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Brubaker_FM 3/12/02 9:08 AM Page i

Down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake

Brubaker_FM 3/12/02 9:08 AM Page ii

A K E Y S T O N E B O O K

A Keystone Book is so designated to distinguish it from the typical scholarly monograph that a university press publishes.
It is a book intended to serve the citizens of Pennsylvania by educating them and others, in an entertaining way, about
aspects of the history, culture, society, and environment of the state as part of the Middle Atlantic region.
Brubaker_FM 3/12/02 9:08 AM Page iii

Down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake

jack brubaker

The Pennsylvania State University Press  University Park, Pennsylvania

Brubaker_FM 3/12/02 9:08 AM Page iv

Disclaimer:
Some images in the original version of this book are not
available for inclusion in the eBook.


Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brubaker, John H.
Down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake / Jack Brubaker.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 0-271-0218-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Susquehanna River. I. Title.
GB1227.S87 B78 2002
551.48´3´09748—dc21
2001046359

Copyright © 2002 The Pennsylvania State University

All rights reserved
Printed in Canada
Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press,
University Park, PA 16802-1003

It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use

acid-free paper for the first printing of all clothbound books.
Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements
of American National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48–1992.
Brubaker_FM 3/12/02 9:08 AM Page v

to
Christine Conant Brubaker
and
John Christie Dann

the North Branch and West Branch
of my life
Brubaker_FM 3/12/02 9:08 AM Page vi
Brubaker_FM 3/12/02 9:08 AM Page vii

Contents
Prologue: Pine Creek . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Bakerton Reservoir . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Brunner Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
 Barnesboro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Marietta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Spring-Water River Canoe Place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Columbia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Ocquionis Creek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Clearfield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Columbia Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Lake Otsego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Kettle Creek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
The Outlet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Lock Haven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Rock River
The Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Great Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Turkey Hill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Cooperstown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Williamsport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Lake Clarke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Goodyear Lake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Muncy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Safe Harbor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Conestoga River . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Long Crooked River Broad, Shallow River Conowingo Pond . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Great Bend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 The Confluence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Conowingo Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Binghamton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Shamokin Riffles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Smith’s Falls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Rockbottom Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Port Treverton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Owego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Millersburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Great Bay River
Tioga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Juniata River . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Havre de Grace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Wyalusing Rocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Harrisburg: Water Gaps . . . . . . . . . 140 The Mouth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Wyoming Valley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Harrisburg: Renewal . . . . . . . . . . . 143 The Flats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Wilkes-Barre: Coal . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Harrisburg: Ice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 The Bay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Wilkes-Barre: Flood . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Harrisburg: Drought . . . . . . . . . . . 152 
Nescopeck Falls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Royalton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Epilogue: The Sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Bloomsburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Three Mile Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 An Afterword of Gratitude . . . . . . . . 249
Conewago Falls: Geology . . . . . . . . 167 A Note on Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Long Reach River Conewago Falls: Navigation . . . . . . 171 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
The Headspring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 York Haven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Brubaker_FM 3/12/02 9:08 AM Page viii
Brubaker_FM 3/12/02 9:08 AM Page ix

prologue: Pine Creek If Art Tomack owned this ridgetop grass and wild-

flower meadow, he would build an observation tower in it.

He would invite visitors to climb his tower and admire the

undulant hill-and-vale landscape of Pennsylvania’s Northern

Tier. And he would tell them something like this: Up here

in these old, eroding Appalachians, tall trees flourish on the

slopes but settlers have cleared the hilltop plateaus for agri-

culture. Up here on these mountain farms in God’s country,

the fields grow more stones than anything you could eat.

Up here, on this beautiful but unbountiful land, hardwoods

and hard rocks have conspired to make a hard working life.

And then Tomack would ask his visitors to consider this

particular ridge’s exceptional watershed—the basis for locat-

ing his tower on this hill and not the next one over. Here,

he would say, three substantial rivers originate and flow to

distant seas. This is the highest ridge, he would explain, and

Brubaker_FM 3/12/02 9:08 AM Page x

x  Prologue

everything that runs to the south is Susquehanna water and The phenomenon that Art Tomack considers worthy of
everything to the west Allegheny water and to the north marking with an observation tower—water flowing in three
Genesee water. This is the Continental Divide in the East. directions from one hill—is unusual on the perimeter of the
When he is not dreaming of building a tourist tower, Art Susquehanna’s drainage area. At most places along the high
Tomack operates a general store in the town of Gold, about grounds that divide this river’s watershed from its neigh-
a mile north of the watershed meadow and ten miles south bors, rainfall drains in one of two directions: it either trick-
of the New York border. Along with frying pans and Hershey les into the Susquehanna Basin or runs off toward the
bars, he and Betty Tomack sell T-shirts advertising “The Gold Hudson or St. Lawrence by way of a tributary in New York,
General Store: At the Headwaters of Three Rivers.” Travelers toward the Allegheny or Delaware by way of a tributary in
stop to shop and, more often than you might expect, ask Pennsylvania, or toward the Potomac or directly into the
where they can find the beginnings of these rivers. Chesapeake in Maryland. Before running to rivers, some of
Art tells headwaters hunters to drive south on Route 449 this water lingers in groundwater emerging as springs or in
to Rooks Road, hang a right, and look for the meadow at aboveground swamps and lakes and ponds, and these are
the peak of the ridge. “The triple divide,” as Betty calls it, the sources of the Susquehanna.
lies along this plateau, 2,400 feet up in the Appalachian Pine Creek’s headwaters in Potter County’s hinterlands and
Range. Springs in the meadow on the Slaybaugh farm feed thousands of other Susquehanna sources pepper the periphery
the Genesee River. Meadow springs on the adjacent Torok of a vast watershed of 27,500 square miles. On the East Coast
farm feed the Susquehanna and the Allegheny. of the United States, only the St. Lawrence’s watershed is larg-
The Genesee, as the Slaybaughs and Toroks and Tomacks er. The Susquehanna drains nearly half of Pennsylvania, an
and the Tomacks’ T-shirts will tell you, empties into Lake eighth of New York, and a fragment of Maryland. Its sources
Ontario, which feeds the St. Lawrence River and the Gulf of are all over the map.
St. Lawrence and, ultimately, the North Atlantic Ocean. The This book concentrates on the river’s ultimate begin-
Allegheny joins with the Monongahela to form the Ohio, nings—those swamps and springs farthest by water from the
and the Ohio joins the Mississippi, and the Mississippi runs river’s mouth—because most travelers searching for sources
to the Gulf of Mexico. The third set of springs feeds Pine wind up there. Likewise, most river followers who visit the
Creek, the largest tributary of the West Branch of the Tomacks’ store are looking not for a secondary source of
Susquehanna River. The West Branch meets the Susque- the Susquehanna but for the primary source of the Genesee.
hanna’s North Branch, forming the Lower Susquehanna, The ultimate sources of the Susquehanna’s branches
and the Lower Susquehanna washes into the Chesapeake spring from similarly rural but culturally distinct regions.
Bay, which runs out to the mid-Atlantic. The origins of the North Branch are associated with the
Brubaker_FM 3/12/02 9:08 AM Page xi

Prologue  xi

scenic home of the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown,

New York. The West Branch’s headsprings and streams flow Susquehanna Cooperstown
out of the humble bituminous country of Cambria County, River c h
Pennsylvania. Hard ball and soft coal. New York an

r
New York Binghamton

B
This narrative follows the flow from these dissimilar
sources to the Chesapeake. Chapters focus on particular
places along the course. Some chapters discuss an aspect of
the Susquehanna that applies not only to that place but to
others along the river. Most chapters examine how the river er

h
Williamsport

Riv
t Wilkes-Barre
Wilkes-Barre
has changed over the years. Clearfield
N or
Before we begin this journey, it might be helpful to clari-
Bra nch
st

Delawa r e
e Northumberland
fy the geography of the Susquehanna Basin by dividing the W
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania

Mai
long and convoluted river into sections.
Most people cut the Susquehanna into three parts. The Harrisburg
316-mile-long North Branch and 228-mile West Branch join

n
Columbia
at Northumberland-Sunbury to initiate the 128-mile Lower S
te
Susquehanna, also known as the Main Stem. The wide, shal-

m
low, island-jammed Lower Susquehanna, sweeping by and, Havre De Grace
0 50
in flood, through Pennsylvania’s capital at Harrisburg, is miles Maryland
Maryland Chesapeake Bay
what most people think of when they think of this old river.
The Susquehanna’s North and West branches are long
enough and far enough apart and flow through sufficiently flow at the confluence, so the Commonwealth of
disparate terrain to have characteristics very different from Pennsylvania calls it one of the Susquehanna’s “major tribu-
those of the lower river and each other. Some confusion taries.” Dedicated West Branchers appreciate this demeaning
could have been avoided if these branches had retained designation as much as they enjoy watching Penn State lose
individual names, but their complex aboriginal designations a football game.
have all but disappeared. More than 31,000 miles of streams with 31,193 names—
Most Pennsylvanians consider the North Branch the thousands of rivulets and hundreds of significant rivers and
Susquehanna’s primary course. The West Branch is shorter creeks—feed the tripartite Susquehanna. Unlike most big
and somewhat narrower and provides less volume to the rivers, the Susquehanna has several tributaries that are
Brubaker_FM 3/12/02 9:08 AM Page xii

xii  Prologue

only that tributary’s drainage, also mainly in New York;

Susquehanna
Upper and the Middle Susquehanna, which extends to the conflu-
River Basin
Susquehanna ence with the West Branch. The West Branch and Juniata
River watersheds form two more subbasins and the Lower
Chemung Susquehanna the sixth.
These subbasins make sense from a water-management
Middle perspective; and setting apart the Chemung, West Branch,
West Branch Susquehanna and Juniata systems helps emphasize the watershed’s
Susquehanna remarkably lopsided reach to the west. However, these des-
ignations do little to identify the dramatically changing
characteristics of the Susquehanna as it flows from cedar
swamps in New York toward cypress swamps in Maryland.
Juniata Lower This book uses variant translations of the Algonquian
Susquehanna word “Susquehanna” as descriptive designations for sections
of the river. No one knows with certainty what the word
means, but dozens of etymologists and historians have pro-
posed at least sixteen translations. Six of them seem to
define general segments of the Susquehanna and the river’s
0 50 changing nature as it moves south. Chapters are clustered
miles beneath these designations.
Chapters under “Spring-Water River” cover the North
nearly as substantial as the main stream where they enter Branch’s sources. The rest of the North Branch, winding
it. These include the 100-mile-long Juniata, the 74-mile into Pennsylvania and back into New York and back into
Chenango, and the 38-mile Chemung. Pennsylvania, is the “Long Crooked River.” The arcing
To organize this river’s vast and varied watershed, the West Branch is the “Long Reach River.” “Broad, Shallow
Susquehanna River Basin Commission, which coordinates River” flows from the confluence at Northumberland-
the basin’s water resources, divides it into six subbasins. Sunbury to Columbia. “Rock River” runs through the
North Branch drainage comprises three parts: the Upper Susquehanna Gorge, from south of Columbia to Tidewater.
Susquehanna, which includes much of New York’s “Great Bay River” washes into the Chesapeake.
Susquehanna drainage; the Chemung River, which includes These divisions not only differentiate and define sections
Brubaker_FM 3/12/02 9:08 AM Page xiii

Prologue  xiii

of the Susquehanna but help emphasize the river’s signifi-

cant reach through three states. In recent years, Susquehanna
Chesapeake enthusiasts have focused on the Susquehanna
principally as it relates to an endangered bay in Maryland.
In this view, Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna has all but lost Spring-
Water
its own identity and the river in New York has become an C Lo River
ro n
afterthought. As the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the
Ri okeg
Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, and other groups pro- ve

d
r
mote bay-related environmental issues, reinforced by the
Chesapeake 2000 Agreement, the river sometimes seems
g Reach
an appendage of the bay. Lon
River

low
Sharload,
It is the other way around, of course: the Chesapeake is

r
Rive
the appendage of the flooded Susquehanna. The river’s

B
ancient mouth opened into the Atlantic Ocean off the
coast of present-day Virginia. During the great ice melt-
down, the rising ocean seeped inland to form the estuary

Ro ver
Ri
around that lowest stretch of river. But the Susquehanna’s

ck
earlier course has not disappeared: its deep trench runs
Great Bay
through the bay, forming its primary shipping channel. 0 50 River
miles
Today the Susquehanna is the bay’s only indispensable
tributary. The East Coast’s largest river contributes an
extraordinary 19 million gallons of water a minute— and other sources deep in the outlands of Pennsylvania
90 percent of the upper bay’s fresh water and 50 percent and New York to and through the nation’s largest bay.
overall. Without that steady influx to hold back the briny As it changes shape, it shapes the land along the way.
Atlantic, the Chesapeake could not support its rich mix of Its journey is the story.
estuarine life. Given the river’s pervasive influence,
“Susquehanna Bay” would be the Chesapeake’s more accu-
rate designation.
At an average speed of 20 miles a day, the nation’s six-
teenth longest river rambles from Potter County springs
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page xiv

Jordanville
Ocquionis
Creek
Richfield Springs
Shadow
Lake Brook
Canadarago

O a ks
S p r i n g - Wa te
t er Lake
River Otsego
re

C
ek
Cooperstown
Phoenix Mills

Milford

Portlandville
dilla River

Goodyear Lake
ver
Ri

Oneonta
a
U na

nn
eha
Otego squ
Su
c h
B ran
Unadilla h
rt
Bainbridge No 0 5 10
Sidney New York
miles
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 1

Spring-Water River Ocquionis Creek

I stood in that meadow with sun reflecting back from the

isolated drops of water and realized that for a river like the

Susquehanna there could be no beginning. It was simply

there, the indefinable river, now broad, now narrow, in this

age turbulent, in that asleep, becoming a formidable stream

and then a spacious bay and then the ocean itself, an

unbroken chain with all parts so interrelated that it will

exist forever, even during the next age of ice.

—Thomas Applegarth upon reaching a source of the

Susquehanna in James Michener’s Chesapeake


Rain falling on a barn roof near that source of the
Susquehanna River farthest from the Chesapeake Bay rolled
off the south eaves toward the Susquehanna and the north
eaves toward the Mohawk. So it is said. The claim cannot
be verified because the barn was destroyed decades ago. In
its place is the largest monastery of the Russian Orthodox
Church outside Russia. Now rain falling on the monastery
property drains either into soggy regions to the north that
feed the Hudson by way of the Mohawk or into a swamp
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 2

2  Down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake

This mucky puddle is as unremarkable as the monastery

that soars nearby is unforgettable. One of the nation’s great
rivers rises beside a cathedral with brilliantly gilded onion-
shaped domes, where bearded, black-habited monks go
about their monastic duties just as their brethren do thou-
sands of miles away.
In 1930, two young Russian immigrant monks pur-
Image not available chased the Starkweather farm, including its old water-
dividing barn. The monks planted crops and began work
on a complex of buildings that would attract other
Russians and sightseers from around the world. They con-
structed a chapel and, in 1950, the cathedral. An expand-
ing brotherhood then built the main monastery and
opened a five-year college-level seminary. Today the
monks of Holy Trinity Monastery operate a large printing
plant and continue to farm.
To the monks, the cedar swamp is wasteland and a nui-
 Ocquionis Creek, the ultimate source stream of the Susquehanna, flows from this sance when it overfills. To Bruce Harter, who until recently
swamp near Jordanville, New York, into Lake Canadarago. In the background is Holy
Trinity Monastery of the Russian Orthodox Church. (Photo by Christine Brubaker.) lived on land adjoining the monastery property, this swamp
is the birth water of the Ocquionis (an Iroquoian word,
on the south side of the watershed ridge. The overflow from supposedly and inexplicably meaning “he is a bear”).
the swamp forms the beginning of the Susquehanna’s North Harter and his father and grandfather before him
Branch. watched Ocquionis Creek trickle out of the swamp and
These wetlands stand about 1,500 feet above the sea, con- across their land toward the village of Jordanville. Harter
siderably lower than some other elevations along the has always thought that the Ocquionis (also known as Fish
Susquehanna’s northernmost reaches, which can rise over Creek) is the ultimate source of the river. His father and
2,000 feet. Lakelike after snowmelt or spring rain, the swamp grandfather believed the same.1
shrinks to ankle depth in drought, with green and brown Ocquionis is a tranquil source. “There has never been a
bottles sticking out of the gunk. Northern white cedars and flooding, except once,” Harter says. He is standing in the
swamp grass rim the tannin-dark water. Relatively warm and side yard of his former Jordanville home, looking toward
probably spring-fed, the swamp rarely freezes in winter. the narrow course the Ocquionis takes down through the
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 3

Spring-Water River  3

fields from the monastery, half a mile away. “The monks of the first sewage treatment plants in upstate New York.
got the Department of Environmental Conservation to blow That relatively primitive plant failed in the 1950s and ’60s.
a beaver dam at the edge of the swamp in the spring of ’49 Raw human sewage mixed with the sulfur and wastes from
and that caused the flood.” dairy operations and a pea-processing plant to degrade the
Beavers occasionally dam the creek south of Jordanville lake severely and create a rare aromatic experience.
as well, and that may explain how the tiny Ocquionis pro- In the early 1970s, Richfield Springs, with state and feder-
vided sufficient water to baptize some of the original set- al support, constructed one of the nation’s first three terti-
tlers. In the decade after the War of Independence, a wave ary treatment plants, designed to remove nitrogen and
of revivalism swept through the United States. When that phosphorus. This operation eliminated most of the nutrients
wave reached the Ocquionis, those dunked in the deepened flowing from the village into the Ocquionis and
creek named the town for the biblical baptismal river. Canadarago. The quality and clarity of water in the lake
The Ocquionis is barely three feet wide where Route 167 improved dramatically.
crosses it in Jordanville, a village of fifty-some houses in Glaciers scoured out Canadarago and Otsego, its sister
Herkimer County. The creek winds west and then southeast lake to the east. The glaciers pushed moraines (boulders,
to the hamlet of Cullen, where it is joined by a tiny branch gravel, sand, and other geologic clutter) to the southern
and becomes unjumpable. Nester Shypski, one of many ends of these largest natural lakes in the Susquehanna
Russian Americans who live in this area and take pride in watershed. Meltwater, rapidly filling the two basins, soon
the monastery up on the ridge, shows where the creek runs breached the lakes’ moraine dams, and they drained down
underground for half a mile or so on his 175-acre farm. He to their approximate present elevations. They continue to
also points out “chyle holes”—deep caves into which rain- drain southward, unlike the better-known Finger Lakes far-
water disappears before joining the Ocquionis. ther west, which drain northward because their southern
When the creek reaches the village of Richfield Springs, it moraines remain unbreached.
is running about twelve feet across. Shallow and filled with Fed by the Ocquionis and three other tributaries,
rocks, it spills its sometime swamp and baptismal and Canadarago is considerably smaller and shallower than
underground water into Lake Canadarago. It also carries in Otsego—about four miles long, one and a quarter miles
sulfur from dozens of springs immediately north of the lake. wide, and, at its greatest depth, 44 feet. Yellow perch,
The Oneidas appropriately called this area Ganowanges walleye, pike, tiger muskies, pickerel, and large- and small-
(“stinking waters”). mouth bass thrive in the comparatively warm water.
Richfield Springs adds to the stink, conveying effluent Searching for the best fishing spots, hundreds of boaters
from its wastewater treatment facility into the creek less than cross wakes on the modest lake each summer.
a mile above the lake. In the late 1800s, the village built one Except where farmers plow right up to the shoreline, the
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 4

4  Down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake

lake is surrounded by cottages of mixed quality, trailer Willard Harman unfolds a multicolored map of Lake
parks, and motels catering to a seasonal trade that doubles Otsego’s watershed. The watershed, covering seventy-five
Richfield Springs’ population in July and August. The square miles, is shaped roughly like an inverted triangle,
dense summer population around the lake succeeds an with the bottom point at the Village of Cooperstown. The
earlier, grander seasonal settlement that centered on the triangle’s sides angle narrowly from the lake, then spread
sulfur springs and was confined, for the most part, to the and run far north of it, deep into the Town of Springfield.
village proper. All of the water that falls into this area, within northern
At the southern end of Canadarago, water spills over a Otsego County and a small section of eastern Herkimer
dam designed to elevate the lake by several feet. The outlet County, feeds Otsego Lake and, eventually, the
stream is called Oaks Creek. It is a fine fishing stream, filled Susquehanna.
with brook trout. “We have created two Otsego Lake protection districts,”
Some ten miles south of the lake, Oaks Creek joins the explains Dr. Harman, a professor with the State University
Susquehanna’s North Branch. Just beyond this commingling of New York College at Oneonta and director of its
of waters, this forerunner of all the long, shallow stretches Biological Field Station on this lake. “One of them is in the
of the Susquehanna can be waded during low flows without proximity of Otsego Lake and has a bunch of restrictions
wetting the knees. related directly to the lake itself. The other one, more than
twice the size of the first, protects the aquifer throughout
Lake Otsego the Town of Springfield.”
A burly biologist with a habit of talking himself nearly
An exclamation of surprise broke from the lips of
out of breath, Bill Harman is the driving force behind regu-
Deerslayer . . . when on reaching the margin of the lake he lations on the lake and in its watershed. As a scientist and a
member of Springfield’s planning board, he worries as much
beheld the view that unexpectedly met his gaze. . . . On a
about pollution entering the springs and ponds and streams
level with the point lay a broad sheet of water, so placid north of the lake as he does about more direct degradation.
“Our interest is primarily in the lake,” he says. “However,
and limpid, that it resembled a bed of the pure mountain
when you have a facility like this, you don’t just stop at the
atmosphere compressed into a setting of hills and woods. lake. The lake, like the Susquehanna, is not just a hole in
the ground with water in it. What comes off the land
—James Fenimore Cooper, describing his hero’s first around it greatly impacts on its character and what lives
sighting of Lake Otsego in The Deerslayer and doesn’t live there. And so we find ourselves more and
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 5

Spring-Water River  5

more interested in what’s going on in the lake’s watershed, Otsego—a distance of fourteen miles—and then transported
which really is more the headwaters of the Susquehanna down the Susquehanna in flat-bottomed boats. George
than the lake itself is.” Washington, passing this way in 1783 on a postwar exploring
Like Lake Canadarago, Otsego is watered by a number expedition, observed Lake Otsego and the portage path to
of creeks and brooks, most of them growing from swampy the Mohawk.
sources near the Mohawk-Susquehanna watershed divide.2 In the 1820s, Governor DeWitt Clinton and others pro-
One of these swamps, Maumee, lies in Herkimer County, posed that a canal be constructed to extend from the
just south of the Jordanville swamp that drains into recently completed Erie Canal (which parallels the Mohawk)
Canadarago. along Shadow Brook to Otsego and down the Susquehanna.
Otsego’s primary tributaries are Cripple and Hayden The plan never attracted widespread support. In the
creeks and Shadow Brook, all flowing into the northern end next decade, construction of a superior alternative—the
of the lake. The easternmost, Shadow Brook, extends about Chenango Canal, connecting the Erie Canal at Utica with
six miles and has the largest watershed. It flows almost Binghamton on the Susquehanna—killed the idea.
entirely through farmland, picking up significant amounts Because Shadow Brook is Otsego’s largest feeder stream
of nitrogen and phosphorus from manure runoff and trans- and because of this long history of travel and anticipated
porting them into Otsego. These nutrients undermine the travel along it to the lake, some local residents say it should
lake’s ecology but have no adverse effect on the enormous be considered the Susquehanna’s primary source. Every
carp that spawn each spring at Shadow Brook’s mouth in source has supporters.
picturesque Glimmerglass State Park. Neither Shadow Brook nor any other tributary or land-
In portaging from the Mohawk River to Lake Otsego, the scape feature of this region prepares a visitor for Lake
Iroquois followed paths near Shadow Brook. Three Dutch Otsego. In an agricultural area where mediocre soil insuffi-
traders probably came this way in 1614, six years before the ciently rewards all but the most determined farmers, Lake
Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. These traders began at Albany, Otsego is a 50-carat diamond in a 14-carat setting. The
canoed up the Mohawk, portaged across to Otsego, and con- Iroquois called it O-te-sa-ga. The word may mean “a place
tinued down the Susquehanna to Tioga Point. After Native of greeting,” and Native Americans certainly met and gath-
Americans captured and released them, the traders descend- ered here. In several of his nineteenth-century novels, James
ed the Susquehanna as far as the Wyoming Valley before Fenimore Cooper called it the Glimmerglass. Subdued by a
crossing to the Delaware River and returning to New York. haze that often accompanies sunrise at Otsego on calm
In 1737, Cadwallader Colden, New York’s surveyor gener- mornings, the lake can indeed seem to glimmer. Cooper
al, noted that goods could be portaged from the Mohawk to described the lake in The Chronicles of Cooperstown as
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 6

Image not available

 The pleasure boat Adelaide on Lake Otsego, 1901. (New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York.)
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 7

Spring-Water River  7

“a sheet of limpid water, extending . . . about nine miles, stone, which is dissolved by water rushing in from Shadow
and varying in width from about three-quarters of a mile to Brook and other streams and then settles to the bottom of
a mile and a half. It has many bays and points, and as the the lake as a white marl. That marl, along with blue sky and
first are graceful and sweeping, and the last low and wood- the lake’s green plankton, contributes to the lake’s distinc-
ed, they contribute largely to its beauty. The water is cool tive turquoise color on its best days.
and deep, and the fish are consequently firm and sweet. The Unlike Canadarago, Otsego is a cold-water fishery—one
two ends of the lake . . . deepen their water gradually, but of the best in the world, according to its devotees. Its cooler
there are places, on its eastern side in particular, where a lower levels shelter native lake trout and landlocked salmon.
large ship might float with her yards in the forest.” Fishing boats occasionally haul in a trout weighing more
Like most glacial, deepened valleys, Otsego’s basin is than twenty pounds. Landlocked salmon can grow to half
bathtub-shaped and steep-banked. It gathers most of its that weight. Anglers also prize the Otsego bass, a native
water from the north and west because its eastern sides are whitefish called a grayback by locals. It is closely related to
steepest, rising 400 to 600 feet above the water surface. another popular lake whitefish, the cisco or greenback, a
Otsego’s average depth is 74 feet, maximum 166 feet, making species introduced to the lake in the 1930s.
it one of the deeper lakes in New York.3 Sited so close to the All of the cold-water species (with the exception of lake
Susquehanna-Mohawk watershed divide, it is also one of the trout and landlocked salmon, whose numbers are increased
state’s higher bodies of water—1,195 feet above sea level. by annual stocking) have been declining in recent years,
Nearly half of Otsego’s shoreline, unlike Canadarago’s, is largely because they must compete for food with introduced
forested and protected from development. Most of the lake’s warm-water species. Six species of new fish, including
east side remains natural, thanks to ownership of vast acreage alewives, have been dumped into the lake illegally since the
by Cooperstown’s philanthropic and paternalistic Clark fami- 1980s. Alewives look much like small shad, but there is
ly. Crucial sections of the western slope, however, are wide nothing small about their effect on Otsego. Alewives eat
open to erosion. Rain washes silt into the lake and landslides huge meals of crustacean zooplankton, thereby starving
occur periodically at several locations. Increasingly powerful Otsego bass, ciscos, and other fish that formerly dined on
motorboats and increasingly numerous personal watercraft that food. Before it began disappearing inside alewives, zoo-
add to the problem if they raise wakes close to shore. plankton ate algae, cutting the souplike growth in Otsego to
The north end of the lake and much of its northern near zero. Now algae bloom on the lake each summer,
watershed lie on limestone, which buffers acid rain as well reducing the water’s clarity and threatening to turn its
as runoff from the acid sandstones and shales that underlie turquoise to pea green. When algae die, they sink, decom-
the southern section. Glacial scouring exposed the lime- pose, and deplete the lake’s deep-water oxygen, further
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 8

8  Down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake

jeopardizing the cold-water fishery. Thus have alewives, the windings of the impetuous Susquehanna, and the lake
an unwanted species, destabilized the entire lake culture. was alive with their numbers.”
Since 1988, more than thirty species of fish have been Now, on perfect summer afternoons (and Cooperstown
captured in the streams that feed Otsego, and most of these does have them, despite enduring 200 overcast days during
warm-water species also thrive in the lake. They include an average year), Otsego Lake is filled with fishing boats
large- and smallmouth bass, perch, sunfish, suckers, and cat- searching for trout and bass, sailboats searching for wind,
fish. The bass especially are popular among Otsego’s anglers. tour boats searching for Deerslayer’s haunts, and motor-
Young freshwater eels still occasionally enter Otsego after boats cruising the scenic waters with water skiers in tow. An
swimming all the way from the Sargasso Sea, in the North increasing number of boats, combined with escalating devel-
Atlantic Ocean. They come to Otsego by way of the opment around the lake, more pollution entering the water,
Chesapeake and the Susquehanna, somehow getting past and the ubiquitous alewives, have prompted calls for greater
huge hydroelectric dams on the Lower Susquehanna and controls on lake and watershed to preserve an outstanding
low-head dams farther north. The arduous trip, one way, fishery and Otsego’s other recreational assets.
takes about a year. As adults, these eels make the return Not to mention saving Cooperstown’s drinking water.
trip to the Sargasso. Until recently, the village’s residents drank lake water with
Eels are scarce in the lake now, but years ago they filled only chlorine added. State and federal regulations mandated
Otsego and the river. Art Andrews, a retired New York State a new filtration plant and additional chlorine treatment in
Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) officer, the mid-1990s, but many residents would have been satisfied
recalls that during the Depression his father worked the to continue drinking unfiltered, unchlorinated water. At the
Cooperstown water pump on the Susquehanna, just below Biological Field Station on the west bank of the lake, SUNY-
the river’s outlet from the lake. When eels migrated back to Oneonta faculty members still drink their lake water straight
the Sargasso in autumn, Andrews’s father would shut down as they work to provide straight answers on how area resi-
the pump wheel, place a big bag over the outlet, and har- dents can protect Otsego.
vest Anguilla rostrata. He sold them downriver in Oneonta Bill Harman came to Cooperstown in 1968 to establish a
for 25 cents each. research location for Oneonta students. The university con-
Otsego once was rich with shad and herring as well. structed the field station three years later just north of the
Before dams, the river and lake teemed with the spawning well-known Farmers’ Museum and Fenimore House. It
migrations of these anadromous fish. Wrote Fenimore holds offices and labs and launches research vessels explor-
Cooper in The Pioneers, “Enormous shoals of herrings were ing Otsego’s flora, fauna, and water quality. Harman runs
discovered to have wandered five hundred miles through the field station as an educational center for researchers,
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 9

Spring-Water River  9

students, and the community. He is a true believer in keep-

ing a “relatively pristine” lake from deteriorating.
“It’s pretty apparent that this is one of those unique situ-
ations where the system is just the right size and shape so
that with the human population we have, what we do
becomes very evident,” says the professor. He is preparing
to take another class of students out in a boat to show them
what nutrients washing into the lake are doing to plant life. Image not available
“In most places you’re either fighting a losing cause or you
don’t have much to worry about. Here we just happen to be
in a situation which is very close to the edge.”
In an effort to monitor lake quality and increase public
awareness of Otsego’s challenges, Harman and other faculty
and student researchers systematically test the lake, its tribu-
taries, and the Upper Susquehanna and compare those tests
with historical data. Harman and others have published The  Bill Harman directs the SUNY-Oneonta Biological Field Station on
Lake Otsego at Cooperstown. The station monitors water quality in the
State of Otsego Lake: 1936–1996, a 300-page description of lake, its tributaries, and its outflow—the Susquehanna. (Photo by
changes in the lake’s ecology. Christine Brubaker.)
That report and earlier studies found that the lake’s water
quality improved in the early 1980s, thanks to a statewide Phosphorus is Harman’s primary concern. It flows into
ban on high-phosphate detergents and installation of an the lake from malfunctioning septic systems and in manure
upgraded sanitary waste disposal system at Glimmerglass runoff from dairy farms, which occupy about 95 percent of
State Park. Quality began to decline again in the mid-1980s the watershed’s cleared land. A Biological Field Station
and has continued to deteriorate, largely because of develop- report in 1996 concluded that Otsego retains over 80 per-
ment on the lake’s west shore. The number of lakeside cent of the phosphorus that reaches it. Unless that percent-
homes increased from 147 in 1937 to 407 in 1994, with con- age is reduced, the report said, the lake will suffer severely.
struction accelerating at the end of the period. Total phos- To Harman, implementation of remedies for the lake’s
phorus levels in the lake doubled in the 1990s, increasing high nutrient levels and other ills is as important as data
algal growth at the same time that alewives diminished the collection. He is an activist scientist; beyond research and
populations of algae-eating zooplankton. teaching, he wants to transform the thinking of the more
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 10

10  Down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake

than 2,300 people who reside in the lake’s watershed year practiced as religion,” at the expense of people who want to
round and its thousand or more summer residents. He use the lake.
wants them to take better care of their septic systems, keep Empey’s brother, Ken, agrees: “If there had been a refer-
their cattle out of streams, and monitor the bait they dump endum, popular opinion would have been overwhelmingly
into the lake. in favor of a public boat launch.” Ken Empey serves on the
The field station has strong allies. Conservative landown- planning board for the Town of Warren in Herkimer
ers who want to protect their own interests as well as Lake County, at the extreme northern edge of Otsego’s water-
Otsego compose the Otsego County Conservation shed. Cooperstown and other Otsego County towns want
Association. Otsego 2000, a more activist group, would like Herkimer residents to participate in watershed improvement
to protect the lake while also promoting new business in efforts, but Empey and many of his neighbors want nothing
Cooperstown. Motorless Otsego, a third conservation group to do with that. “It doesn’t look like a good deal to us.
and the most radical, would remove all gasoline engines They would like to control the whole watershed because of
from the lake. the lake, but we don’t have easy access to the lake.”
Not everyone agrees with the conservationists. Another In 1992, watershed municipalities formed the Otsego Lake
point of view exerted itself forcefully during a lengthy argu- Watershed Council to reconcile varying viewpoints while
ment in the mid-1990s over whether or not the DEC should developing a master plan to protect Cooperstown’s drinking
build a public boat launch at Glimmerglass State Park. The water, preserve the lake and the land around it, and provide
DEC and some residents believed more boaters should be for recreational use. Council members called for the State of
encouraged to use Otsego, accessible to the public now only Lake Otsego report so they would have a scientific basis for
by way of a launch in the Village of Cooperstown. Harman, action. They quizzed groups of lake users to discover their
Otsego 2000, and others claimed the launch is adequate and priorities. They held public hearings, issued a management
that more boats, particularly if launched from the state plan, and hired a watershed manager.
park, would further destabilize the lake. Governor George Harman believes independent elements of this voluntary
Pataki eventually scotched the project. plan will be implemented as consensus develops on lake-
Mike Empey, a licensed fishing guide and president of protection priorities. He hopes the consensus will support
the Otsego County Sportfishing Association at the time, better farm management practices and wastewater treatment
thought the boat launch should be built. He believes and stricter navigational rules and fishery management. “It’s
Harman has not proved beyond doubt that the quality of kind of a mix between what a lot of people think of as a
the lake water is declining. He says Harman and the legislative hammer to hold over somebody’s head,” he
Biological Field Station have engaged in “eco-science explains, “and a peer-pressure kind of thing where you
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 11

Spring-Water River  11

think, gee, if I don’t clean my act up, all my neighbors are That site is Lake Otsego and the channel draining it.
going to think I’m a turkey. That latter means of getting at Ocquionis Creek and Shadow Brook are ultimate sources
things seems to work a lot better in many situations.” of the Susquehanna. The outlet from Lake Otsego is the
Here at the headwaters of the Susquehanna, as at so river’s traditional source. This is where most people search-
many places along the river’s length, competing interests ing for the source stop.
want to maintain the quality of drinking water in the lake “The site is gravelly, stiff clay,” wrote the river explorer
while also fishing and boating in it and living and farming Richard Smith after visiting the place in 1769, “covered with
in its watershed. That goal may be attainable; but given the towering white pines, just where the river Susquehanna, no
vagaries of nutrients and alewives, alongside some watershed more than ten or twelve feet wide, runs downward out of
residents’ concerns that the environmental case has been the lake, with a strong current.” Majestic pines still ascend
overdrawn, ultimate resolution remains as clouded as Lake Otsego’s eastern cliff, but the outlet has changed. Since
Otsego’s glimmer. its damming in 1905, this section of the Susquehanna runs
three times wider, but without force. The concrete dam sev-
The Outlet eral hundred yards downstream from the outlet significantly
deepens and slows water in lake and river.
I dream of a blue lake sleeping . . .
Fenimore Cooper described the predammed outlet in
And I see a village gleaming . . . The Deerslayer: “[Beyond] the fringe of bushes immediately
on the shore of the lake . . . [was] a narrow stream, of suf-
And out from the lake’s broad bosom
ficient depth of limpid water, with a strong current, and a
A river is gliding slow. canopy of leaves, upheld by arches composed of the limbs
of hoary trees. Bushes lined the shores, as usual, but they
—Mrs. E. J. Bugbee of Fayette, Iowa, in a letter to the left sufficient space between them to admit the passage of
editor of the Cooperstown Republican and Democrat, 1858 any thing that did not exceed twenty feet in width, and to
allow of a perspective ahead of eight or ten times that
When James Fenimore Cooper published The Pioneers in distance.”4
1823, he pluralized his subtitle addendum: or, The Sources of In the mid-1840s, several years after Cooper wrote The
the Susquehanna. In his introduction to a later edition, how- Deerslayer, the noted journalist Nathaniel Parker Willis visit-
ever, the author noted that “New York having but one ed Cooperstown and asked the novelist to show him the
county of Otsego, and the Susquehanna but one proper source of the Susquehanna. Cooper, then in his fifties and
source, there can be no mistake as to the site of the tale.” widely recognized for his literary accomplishments, led the
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 12

Image not available

 Patriotic canoeists at Clark’s Bridge, an elaborate foot crossing just downstream from the Susquehanna’s outlet from Lake Otsego, 1888. (New York
State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York.)
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 13

Spring-Water River  13

younger Willis to the outlet. “It was something to see two

such sources together,” Willis reported, “the pourings-out
from both fountains, from visible head and visible head-
waters, sure to last famous till doomsday.” Willis admitted
that upon entering Cooperstown he had ridden over Main
Street Bridge “with neither tributary look nor thought”
toward what flowed beneath—the Susquehanna’s outlet
from Otsego. He really needed Cooper to guide him there.
In 1899, six years before Cooperstown residents dammed Image not available
the river, Charles Weathers Bump, on assignment from the
Baltimore Sun, stood on the bridge Willis had crossed and
looked back toward the Susquehanna’s start. “We gazed
down upon as pretty a brook vista as can be seen any-
where,” he wrote. “Leafy trees and bushes overhung the
water in profusion, and some grew quite in midstream, with
their roots clinging to mossy rocks. The water was so calm
and clear as to reveal, with the aid of a friendly sun, the
charms of the river bottom, and the stream seemed to us to
have a mood akin to ours, unwilling to leave the  The Susquehanna, in foreground, runs out from Lake Otsego. The view is from
Cooperstown’s Main Street Bridge. (Photo by Christine Brubaker.)
‘Glimmerglass’ for an onward hurry to the Chesapeake.”
Carl Carmer visited the outlet in the early 1950s, as he
was preparing to write The Susquehanna for his Rivers of Generations of village residents have gathered for recre-
America series. The dam had changed the scene. “A few ation and sometimes celebration at the lake’s outlet, where
yards from the lake it is not quite four feet deep,” he the water remains relatively clear. Many of Cooperstown’s
observed, “and there children swim, shadowed sometimes visitors, however, are as oblivious of the North Branch’s start
by the high bank across from Riverbrink [the first home on as N. P. Willis was initially in the 1840s. No one has made it
Cooperstown’s River Street, which parallels the stream]. easy to recognize that a river begins here. The Susquehanna
Canoes drift here and fishermen, hardly expecting a catch, River Basin Commission erected the first plaque marking the
idle with short lines dangling in water so clear that the fish source in 1996; it stands at a less-than-obvious site in a
can see them.” grove of maple trees fifty yards from the water.
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 14

14  Down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake

The low-key nature of all things unrelated to baseball it resembled a large beehive in shape, its form being more
contributes to the Susquehanna’s relative obscurity in than usually regular and even.”
Cooperstown. Besides, the tiny park at the river’s start was Louis Jones, a Cooperstown folklorist, reported an “old
privately owned and quietly guarded until 1957. Then Mohawk Indian” story connected with Council Rock. A
Fenimore Cooper’s great-grandson donated an acre and a black-robed missionary disparaged the Mohawks’ religion.
quarter to the Village of Cooperstown with the condition In contrast, he told them, his God could perform great mir-
that it remain forever undeveloped. From the juncture of acles. He could move mountains, for example. Then a
River and Lake streets the village constructed a flight of Mohawk chief asked the missionary a question. If he had
stone steps leading to the lake, river, and floodplain. The such complete faith, the chief wondered, did the missionary
terraced Cooper tract is called Council Rock Park. believe that his God could move Council Rock? The mis-
Old state markers at the top of the steps commemorate sionary said his God could do that. “Well, then,” said the
two singular features of the lake. One is Council Rock. The chief, “we will test your faith. We will roll the rock on top
other, a metal plaque bolted to a boulder on the outlet’s of you and your faith being what it is, your God will move
eastern shore, marks General Clinton’s dam, a temporary it off your back.” The Mohawks rolled the rock on top of
military device that helped the Continental Army win the the missionary. They say his skeleton is still beneath the
War of Independence. boulder.
Mohawks gathered at Council Rock, which rests in the While the Native Americans may have gotten the best of
lake a few yards from the outlet. Arrow points and chips one missionary, they did not survive white settlement. The
have been found in large numbers on the shore, often called Revolution ruined the Iroquois. By the late 1780s, tribes had
Indian Point. Council Rock is (and apparently was, even abandoned settlements at Cooperstown and at the huge
before Cooperstown’s dam raised the level of the lake) the village at Onoquaga (along both sides of the North Branch
only rock rising above lake water, so Native Americans as well downstream at what are now Afton and Windsor). For
well as early white settlers considered it a landmark. several decades, small groups of Iroquois returned to the
Deerslayer and Chingachgook meet at Council Rock in Cooperstown area in the summer months to hunt, fish, sell
The Deerslayer. Cooper describes the feature at the opening goods to whites, and beg for food. By 1850, as Fenimore
of the novel, as Deerslayer and Hurry Harry canoe from Cooper’s daughter, Susan, noted, white settlement had oblit-
Otsego into the Susquehanna’s outlet: “The rock was not erated everything related to Native American occupation
large, being merely some five or six feet high, only half of except Council Rock.
which elevation rose above the lake. The incessant washing A poignant memorial to the Iroquois—a large mound of
of the water, for centuries, had so rounded its summit, that earth with a medium-sized oak tree growing at its center—
Brubaker_ch01 3/5/02 6:57 PM Page 15

Spring-Water River  15

lies off Main Street just east of the outlet. Workers uncov- Clinton arrived at the foot of Otsego in early July 1779.
ered a number of Native American skeletons while grading He held his army of 1,800 men and 220 bateaux there until
this property in 1874. The property owner, Mrs. Alfred early August, waiting for the lake waters to rise behind a
Corning Clark, gathered the bones and buried them at the dam his engineers had constructed at the outlet. Some
foot of the mound. She marked the mound with a granite accounts say the water level rose a foot. Some say two or
slab and an epitaph composed by the Reverend William three feet. One says four feet, which is about the addition-
Wilberforce Lord, village rector and a poet. It reads: al amount of water held in the lake by the 1905 dam. The
reason for the damming was simple: Clinton’s boats were
White Man, Greeting! too heavily weighted with supplies to descend a summer-
We, near whose bones you stand, shallow Susquehanna. Without additional water, those
Were Iroquois. The wide land boats would have run aground on fallen trees or rocks, or
Which now is yours was ours. they would have banged against the river’s clay banks and
Friendly hands have given back stopped dead in a slow flow. Clinton’s engineers planned
To us enough for a tomb. to create an artificial flood similar to the “splashes” used
by raftmen and loggers in the next century to raise the
The inscription on the boulder plaque at the level of water on Susquehanna tributaries to a useful raft-
Susquehanna’s outlet is not similarly poetic and is only ing stage. At the outlet, soldiers placed logs collected from
partially informative: “Here was built a dam the summer the adjacent woodland atop a boulder foundation and
of 1779 by the Soldiers under Gen. Clinton to enable them waited for Lake Otsego to rise.
to join the forces of Gen. Sullivan at Tioga.” An unin- On August 8, after pressure had built for five weeks
formed visitor may well wonder: How could a dam help behind the rock-and-log jam, Clinton’s soldier-sailors
this army? moved the bateaux into the river. At six o’clock that night,
General James Clinton led half of the crucial Sullivan- they broke the dam. The river, which had been nearly dry,
Clinton expedition against the Iroquois and their British filled quickly. The boats, manned by three soldiers each,
sponsors. He was second in command to General John took off at the peak of the flood the next morning and ran
Sullivan. George Washington directed Sullivan to cross thirty miles down the swollen river. Clinton’s soldiers
into central Pennsylvania from Easton and ascend the marching alongside the Susquehanna traveled just over half
Susquehanna to Tioga. He ordered Clinton to move from that distance.
Albany along the Mohawk to Canajoharie, cross to Otsego The flood swelled the North Branch for more than 100
Lake, and travel down the Susquehanna to meet Sullivan. miles and forced major tributaries, including the Chenango
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