Williamsport's Great Log Boom

Just below this stretch of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River once stood one of the most impressive industrial structures in nineteenth-century Pennsylvania: a chain of piers and booms stretching roughly seven miles built to snare logs floating down from the northern forests. Incorporated in eighteen forty-six, the boom company collected thousands of logs each spring as the snowmelt drove them downstream. The operation helped turn Williamsport into the lumber capital of the world, a title it held through most of the decades before nineteen hundred.

At its peak, the city was said to have had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else. The catastrophic Johnstown Flood of eighteen eighty-nine damaged the boom badly, and the industry slowly collapsed as the forests were exhausted. Today Williamsport is better known for Little League Baseball, but the river still carries the memory of that vanished empire.