Driftwood, near the “Crescent,” a half moon shaped mountain forming sides of the valley for nearly three points of the compass; claims the first settlement by white man within the county, in 1804; in the center of the village, facing the Sinnemahoning Creek, is the “Bucktail” Monument, in memory of Cameron’s sons who fought for the Union, erected by the state in 1908, inscription, “From this town, on April 27, 1861, the Cameron, Elk and McKean County Rifles, under leadership of Thomas L. Kane, afterwards Commanding Officer of the Regiment, later a Major-General, embarked on four rafts for Harrisburg, where they were mustered into the service of the State, and formed the nucleus, about which the Bucktail Regiment of the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps was organized; which during its time of service, was almost continuously attached to the army of the Potomac.”
Sinnemahoning (Stony-lick), site of an Indian village called “The Lodge,” the battle ground of Peter Grove, famous Indian fighter, a picturesquely beautiful spot. Here were born the beautiful Clafflin sisters, Lady Cook (Tennesee Clafflin), and Mrs. Martin Woodhull (Victoria Clafflin), now a wealthy philanthropist in England; their father, Buckman Clafflin, a pioneer, opened the first store in the county in 1829.
Lackawanna County
LXVII
LACKAWANNA COUNTY
FORMED August 13, 1878; named for the great Lackawanna coal basin; an Indian word, signifying “The Forks of a Stream.” Chief industry, anthracite coal mining, confined to the long-depressed trough forming the Lackawanna Valley and to the mountains bordering it on both sides, with Bald Mountain, in Lackawanna Range, 2250 feet high, and Big Stoney among the Moosic Mountains, 2230 feet. Originally settled by Connecticut people who disputed the right of Pennsylvania to jurisdiction; life and growth have been the result of the coal-mining industry, which brought into it large numbers of Welsh, Irish, German, English, and Scotch, whose descendants dominate the region; latterly have come Polish, Slavs, Italians, and Lithuanians, a heterogeneous but rapidly assimilating mining population.
The mining of anthracite coal began at Carbondale in the early twenties; the old No. 1 plane is marked with monument and tablets; coal was taken over the Moosic Mountains to Honesdale, Wayne County, by steep inclined planes, up which the loaded cars were drawn by ropes or cables, and the empty cars let down; thence by canal to Roundout, on the Hudson; on the levels, between planes, cars were drawn by horses; later a descending grade was given to the tracks over which the cars ran by gravity; a similar gravity railroad near Scranton, carried coal to the Delaware & Hudson Canal at Hawley, below Honesdale, both now abandoned for steam roads.
The country northwest has well-cultivated farm lands; that, southeast, blends with the Pocono Highlands, is wild and picturesque; an almost unbroken wilderness for thirty miles, excepting along the line of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad; on both sides of this road are good highways; the main road, the whole length of the valley, is exceptionally fine. The road from Gouldsboro Station was built by Jay Gould, 1855, when he was interested with Mr. Pratt in a tannery at Gouldsboro (now Thornhurst).
At Carbondale, crossing Moosic Mountains, is road to Honesdale, following the line of the old Delaware & Hudson gravity road; at Dundaff, about five miles north of Carbondale, this road runs along the edge of Crystal Lake, near are the Twin Knobs of Elk Hill, about 2500 feet high. A point of geologic interest is the Archbald Pot Hole, said to be largest of the kind in this country; a cylindrical hole twenty feet deep, by thirty feet wide, eroded in the ice age through the overlying rocks down to the coal measures.