion of the creek as it flows through a tract of swamp land, -- crosses the old Easton and Wilkes-Barre turnpike and then, making a sharp bend to the northwest, at which point it is intersected by the artificial boundary line between Monroe and Carbon, it

1 In the Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, re- port for Pike and Monroe Countics, p. 30, this stream is called "Tunkhanna," and the Little Tunkhannock is called simply the " Tunkhannock," but locally these two streams are distinguished by the names here given.

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WAYNE, PIKE AND MONROE COUNTIES, PENNSYLVANIA.

takes a direct course to the Lehigh, meeting on the way the Tobyhanna, as before mentioned. The Lehigh River is the only remaining notable stream of the county. This river rises in Wayne County, flows southwest and for about twelve miles above the mouth of the Tobyhan- na it forms the line between Monroe County on the one side and Lackawanna and Luzerne Counties on the other.

Monroe County, then, is an irregular figure bounded on the north by Luzerne, Lackawanna, Wayne and Pike Counties, on the east by Pike County, on the south by the Delaware River, separating it from New Jersey, and by a sur- veyor's line along the top of the Blue Moun- tain, separating it from Northampton County, and on the west by a surveyor's line and the Little Tunkhannock and Tobyhanna Creeks, separating it from Carbon County. In its ex- treme length it is about thirty-one miles, dis- regarding the meanderings of the Delaware River, and about thirty miles in extreme width. Its southern and western lines are, however, several miles longer than its northern and east- ern lines. Its superficial area is five hundred and eighty-five square miles, or three hundred and seventy-four thousand four hundred acres, of which fully one-half lie on what we may eall the second floor of the county : i. e., on the Pocono Plateau ..

A eross-seetion of the county would look about like this,-

Possessed, so far as yet discovered, of a few valuable ores, and with a rock formation that gives little promise in this direction, witlı sur- face strata whose place in the geologieal gamut is thousands of feet below the coal-measures of the adjoining counties north and west, there would seem to be little of a mineralogical na- ture in Monroe County geology of value, re- garded from a merely economie stand-point, aside from her flagstone, her limestone, her cement and paint-beds, and, in some localities, her Mareellus slates and iron-ore.

But throughout this romantie distriet there is rich and abundant material for seientifie re- search, and to the eye of the scholar, if not to that of the capitalist, the roeks of Monroe must ever be of profound interest ; for here nature has stamped, in indelible lines, the record of her pre-historie operations ; and here the God of nature, before He gave the Deealogue to Moses, inseribed upon these tables of stone the fiat of His will.

GLACIATION .- The evidences of glacial action, except in a portion of the western townships, are wide-spread and abundant throughout the county, in the shape of drift deposits, morainie mounds, glacial stric, and the planed and polished surfaces of the rocks, as well as by their disruption and erosion.

The two great gaps which oeeur in the Blue Mountain within the limits of this county, and which are known as the Delaware Water Gap

SCALE : Horizontal lines, 5 miles to 1 inch ; vertical, 3000 feet to 1 inch.

REFERENCES : a, Pocona Plateau; b, southern escarpment of mountain ; e, rolling country, extending from Pocono range, on the north to Godfrey's Ridge on the south, in the eastern end of the county, and to Wire Ridge in western end of county ; d, Godfrey's Ridge, otherwise called Walpack Ridge ; e, Cherry Valley : f, Monroe County side of theBlue or Kittatinny Mountain.

The map on the following page shows a topo- graphieal outline of the county with its principal streams and mountain ranges.

Geologists deelare that Monroe County is as interesting, in a geological point of view, as it is uninteresting mineralogieally. (See Second Geologieal Report, Pike and Monroe Counties, 1882.)

and the Wind Gap, stand as everlasting monu- ments, doubtless, of the resistless power of the great northern glacier, which at one time cov- ered nearly the whole face of this county, in common with mueh of Northern Pennsylvania and the States adjoining.

Upon the tops of our highest mountains, twenty-one hundred and fifty feet above tide,

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MONROE COUNTY.

the great glacier has left his foot-prints in scratches and grooves in the solid rock, and in the Stroudsburg Valley and Cherry Valley as well, the same well-known marks are found at elevations only four hundred to four hundred and fifty feet above tide. The direction of these stric is always "toward the southwest, corresponding, in some degree, with the trend of the mountains. The strice of greatest eleva- tion, viz .: those at twenty-one hundred and fifty feet above tide, which are found in Cool- baugh township, above Tobyhanna Mills, bear

Ridge, has been removed from the top and side of the northern slope by this same power, all the way from Carpenter's Point to Strouds- burg. The cauda-galli, which originally underlay the corniferous limestone, has been de- nuded, except in protected folds, and now forms the surface roek of the north slope, bare and pol- ished by the ice, while huge blocks of the cornif- erous limestone have been hurled over the southı front of the ridge, and scattered far and wide by the transporting power of the ice, or deposited in mounds and ridges, along with morainie debris.

Wayne Co. :

PIKE

County

Lac

Lehigh River

CT /Tunkhannock Cr.

Bis

Bus

kill

Luzerne

anna

hanno

R Pond

POCONO

siTouds > Burg

Water Gap

Mc Michaels CT.

Big

wire Mt

Pohopoco

Frantz's Cr.

Aquanchicola Cr

TOPOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE MAP OF MONROE COUNTY.

S. 5º W., or very nearly due south ; those far- ther down, and nearer the sturdy barriers of Godfrey's Ridge and the Blue Mountain, bear more to the west, some of them as much as 70° west of south.

The hard rocks of Southern Monroe, like the corniferous limestone and eauda-galli of Godfrey's Ridge, have been planed and polished by this same resistless agency, and Professor White, in his report upon the Second Geologi- cal Survey of Pike and Monroe Counties (pp. 46, 47), states that nearly the entire stratum of eorniferous limestone, which, in pre-glacial times, covered the southern side of Godfrey's

This stupendous result was doubtless facili- tated by reason of the double system of joints which prevails in this stratum,-to wit, the bedding-planes and transverse seams furnislı- ing numerous fissures, into which the glaeier drove its Titanic wedges, thus tearing off im- mense masses of rock at once,-but if this has been done to Godfrey's or Walpack Ridge, it is not difficult to believe that the same ageney was able, and actually did, eleave asunder the Me- dina sandstone and Oneida conglomerate of the Blue Mountain, when, with imperceptible movement, but with an energy resistless as fate, the great ice-sheet pressed down upon it, and

River-

Pocono

Brodheads CI

Marshalls Cr

stroudsburg

Godfreys Ridge

Cherry Creek Blue Mountain

"Wind Gap

1038

WAYNE, PIKE AND MONROE COUNTIES, PENNSYLVANIA.

thus, aided and supplemented by the wild rush of the pent-up sub-glacial waters, were the two gate-ways, above referred to, opened through the mountain.

Professor White, in his Report, already re- ferred to (p. 63), referring to the Wind Gap, says :

" I could find no evidence that the Northern Ice had ever passed through the notch, so that its origin can- not be ascribed to glacial erosion, although it may have served as a waste-weir through which the water from the melting Ice escaped Southward, when it filled the old valley to the North to an elevation higher than the level of the surface in the Gap. '

And Professor Lesley, in a note upon the same subject, says :

" If this gap " (referring to the Lehigh Gap), " and the Delaware Water Gap were occupied, the one by a high, wide tongue of ice, banked against the Bake- Oven, and the other by the great New York main glacier, then, although the sub-glacial waters would still issue by ice-caverns through the two gaps, the residual surface glacial waters would probably be obliged to pour over the crest of the Blue Mountain. If they did this at the Bake-Oven for a short time, the only part of the problem of the genesis of thesc two remarkable topographical phenomena remaining unexplained would be the selection of these two points along the crest in preference to any others."

The great terminal moraine enters the county across the crest of the Blue or Kittatinny Moun- tains diagonally, between Fox Gap and Wind Gap, and is thence plainly traced by its ridge of drift deposit, in a northwesterly direction, to the vicinity of Saylorsburg, where it turns north, by the way of Mechanicsville, Brod- headsville and McMichael's to Pocono Knob, back of Tannersville, encircling the Knob on its eastern and northern sides at about two-thirds of its height, thus plainly indicating that in the glacial age this Knob stood a solitary island in the edge of a boundless sea of ice; thence to a point near the division line between Tunkhan- noek and Tobyhanna townships, where it turns Westward, and, crossing Tunkhannock town- ship north of Long Pond, it passes out of the connty a little north of the point where the Little Tunkhannock Creek becomes the county- line.

This great moraine, as it traverses the Poco- 10 Plateau, is described by Professor Lesley,

State Geologist, as a ridge of drift one hundred feet high, of so remarkable an aspect that it has been named by the inhabitants " The Long Ridge."

DRIFT DEPOSITS .- Behind this moraine- i. e., north and east of the line indicated-the whole country is covered with drift deposits. This includes the whole county, except the townships of Eldred and Polk and portions of Ross, Chestnut Hill and Tunkhannock, where drift deposits are not found, or, if so, occurring in the form of modified drift, worked over by post-glacial floods.

The drift is of the ordinary composition, con- sisting of boulders of every size, from a peb- ble to masses of rock weighing hundreds of tons and containing thousands of cubic feet,- some of them angular and others rounded and water-worn,-together with much sand, clay, and, in many localities, quick-sand. The boul- ders are of rocks coming to the surface in this and adjoining counties, no granitic or metamor- . phic rocks having been observed among them.

The drift is of varying depth,-from two hundred feet or more, in some of the valleys, down to a few feet, or perhaps an occasional boul- der on some of the summits. This is true of the southern part of the county, where the land is rolling. On the Pocono Plateau the drift is spread more uniformly, to a depth of twenty to thirty or thirty-five feet, post-glacial erosion having had less effect than where deep valleys and high hills alternate.

" KETTLE-HOLES " AND RESULTING LAKE- LETS .- Frequent depressions, or kettle-holes, occur in the drift, and some of them, having be- come filled with water, now constitute beautiful ponds or lakelets. Two of these-Echo Lake, in Middle Smithfield township, and Minneola Lake, in Chestnut Hill township-are surround- ed by high banks of drift and have no visible outlet, although the former has a subterranean drainage into Coolbaugh's Pond, and thence by the way of Pond Creek into Marshall's Creek ; and the latter has a similar underground outlet through the coarse gravel into McMichael's Creek, one-fourth of a mile distant.

Lake Paponoming, on the line between Ham- ilton and Ross townships, is also an old glacial

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MONROE COUNTY.

kettle-hole, filled with water, surrounded by banks of drift forty or fifty feet high. It has, however, now, surface drainage over a low place in its drift environment, into the Lake branch of McMichael's Creek. This lake is lo- cated in the line of the great terminal moraine. It is a beautiful lake and one of the most popu- lar resorts in the county.

To the deposition of the drift material in the glacial age, modified by subsequent floods, many of the striking features of the landscape in the vicinity of Stroudsburg are due, as well as many peculiarities of soil. Several fine ex- posures of till occur in this region, the brick- yards of Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg being adaptations of the clay of this deposit to practi- cal purposes.

BURIED VALLEYS .- Monroe, as well as Pike County, is remarkable for its great num- ber of buried valleys. The Delaware River, all the way from Port Jervis to the Delaware Water-Gap, flows over one, or, more strictly speaking, partially over two, lying at least one hundred feet below the present bed of the river, the original channel having been silted up to that deptlı.

The Stroudsburg buried valley really ex- tends through, all the way from Stroudsburg to the Hudson River at Rondout, although the middle section of it-i. e., that part from Port Jervis to Bushkill-is occupied by the Dela- ware River, which flows through it, that stream entering the valley at Port Jervis and leaving it at Bushkill, at which latter point the river cuts through Walpack, or Godfrey's Ridge, and enters the Clinton Red Shale Valley, running parallel with and south of the Stroudsburg Valley.

The Marcellus Shale is the bed-rock under- lying the whole course of this valley in Penu- sylvania and a great part of its course in New York. The castern section of this valley, run- ning from Port Jervis to Rondout, is at its highest point but about eighty feet above the river at Port Jervis, and this fact has given rise to a theory with some scientists that the Delaware may have, in pre-glacial times, run that way and formed a tributary of the Hud- son. However apocryphal this may be, it is

certain that the identity, or, rather, the unity, of the different sections of this valley is attest- ed by their geological structure, by the charac- ter and depth of their drift accumulations and by the conformation of the hill-rauges on either side.

This same Marcellus shale, or Stroudsburg Valley, continues on west from Stroudsburg, by the way of Kunkletown and Sciota, near which latter point it is bifurcated, oue branch passing northwestward along the north branch of Mc- Michael's Creek to Brodheadsville, and thence west and southwest to the Lehigh River, near Weissport, the latter part of its course being occupied by Pohopoko. Creek. The other branch keeps southwestward from Sciota, along the Lake branch of McMichael's Creek and Frantz's Creek to the point where the driftless area commences, in Ross township, southwest of the great terminal moraine, where the wide, drift-filled valley suddenly terminates, and tlie creek continues through a deep trench cut out of the Marcellus shale, whichi here comes to the surface.

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History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania, Part 168

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co. Number of Pages: 1438

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co.
Number of Pages: 1438