Plunketts Creek (Loyalsock Creek tributary)

Plunketts Creek is named for Colonel William Plunkett, a physician, who was the first president judge of Northumberland County after it was formed in 1772. During conflicts with Native Americans, he treated wounded settlers and fought the natives. Plunkett led a Pennsylvania expedition in the Pennamite–Yankee War to forcibly remove settlers from Connecticut, who had claimed and settled on lands also claimed by Pennsylvania. For his services, Plunkett was granted six tracts of land totaling on November 14, 1776, although the land was not actually surveyed until September 1783. Plunkett's land included the creek's mouth, so Plunketts Creek was given his name. During the American Revolution, Plunkett did not actively support the revolution and thus was suspected of being sympathetic to the British Empire. He died in 1791, aged about 100, and was buried in Northumberland, without a grave marker or monument (except for the creek that bears his name). Lycoming County was formed from Northumberland County in 1795. When Plunketts Creek Township was formed in Lycoming County in 1838, the original name proposed was "Plunkett Township" but the lingering suspicions of his British sympathies led to that name being rejected. Naming the township for the creek was an acceptable compromise. In 1866, Cascade Township was formed from parts of Hepburn and Plunketts Creek Townships in Lycoming County. The possessive apostrophe is not part of the official name of the creek, although records from the 19th century often spell it as "Plunkett's Creek". Two streams in the watershed have given their names to roads in Plunketts Creek Township: Engle Run Drive and Mock Run Road. == Course ==

The source of Plunketts Creek is 1440 ft (439 m) above sea level, northwest of the unincorporated village of Hillsgrove and just south of the Loyalsock State Forest in Hillsgrove Township, Sullivan County. the direct distance between the source and the mouth is only 4.1 miles (6.6 km). From the mouth of Plunketts Creek it is 19.50 miles (31.38 km2) along Loyalsock Creek to its confluence with the West Branch Susquehanna River at Montoursville. Floods Plunketts Creek can vary greatly in depth, depending on the season and recent precipitation. Its water level is typically highest (perhaps 3 feet (1 m) deep) in spring or for a few days after a heavy rain, and lowest in late summer, when it can shrink to a trickle. While there is no stream gauge on Plunketts Creek, a rough estimate of the creek's water level may be found from the stream gauge on the Loyalsock Creek bridge in Barbours, just downstream of the mouth. Lycoming County operates this gauge as part of the county-wide flood warning system. It only measures the water height (not discharge), and measured a record gauge height of on September 7, 2011. The September 2011 flood was caused by remnants of Tropical Storm Lee, which dumped of rainfall in the nearby village of Shunk in Fox Township in Sullivan County (just north of the creek's source). The 2011 flooding caused widespread damage in Proctor and Barbours and destroyed a small stone bridge on Wallis Run Road in Proctor over King Run, a tributary of Plunketts Creek. The Barbours Fire Hall became an "emergency relief center offering food, shelter and supplies to victims of the flood". Further downstream on the Loyalsock, the flooding badly damaged the historic Hillsgrove Covered Bridge, washed out sections of Pennsylvania Route 87 along the creek, and destroyed the Pennsylvania Route 973 and Lycoming Valley Railroad bridges over the creek near and in Montoursville. The previous record flood reached on the Loyalsock flood gauge at Barbours on January 19–20, 1996. This major flood resulted from heavy rain, snow melt, and ice dams, which caused millions of dollars of damage throughout Lycoming County, and six deaths on Lycoming Creek in and near Williamsport. On Plunketts Creek, the flood heavily damaged and later caused the demolition of Plunketts Creek Bridge No. 3, a mid-19th century stone arch bridge listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The flood waters were 4 feet (1.2 m) deep in Barbours and it was called the village's "worst flood in history" at the time. == Geology ==

Plunketts Creek is in the southern edge of the dissected Allegheny Plateau, near the Allegheny Front. The northern edge of the Plunketts Creek drainage basin is formed by Burnetts Ridge and Popple Ridge. Plunketts Creek flows along the north side of Camp Mountain and, on turning south at Proctor, forms a water gap between it and Cove Mountain (to the west). The watershed has no oil or conventional natural gas fields. However, a potentially large source of natural gas is the Marcellus shale, which lies 1.5 to 2.0 miles (2.4 to 3.2 km) below the surface here and stretches from New York through Pennsylvania to Ohio and West Virginia. Estimates of the total natural gas in the black shale from the Devonian period range from 168 to 516 trillion cubic feet (4.76 to 14.6 trillion m3), with at least 10 percent considered recoverable. The Pennsylvania Bureau of Topographic and Geologic Survey's "Distribution of Pennsylvania Coals" map shows no major deposits of coal in the Plunketts Creek watershed, and only one deposit nearby in the Loyalsock Creek watershed (in southern Plunketts Creek Township). However, Meginness (1892) refers to coal mines in Plunketts Creek Township, and there is an unnamed tributary of Plunketts Creek in "Coal Mine Hollow" on the right bank between Dry Run and King Run, so it seems a small coal mine operated there in the past. Much of the Plunketts Creek valley (and those of its tributaries) is composed of various glacial deposits. Closer to the mouth, there are large deposits of alluvium, as well as alluvial fan and alluvial terraces. Many of the glacial deposits are associated with the Wisconsin glaciation, with stratified drift and till, as well as outwash present. The alluvium is "10 feet (3 m) or more thick in the lower reaches of the Plunketts Creek valley", but only "6 feet (2 m) thick in headward tributary valleys". The outwash is described as "stratified sand and gravel that form terrace remnants along the flanks of Loyalsock Creek and Plunketts Creek valleys". == Watershed ==

The Plunketts Creek watershed drains parts of Cascade, McNett, and Plunketts Creek townships in Lycoming County, and Fox and Hillsgrove Townships in Sullivan County (with most of the watershed in Plunketts Creek Township). The drainage basin area is , accounting for 4.78% of the Loyalsock Creek watershed. Water quality The clear-cutting of forests in the 19th century adversely affected the ecology of the Plunketts Creek watershed and its water quality. Polluting industries on the creek and its tributaries then included a coal mine and tannery (which are long since departed). In the autumn of 1897, three men working with hides at the Proctor tannery were stricken with anthrax, two fatally. Another four deaths originally blamed on pneumonia were suspected of being due to pulmonary anthrax, and some cattle drinking from Plunketts Creek downstream from the tannery were also infected. As late as 1959, the sludge pile from the tannery was still visible in Proctor, but was not disturbed for fear of anthrax spores. No acid mine drainage is reported in the watershed. As of 1984, the mean annual precipitation for the Loyalsock Creek watershed (which Plunketts Creek is part of) was 42 to 48 inches (1067 to 1219 mm). The total alkalinity (TA) is a measure of the capacity of water to neutralize acid, with a larger TA corresponding to a greater capacity. In 2007, the TA of two subtributaries was known: Engle Run, a 4.9-mile (7.9 km) tributary of King Run, had a TA of 5, and the Noon Branch, a 1.9-mile (3.1 km) tributary of Wolf Run, had a TA of 9. The 2002 Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) report on "State Forest Waters with Special Protection" rated Plunketts Creek (from its source to mouth) and two of it tributaries, Wolf Run and Mock Creek (from the county line to the mouth), as "High Quality-Cold Water Fisheries". Two subtributaries were rated as "Exceptional Value" streams for fishing: Engle Run and the Noon Branch of Wolf Run. Recreation Meginness (1892) wrote that "Plunkett's Creek township, on account of its dashing mountain streams of pure water, has always been a favorite place for trout fishing." Barbours has been popular from early on with "anglers seeking trout in the 'Sock and its tributaries", as well as with hunters after black bear, white-tailed deer, and wild turkey in the surrounding forests. Habitat is found there for deer, ruffed grouse, and wild turkey. Hunting, trapping, and fishing are possible with proper licenses on both the state forest and State Game Lands. Camping, hiking, mountain bike and horseback riding, snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, and bird watching are all possible on state forest lands. The southern end of the 27.1 mile (43.6 km) long Old Loggers Path, a loop hiking trail, runs through the watershed just north of Engle and Wolf Runs. == History ==

Early inhabitants The first recorded inhabitants of the Susquehanna River valley were the Iroquoian speaking Susquehannocks. Their name meant "people of the muddy river" in Algonquian. Decimated by diseases and warfare, they had died out, moved away, or been assimilated into other tribes by the early 18th century. The lands of the West Branch Susquehanna River Valley were then chiefly occupied by the Munsee phratry of the Lenape (or Delaware), and were under the nominal control of the Five (later Six) Nations of the Iroquois. The Proctor tannery employed "several hundred" at wages between 50 cents and $1.75 a day, the employees living in one hundred twenty company houses, each renting for $2 a month. In 1892, Proctor had a barber shop, two blacksmiths, cigar stand, I.O.O.F hall, leather shop, news stand, a post office (established in 1885), a two-room school, two stores, and a wagon shop. A logging railroad was built by the Central Pennsylvania Lumber Company (CPL) in the far northern part of the watershed in the 1920s. It crossed Engle Run twice and ran parallel to Wolf Run, near both their sources. No other railroads crossed or ran along Plunketts Creek. Decline and renewal The lumber boom on Plunketts Creek ended when the virgin timber ran out. By 1898, the old growth hemlock was exhausted and the Proctor tannery, then owned by the Elk Tanning Company, was closed and dismantled. Proctor celebrated its centennial in 1968, and a 1970 newspaper article on its thirty-ninth annual "Proctor Homecoming" reunion called it a "near-deserted old tannery town". The Game Commission began acquiring property for State Game Lands in 1920, The Northcentral State Game Farm is in the Plunketts Creek valley just south of Proctor, and a part of it is on the right bank of Loyalsock Creek downstream of the confluence. The Loyalsock State Game Farm is 13 miles (21 km) downstream on Loyalsock Creek, at the village of Loyalsockville. When a May 2007 fire destroyed a brooder house there just days before 18,000 pheasant chicks were due to hatch, the eggs were transferred to the nearby Northcentral State Game Farm without reduction in the production goal. As of 2007, Proctor has two separate businesses: a general store (which also sells gasoline) and a bed and breakfast. The church which used to host the annual "Proctor Homecoming" reunions still stands, but is closed. Barbours has no store or gas station, but does have one church. Today much of Plunketts Creek's watershed is wooded and protected as part of Loyalsock State Forest or Pennsylvania State Game Lands No. 134. Barbours has one sawmill, in 1997 it had thirty contract loggers and fifteen employees, with $1.2 million in annual gross sales. (for comparison, in the same period Lycoming County's population increased by only 18.6 percent, while Sullivan County's declined by 2.9 percent). Tourists still come too: the opening weekend of the trout season brings more people into the village at the mouth of Plunketts Creek than any other time of the year. == See also ==