I remember when I was 15, and took a trip for the first time with my father to Penn State’s campus. As a water works superintendent, that was where he would go every year for a state-wide seminar, which would always take place in the first week of August. We came from Bucks County, so we travelled west, and for the first few years we took the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Harrisburg. From there, we went north and crossed the river to Duncannon. However, the first year, my father missed the Harrisburg East exit and we crossed the Susquehanna River to the Harrisburg West exit. I had wanted to see the Susquehanna for a while, and also wanted to look for the Three Mile Island cooling towers. When I did see the river, what really amazed me was how wide it actually was. At that point it was about a mile wide. It looked more like a bay or a sea. I also noticed it looked shallow, as there were a lot of rocks and shoals, and low-lying islands which could easily be submerged during floods.
For the next five years after that, I went with my father to his annual seminar at State College. Every year at some point we crossed the big river. The next year, he got it right, and made the Harrisburg East exit, and continued on the highway for about five to ten miles past the city, and through a confusing clover leaf connector. We crossed the river somewhere in Dauphin County over into Duncannon, where the Susquehanna receives the Juniata River. From there, we would ride along the Juniata until Lewistown, with its huge dam, and then take 322 the rest of the way to State College. After a few years, my father took a different way to get there. Since my parents are both from Carbon County in Northeast Pennsylvania, we would travel up the turnpike’s Northeast Extension and then stay over with relatives on Sunday night. On Monday, we rode westward on I-80 until the Bellefonte exit, and then went south to State College.
With my interest in maps and geography, I wondered how the Susquehanna would look from I-80. That highway crosses the river near Bloomsburg, which I would guess is about 100 or so miles up the river from Duncannon. It also is on the main branch, before its confluence with the West Branch in Sunbury. Even up there, the river was still wide and resembled a bay or large lake. A little while after crossing the main stem, I-80 crosses the West Branch, which I was also about to see for the first time, and it too was very wide. The next year, my brother Mark started travelling with us to Penn State, and he too was amazed by the width of the river. But of course, it was also noticeable that the river did not look very deep at any of those places. It looked obvious that the river was not navigable other than for casual activities like motor boating and canoeing. Rocks and shoals were visible everywhere, and all the bridges over the river were low. At one time, there were huge anthracite and lumber industries along the river. The lumber industry may still be big, I haven’t really researched that. I sometimes wondered if some of the cities on the river like Harrisburg and Binghamton, NY would be larger metropolitan areas had the river been navigable up to those points. I guess it depends on how large and in-demand these industries were. I know anthracite was the main source of heating fuel at one time, although canals and later railroads were effective ways to transport coal.
A while back I read Susquehanna, River of Dreams and if I remember right, I read that at one time navigators did try to use the river during its flood stages. The word freshet was used to define the flood of the river caused by the spring snow melt. Apparently, these freshets made the river navigable at least for wood barges. I also remember that canals were once built alongside the river at least as far up as Columbia in Lancaster County. It was once possible to depart for Europe from there, although I don’t think that actual ocean-going vessels sailed up and down that canal. I guess that smaller boats picked up passengers and took them to a transfer point where they would board a ship. I’ll have to check that again.
But the Susquehanna has been put to use, if not for navigation, then for power. There are several dams along the river, and at least three nuclear power plants that I can think of. Three Mile Island, of course, will always be remembered. It came to epitomize the danger of nuclear power plants. Not too far downstream from TMI is the Peach Bottom plant, and up on the main stem near the I-80 bridge is Berwick. Of the dams, the one I can think of as the most well-known is Connowingo in Maryland. Other than that, I can remember Shamokin Dam near Sunbury, because the town across the river from Sunbury was named after it.
One aspect about the Susquehanna that makes news from time to time is that it is notoriously flood prone. I guess the most famous incident was Hurricane Agnes in 1972. Wilkes-Barre, in Northeast Pennsylvania was hit particularly hard and a good part of the city was underwater. I remember hearing a story (almost certainly an urban legend) about a coffin being uprooted from a cemetery in Wilkes-Barre and actually washing that deceased man’s coffin into his former home, where it opened in front of his horrified widow. But urban legends aside, there are plenty of very real stories of flooding along the river, including recently, with the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion being threatened.
What has attracted me most about the river and the entire Susquehanna Valley, is the natural beauty of the area it runs through. It is mostly mountainous and rural, and perhaps managed to stay that way because the river is not navigable by commercial vessels. I have seen it at several different points, mostly by crossing over it on highways. There are several college towns along its banks. Bloomsburg, Lock Haven, Bucknell (Lewisburg), and Susquehanna (Selinsgrove) are a few I can think of offhand. Millersville and Elizabethtown are not too far away. It runs through the heart of Pennsylvania’s Amish country and the famous group of people it is named after. There are places I haven’t been to and would like to see, especially at the river’s source and mouth. I have seen pictures of Cooperstown, NY, and Havre De Grace, MD, but have never actually been in either of those places. Cooperstown, of course, is famous for the Baseball Hall of Fame, but it also sits on Otsega Lake, which is the source of the river. I have been near Havre De Grace, since I-95 crosses the river near there, but I have never gotten off the highway and into the town itself. Aside from those places, I would like to see the confluence of the North and West branches of the river at Shikellamy State Park, where there is a vista it can be viewed from. But whatever part of the river I go near next, I want to bring my camera and get some pictures.
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