HISTORY: Warner Beers, 1886, Part 2, Chapter 1, Cumberland County, PA Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Judy Bookwalter Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/cumberland/ ______________________________________________________________________ History of Cumberland and Adams Counties, Pennsylvania. Containing History of the Counties, Their Townships, Towns, Villages, Schools, Churches, Industries, Etc.; Portraits of Early Settlers and Prominent Men; Biographies; History of Pennsylvania; Statistical and Miscellaneous Matter, Etc., Etc. Illustrated. Chicago: Warner, Beers & Co., 1886. http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/cumberland/beers/beers.htm ______________________________________________________________________ PART II. HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY. PENNSYLVANIA. CHAPTER I. DESCRIPTIVE. GEOGRAPHY - GEOLOGY - TOPOGRAPHY, ETC. CUMBERLAND COUNTY, although extending into the mountains along its northern and southern boundaries, lies mostly in the picturesque valley between the two great ridges. The North Mountain was called by the Indians Kau-ta-tin-chunk, signifying "endless mountains," or, as some authorities give it, main or principal mountain. It extends in a long, smooth-topped ridge from northeast to southwest, broken only by occasional gaps through which highways have been constructed leading into the counties to the northward of Cumberland. The South Mountain trends in the same general direction as its neighbor on the north, but its surface is far more uneven. Both are covered with a thick growth of timber and shrubbery, in which appear such varieties as pine, oak, ash, willow, maple, poplar, chestnut, spruce, elm, cedar, alder, sumac, etc. The timber in the valley was never a heavy growth, and consisted mainly of a few varieties of oak. A thick brush grew in portions of the valley, and was easily cleared away; it was therefore a comparatively light task to prepare the soil for cultivation. Probably nowhere in the State are the colors of autumn brought out with more pleasing effect than in the South Mountain region of the county of Cumberland. A writer upon the subject has given the following fine description: "In the dry, burning summer month - a month in which it is hard to believe there are any nights - the leaf, panting, as it were, in the furnace, knows not any repose. It is a continual and rapid play of aspiration and respiration; a too powerful sun excites it. In August, sometimes even in July, it begins to turn yellow. It will not wait for autumn. On the tops of the mountains yonder, where it works less rapidly, it travels more slowly toward its goal; but it will arrive there. When September has ended, and the nights lengthen, the wearied trees grow dreamy; the leaf sinks from fatigue. If the light did not succor it still! But the light itself has grown weaker. The dews fall abundantly, and in the morning the sun no longer cares to drink them up. It looks toward other horizons, and is already far away. The leaves blush a marvelous scarlet in their anger. The sun is, as it were, an evening sun. Its long, oblique rays are protruded through the black trunks, and create under the woods some luminous and still genial tracks of light. The landscape is illuminated. The forests around and above, on the hills, on the flanks of the mountains, seem to be on fire. The light abandons us, and we are tempted to 4 HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY. think that it wishes to rest in the leaf and to concentrate within it all it Summer is comparatively monotonous; it wears always the same verdure. Autumn is a fairy spectacle. Where the trees huddle close together, every tone of color is intermingled - pale, golden tints with glowing or slightly burnished gold, scarlet, and crimson, and every hue of blushing carnation. Every leaf shows color. The vivacity of the maple contrasts sharply with the gloom of the pine; lower down this hill, the rusty hues of the oaks; lower still, and all around, the drooping and fallen brambles and wild vines blend their glowing reds with the wan yellow of the grasses. It is the festival of the foliage." The valley in which Cumberland County is located is, with exceptional instances, slightly rolling, and in places nearly level. The lands along the Conodoguinet and other streams are more or less broken, and there is sufficient variety to make the landscape very attractive from almost any point of view. The principal and largest stream in the county is the Conodoguinet Creek, which rises in Franklin County and flows through Cumberland in a winding course, which grows exceedingly tortuous as it approaches the Susquehanna River, into which it empties at West Fairview, near the center of the eastern boundary of the county. The Conodoguinet affords abundant water-power, which is utilized in various places for driving the machinery of mills. Next in size is the Yellow Breeches (called by the Indians Callapasscinker), forming in part of its course the boundary line between Cumberland and York counties. Its head is in the mountains in the southwest portion of Cumberland County, and it is a clear and very rapid stream, fed by many springs and very rarely freezing over in winter. Considering the size of the stream the power it affords is wonderful; upon it and its various branches are mills, forges and furnaces. Tributary to the Conodoguinet, Main's Run is the chief from the South. It rises at the foot of South Mountain, flows northward and forms the boundary line along its course (eight miles) between Cumberland and Franklin counties, passing through Shippensburg, and emptying into the Conodoguinet a few miles north of that place. Other streams of more or less importance in the county are Newburg Run, Peebles Run, Hollow Run, Brandy Run, Whiskey Run, Back Run, Big Run, Lick Run, Stine's Run, Parker's Run, and others, all discharging into the Conodoguinet from the North; Milesburn's Run, Quartersman's Run, Big Spring, Green Spring, Letort Creek, and others from the South, besides Cedar Run, Log Run, Mountain Creek, Spruce Run, Clark's Run, and many smaller ones. A number of the streams in the county have their sources in large springs, some of them furnishing excellent waterpower, notably one which rises at Springfield, south of Newville, Letort's Silver Spring, Big Spring, etc. At Mount Rock, seven miles west of Carlisle, a stream issues from a large spring in the limestone, sinks into the earth after a short course, passes under a hill and reappears on the other side. Springs in various places are strongly impregnated with Sulphur and other mineral substances. Carlisle Springs, in Middlesex Township, four miles northeast of Carlisle, was at one time a favorite summer resort, and a hotel was erected for the accommodation of guests; but the building was burned and the business of the Springs declined. The agricultural resources of the county are very great, "equal," says Dr. Egle, "to any other county of the same population in the State. The farms are highly cultivated and produce large crops of corn, wheat, oats, etc, while fruits, of most kinds grown in the latitude, are generally abundant. The mineral belt of the county lies principally in the South Mountain region, where great quantities of iron ore exist. It has been the source of much wealth, and numerous furnaces and forges have turned out a vast product of pig metal and forged iron from the ores close at hand. 5 HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY. Geological. - While not of great variety, the geological formations which appear in Cumberland County are very interesting, from the fact that they tell of an early period in the history of the earth as we now see it. Leaving the red sandstone of York and Adams Counties, with its soft, crumbling shales and beautiful conglomerates, a bed of primary rock is found in the long ridge of the South Mountain, and overlying it is a "hard, white, compact sandstone, almost purely silicious, and sometimes exhibiting evidence of the heating agency of the rocks beneath by its excessive hardness, its ringing sound when struck, its splintery fracture, and occasional discoloration."* Next above this sandstone, in regular order, and extending from the northern base of the South Mountain more than half way across the valley to the northward, is a belt of limestone, the presence of which gives to the soil of the region its agricultural value. It is easily traced in a continuous line from the Delaware River westward and southwestward into Maryland and Virginia. It has generally a bluish color, is very hard and sometimes is grayish or nearly black. It is largely used as ballast along the line of the Cumberland Valley Railroad, being broken into fragments for the purpose, and forming a solid road-bed. For the most part it is quite pure, and when burned yields excellent lime; but in places it contains sand, clay and oxide of iron easily discernible. There are also, sometimes met with in this formation, bands and nodules of chert, or flint, usually of a dark color; and fossil shells and zoophytes peculiar to the era in which the rock was laid down are found plentifully in some localities. It is a well-known fact that upon a limestone soil the agriculturist meets with excellent reward for his labors, and such is the case here, some of the finest agricultural districts in Pennsylvania lying along this formation in the beautiful Cumberland Valley. Above this limestone, however, in a district which in Cumberland County is included in a strip extending southward from the base of the North, or Kittatinny Mountain, is a black or bluish slate, sometimes varying in color to gray, olive or yellowish. The lands where this exists are colder and not so valuable for farming purposes as those lying upon the limestone, though in the latter it is often necessary to blast and quarry away outcropping ridges of the rock in order that the plans of cultivation may be more easily carried out. The slate lands are made fairly productive by the use of lime and other manures. A peculiar feature is a dyke or scam of trip rock, or greenstone, which extends entirely across the valley east of the center of the county, and which doubtless forms a continuation of the same ridge seen both to the south and north of this county, penetrating the mountains in both directions. It is of igneous origin, and was forced upward from the intensely heated interior, through the overlying formations, to the surface. The contiguous rocks were so discolored and hardened by the upheaval of the trap that in some places they bear little resemblance to the body of the rock of which they really form a part. Along the border of the limestone district, or in the soil above it, are valuable beds of iron ore, which in some localities have been and are being extensively worked. In Penn Township, Cumberland County, on Mountain Creek, a detached bed of limestone appears, surrounding by the white or mountain sandstone. Growing on the latter, in an extremely thin soil, is timber which affords fuel for the furnaces. Connected with this isolated limestone district is a deposit of brown argillaceous and hematite iron ore, which has been worked since a very early period in the history of the county. "Along the northern side of the South Mountain, near the contact of the white sandstone *Trego's Geography of Pennsylvania, 1848. 6 HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY. with the limestone, iron ore is abundant and is extensively mined for the ply of furnaces. Further north and wholly within the limestone form pipe ore and other varieties of excellent quality may be obtained in places."* The rocks of the North Mountain are coarse gray and reddish sandstone, valuable neither for building nor mineral purposes. Like the South Mountain they are covered with a dense growth of the varieties of timber which flourish in the region. Of the ores which occur in the limestone formations of the valley, a valued writer speaks as follows: "Beneath the surface are inexhaustible deposits of magnetic iron, conveniently near to valuable beds of hematite, which lie either in fissures, between the rocky strata, or over them in a highly forruginous loam. This hematite is of every possible variety, and in immense quantities. When it has a columnar stalactite structure, it is known under the name of pipe ore, and it is found abundantly along the slopes of the valley of the Yellow Beeches. It usually yields a superior iron, and at the same time is easily and profitably smelted. It generally produces at least 50 per cent of metallic iron. The beds are frequently of extraordinary extent, and the actual depth to which they reach has not been determined. Over a space of ten acres a number of holes have been opened, from sixteen to forty-two feet in depth, without going through the vein. Together with the magnetic ore these hematite beds, many of which remain untouched, are sufficient for supplying a large part of the manufacture of the United States. But in the valley there are traces, also, of sulphuret of copper (the blue vitriol of commerce), red and yellow ochre and chrome ores, alum earth, copperas ores, porcelain earth, and clay for stone-ware, common glazed ware and fire bricks; also Epsom salts, shell lime, marl, manganese, and valuable marbles. * * * In every part of the limestone region the earth resounds under the tread of the traveler, and numerous sink-holes communicate with caverns or running streams beneath them. These constitute a natural drainage, which is amply sufficient for all the ordinary demands of the highest culture. Two or three caves have been discovered and entered, which have been esteemed as curiosities. The most wonderful of these is on the bank of the Conodoguinet, about a mile north from Carlisle. It is under a small limestone cliff, not more than thirty feet high above the surface of the creek; but through a semi-circular arched entrance, from seven to ten feet high and ten in width, it descends gradually to an ante chamber of considerable size. From this a vaulted passage large enough to allow one to walk erect extends 270 feet, to a point where it branches off in three directions. One on the right is somewhat difficult on account of the water which percolates through the rocks on every side, but leads to a large chamber of great length. The central one is narrow and crooked, and has never been completely explored on account of a deep perpendicular precipice which prevents all progress beyond about thirty feet. The other passage is smaller and has but little interest. In different parts are pools of water, supposed by some to be springs, but as they have no outflow they are more probably formed from drippings from the surrounding rocks. Human bones have been found in it, and no doubt it has been used as a place of refuge or temporary lodgement by the Indians. No such articles as are usually deposited with their dead have yet been discovered." ** Another cave has been discovered on the bank of the Conodoguinet, in the township of West Pennsborough, about one and a half miles north of Greason. The opening is about 10 feet wide and 6 feet high, extending back about 10 *Trego. **Rev. C. P. Wing in "History of Cumberland County," 1879. 7 HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY. feet; then 3 feet wide and 16 feet high for a distance of 38 feet. Then another room is reached 10x10 feet and 15 feet high, from which a passage leads to a similar room not so large, but with a high ceiling; thence a long narrow passage opens into a room 40 feet in circumference and the same height as the others, and from this another small passage leads to near the place of entrance. This cave abounds in stalactites and many curious shapes. It is said that the white men who first came to the valley were greatly impressed with its beauty and the natural productions of the soil. The grass was rich and luxuriant, wild fruits were abundant, and there was a great variety of trees in places, including numerous species of oak, black and white walnut (butternut), hickory, white, red and sugar maple, cherry, locust, sassafras, chestnut, ash, elm, linden, beech, white pine and scrub pine. There was also a shrub growth of laurel, plum, juniper persimmon, hazel, wild currant, gooseberry, blackberry, raspberry, spice-brush and sumach, while in the open country the strawberry, dewberry and wintergreen made a luscious carpeting and furnished to the Indians in their season a tempting and welcome partial supply of food.