The West Branch Canal: Pennsylvania's Inland Lifeline

Just beyond the tree line to the south, a long stone wall rises along the riverbank, the remains of a towpath support built when this was one of Pennsylvania's busiest trade corridors. The West Branch Division of the Pennsylvania Canal was constructed between eighteen twenty-eight and eighteen thirty-four, threading a water highway from Northumberland up through the Susquehanna's West Branch valley all the way to Farrandsville. Mules walked the towpath, pulling loaded boats carrying lumber, coal, and agricultural goods toward markets in the east.

The canal stayed in use well into the railroad era, surviving far longer than most people expected when the iron roads arrived. The stone wall you can't quite see from here is one of the more substantial remnants of Pennsylvania's canal era, silent beneath the forest.