Buddy's War # 18- What a Shock

    •   May 4, 1944

Buddy called at 9:45 from Georgia saying he was married on Wednesday [the previous day, May 3.] Well the shock was awful

- Diary entry, Beula Keller Lehman

It may be that the shock is simply that he married someone other than the one he had been dating for years. It may have sunk in that the “friend” grandma mentions speaking to in a phone call from Georgia 13 days earlier is now Mrs. Harold Lehman.

Here we meet Dora Moldawsky. Her parents, Sam and Anna, came to the United States from Eastern Europe, most likely the Ukraine. It was the early 1900s, probably around 1904 before the Soviet Union, but not before the pogroms. That is no doubt why they made the trip to the United States. How they entered is a piece of the myth. In those mists of childhood overhearing, I remember something about them posing as brother and sister, even though already married.  All genealogical research points to them already being married when they got here. It makes an interesting story. Legal, illegal, or semi-legal immigrants, they came through the golden door of Ellis Island in New York Harbor next to the uplifted lamp of the Statue of Liberty.

Sam and Anna had three children. Dora, the youngest, was born in 1913. I have some pictures of Sam from the 1940s- a tall, handsome man, tanned and well dressed. Anna was the typical Jewish, eastern European Bubbe, grandmother. Sometime in the late 40s or early 50s, Sam had a leg amputated. Family lore had it due to diabetes, but a cousin later discovered other possible causes.

They were observant, Orthodox Jews. They kept Kosher and Sabbath. When we visited, the strict separation of meat and milk, for example, was hard for my brother and me to understand. Mom was not observant back in the Gentile wilds of Pennsylvania, Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform. When we were in Brooklyn I don’t remember any time when anyone went to services on Friday evening or Saturday morning. It is quite likely that at least the men went, but, since Sam died when I was nine or ten, it wouldn’t have been unusual for us not to even notice what was happening.

Sometime in her late 20s, Dora did her version of running away from home. In 1940 according to that year’s census records, she was still in Brooklyn, working as a bookkeeper at a wholesale dress house. In some magical and mysterious unknown way by 1943 at age 30 she ended up in Augusta, Georgia. Different versions of the story claim she was working as a secretary or did accounting or was a club singer in Augusta. Maybe all three. What is clear is that while there she met a GI from Pennsylvania who was eight years older than she was. That adds a certain amount of rebelliousness to her character. It would take a great deal of what her family would call chutzpah for her to be on her own, in 1944, and then get married to a gentile! This was as “mixed” a marriage as any other in 1944.

Sam and Anna must have loved her, though, they did not disown her. Beula’s diaries mention Harold and Dora both going to New York to visit and then, after Buddy was deployed, Dora coming to spend time with his family in Pennsylvania. Later pictures show Sam and Anna visiting in Pennsylvania with my brother and me, their two youngest grandchildren.

What we have here is a story with a glimpse into a far-different time. We have Harold Lehman, a run-away gentile from Pennsylvania standing at the Jewish USO of Camp Gordon, Georgia, marrying Dora Moldawsky, a run-away from her Brooklyn family.

People have asked me what it was like to grow up Jewish in Gentile, Bible-belt, Pennsylvania. My immediate answer often was, “I have no idea.” My brother and I grew up culturally Gentiles. I was living in the midst of my family’s home area. As I have mentioned before we were the 7th or 8th generation from my family tree in the West Branch/Pine Creek Valley. And they were all culturally, if not actively practicing Christians. Christmas was a big holiday in our family with a tree and a midnight Christmas Eve/Day party where my brother and I were awakened. We went out to open our presents, delivered by Santa Claus, with family and Dad’s workers there.

I know there was an awareness in the community that our mother was Jewish and that therefore I was, in some way or another, Jewish. Before 1964 each school day started with a reading from the Bible, the Lord’s Prayer,* and the Pledge of Allegiance. When I became aware of such things, I noted that I was always given a passage from the Old Testament. Socially, and practically, though, I was far more Gentile than Jewish. That does not mean I wasn’t aware of “Jewishness.” It was just far more prevalent and obvious to me that I was part of a Pennsylvania native family. I have no idea how others in town felt.

Seventy-five years ago today none of this was on the table, at least in any way I can see. Knowing my family, I am sure there was a great deal of uncertainty, fear, perhaps even anger, at what Buddy had just done. I would guess they had some of the same stereotypes and prejudices, especially about New York City Jews, as were common in the day. Beula never mentioned in her diary that Buddy’s wife was Jewish. I have a hunch that, like many a mixed marriage today, the tension would have been incredible. It is May 1944 and he is only a few months away from shipping out to Europe. As if that wasn’t enough stress, they would have to get used to a new and very unfamiliar family member.

*Footnote: Many years later, living in the Midwest, I learned that in a number of places in the United States this daily Bible reading and reciting the Lord's Prayer was NOT the practice. I had a roomful of church members look at me like I was crazy and dreaming when I said that we did that each morning. The reason was simple- there were Christian groups in the community that were not allowed to pray with others, Christians or not.

Buddy's War # 17- A Hint of Something to Come

    •    April 21, 1944

At 6.45 in the evening Buddy called from Augusta and his friend was there and I talked to her.
- Diary entry, Beula Keller Lehman

This is the first mention in the diaries of Buddy’s friend. Did Beula know that she was more than just a “friend” and was she using the euphemism to ignore the implications? Dad was 38 years old, never married. His brother Carl, 42, the eldest, was to be married by the end of June to his very long-time girlfriend.  His sister Ruth, 40, the middle child, had been married about 10 years. Dad had a history of a long time girlfriend that I have mentioned in other posts, whose tires he reportedly slashed when angry.

For all practical purposes Buddy was a small-town boy He spent most of his life in his hometown along the banks of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River and the nearby Pine Creek in North Central Pennsylvania.

The West Branch rambles through the Allegheny Plateau, before heading east at Lock Haven. Forty or so miles later it breaks south at Muncy leaving the valley. It will join the North Branch a few miles further and form the main river to the Chesapeake Bay. The east flowing section is in a wide, fertile valley, the transition between the Appalachian Ridge and Valley Province (- Link) to the south and the Allegheny Plateau (- Link) to the north. For those 40 miles Bald Eagle Mountain (- Link) bounds the river and the valley. Powerful, tall and green, the mountain is the edge of the world from either direction.

Then there is Pine Creek (- Link). Don’t let its name fool you. One historian commented that it deserves the name river rather than creek. It can be a powerhouse of liquid- or a rock strewn stream. It runs eighty miles from its start beyond Ansonia. It flows through the Allegheny Plateau heading south having carved what is known as The Gorge or the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania. It flows into the Susquehanna a few miles from my hometown, near the site where an ancient Elm stood for centuries until felled by Dutch Elm disease. Under that elm, the Tiadaghton Elm, on July 4, 1776, a group of illegal settlers known as the Fair Play Men signed a declaration of independence from England as the same thing was happening in Philadelphia. (- Link)

Pine Creek is the Tiadaghton- its native name. We were always told it was the largest creek in the world; the major tributary of the West Branch of the Susquehanna. Pine Creek is the wild place, the wilderness on which one’s life foundation can be built, a wilderness at the bottom of a majestic pine bounded gorge. Get your feet wet in Pine Creek, the saying went, and you will always return.

Both Dad’s parents grew up in the same area on neighboring homesteads. The town, and the whole valley from Williamsport to Lock Haven as well as up Pine Creek was filled with all kinds of distant- and not too distant relatives. Everyone knew everyone.  Nevertheless, as I said in post #2, I have little concrete information about his childhood and young adult years.

As a small-town boy, he did become familiar with the city when he went to pharmacy school in Philadelphia. But his feet had been in Pine Creek. After his graduation in 1928 he returned home to the West Branch Valley and lived with his parents in the house where he had spent much of his youth, worked at a local pharmacy that he and his father eventually purchased.

I am sure that it would not have been too much to assume that Dad was going to marry someone local.

All of this was now several years past when Beula got to talk to Buddy’s “friend” 75 years ago. When and how he met this friend is lost in family history. From information in Beula’s diary it appears that Dad was renting from a family in Augusta, about 9 miles from Camp Gordon and probably working in a hospital at least part time. Sixteen years later the family would stop in Augusta on a return trip from Florida and visit with a family who we were told was where Mom was living at the time. I can only guess that it may have been the same place. Who knows? Sometimes facts are not possible to discover.

What Beula and Bill or any of his siblings knew is pure, uneducated conjecture. Now, 75 years later we know where it was about to go.

Meanwhile,

◆ April 1944
◆ 75 Years Ago

    ◦    Adolf Eichmann and the Nazis offered the Hungarian rescue worker Joel Brand the "Blood for Goods" deal, proposing that one million Jews be allowed to leave Hungary for any Allied-occupied country except Palestine, in exchange for goods obtained outside of Hungary. The deal would never be made because the Allies believed it to be a trick and the British press slammed it as blackmail,
    ◦    A two-day meeting between Hitler and Benito Mussolini was held near Salzburg, and
    ◦    "It's Love-Love-Love" by Guy Lombardo and His Orchestra topped the Billboard singles charts.

Earth Day

John Muir 

Naturalist and Preservationist

Fourth Sunday of Epiphany

Colors - Subtle and Wild

Looking north toward the southern end of the
Pine Creek Gorge 

in northern Pennsylvania.

October 2003

Fall gets me thinking about colors and all the ways they show up in our world. More colors will becoming through the month. I thought I might as well start with a picture of the stomping grounds where I grew up.

That Which is Immortal

Pondering Deep Roots

A passage from the remarkable book, The Telling Room by Michael Paterniti. Paterniti is responding to a transcendent moment in Spain, speaking of the life of the cheese maker he's been following. He reflects on the ancient life on the Spanish meseta where the cheese maker has always lived:

Divinity, Not Machines

I craved divinity. I was thinking about how Ambrosio [the cheese maker] had said he spoke to animals, as if they were close friends, confiding in them. ... I wanted to live in a realm where I could talk to animals, where all the generations of my family had once resided, where I might take daily strength in them, and where I'd live antlered by meaning and mysticism.

For me that resonated with my growing up in the West Branch Valley of north central Pennsylvania. Where Pine Creek joined the Susquehanna River I was rooted and grounded. A few years ago I started reflecting on that childhood homeland. That has been the early stirrings of writing that I hope to spend significant time working on when I move toward retirement in December. Paterniti's description spoke to me of my own roots in that land in Pennsylvania.

It is what pulled me there over five years ago to ride the Pine Creek Rail Trail for my 60 miles for 60 years 60th birthday ride. It's what moves and inspires me when I look at that picture above this post on the banner of this blog. It is what stirs me when I think of the Bald Eagle Mountain on the southern boundary of the Valley or the Depression Era park I always called The Rocks. It may even be what so smoothly directed me to a church denomination that knew that area while still inhabited by the natives who called the Creek Tiadaghton.

It is the pull of water and trees;
Green hills and
Bald Eagles.

It is the mountains known as
Endless
But in the end were, for me,
Too limiting.

Yet they remain to define the
deepest places of my soul.

My soul, still,
decades after becoming a Midwesterner,
is solidly growing from the
rich geology, geography, river soil and
grandeur of that Valley.

Time will tell if I can tell that story. It is one of the dreams of what will become my Third Career starting in 2014. It will not be retirement; it will be a time of digging into that soil, pruning branches, examining the roots- and branches- that are fed by the memory of those mountains and waters.

A Long Gone Sight

Bridge Across Pine Creek

Ramsey, PA

(Scan from slide)

August 1982

Note: Yes, it is the same bridge as in the photo at the top of this page.
This one was taken 24 years earlier while Conrail was still running the line.
I used Paint Shop Pro to add some softening effects.

With all the time spent on Les Mis and practicing my trumpet I decided to set up this whole past week of posts ahead of time so I did some digging around to find some interesting stuff.

No Foolin'

I waited a couple extra days to post this so you wouldn't think I was just foolin' around.

Some of you may remember my 60th birthday five years ago. I did something I had often dreamed of doing- traveling the whole length of the Pine Creek Gorge in Central Pennsylvania where I grew up.When I was young it was the New York Central (Penn Central, then Conrail) railroad line. The Pine Creek Valley is one of those wondrous places where the power of God's natural world can't be missed.


Well, it is now a Rail Trail. (Link) It's easier to travel the whole length now than it would have been when I was growing up. So I did. I planned my 60 Miles for 60 Years bike trip in August, 2008. (Music Video Link). I had never done a long bike trip before. I trained on and off for a couple years and then, with my brother's bike, I started in the north and headed downstream with the Creek. Over two days I made my 60 mile pilgrimage.


Well, another milestone is in four months. (See sidebar for exact days, hours, minutes.) This one is 65 years. Time for something new. At one point I had hoped to make a 300 km bike pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago in Spain but the small problem of costs has prevented that. (Hopefully just a postponement until after retirement.) Something else had to take its place.

Enter my dear wife of almost 41 years. "Why don't we take a long weekend and you can do some biking on the trails here in Minnesota." (Lightbulb going on!)

Sure! Why not?

So I started some looking and found a wonderful Rail Trail in Central Minnesota. The Lake Wobegon Trail along with two other connecting trails, make up a ride of about 120 miles. A century ride. No, it won't be in one day. It will probably be over three days around my birthday. I'll ride and my wife will do other things and meet me at day's end with the car.

I can't think of a reason not to do it. I am in great biking shape, even now without any outdoor rides yet. Rail trails are fun, mostly flat and often in scenic places with neat things to see (like bridges over rivers, wildlife, etc.) Makes sense.

So here it is. The official announcement.

The pmPilgrim Century+ Ride for 65 years.

Or perhaps The pmPilgrim Medicare Century+ Ride since I will be eligible for Medicare.

Watch for more information and my preparations.

I'm beginning to get excited already- and spring has barely sprung here in Minnesota.

Sacred Waters 4

Pine Creek

Cammal, PA

A Few Years Behind

Back in August of 2008 I did my first extended bike ride- 60 miles on the Pine Creek (PA) Rail Trail for my 60th birthday. I then put a video of my pictures together, but it was too long for You Tube. Then I could post longer than 15 minutes, but You Tube copyright issues kept it from being heard.

So I took a couple days last week while recuperating to do a re-edit. I changed some of the music and shortened it some. It is now posted and ready to be seen.

Enjoy.

Trail of the Month on Rails to Trails

Click Here for this month's Rails to Trails Trail of the Month. My readers will know this one!

More Silence After Convention Noise

Pine Creek Trail

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.”
--Mother Teresa

After All the Noise ofTwo Conventions

Peace and calm...



Pine Creek at Ramsey, Pennsylvania

Heron Take-Off

Here is what may be the luckiest picture I took along the Pine Creek Rail Trail last week. I was pedaling along and saw the Great Blue Heron across the creek. I stopped and got my camera out just as he started to fly. Luck is always the #1 criteria for good pictures.

Haunted

"I am haunted by waters."

So wrote Norman Maclean in his acclaimed and awesome book, A River Runs Through It which was made into a wonderful movie (if you like that kind of movie!)

Three weeks from now I will return to one of my personal primal waters, Pine Creek, known to the original populace as Tiadaghton. It is barely 60 miles long but in its history it has ground a plateau into a gorge and provided a path through a rough and unforgiving wilderness.

Over four years ago I wrote here:

One learns much from water. One learns that a cycle of life is going on around us. It is in the tides and waves. It is in the high water of spring and the low water of late August. It is in the quiet of a calm summer day and the relentless wind turning lakes into wave swept danger.

One learns how to flow to connect places. Water provided the first interstate highways; the routes through wilderness; traffic lanes for a growing economy. Water separated from, then led to, the New World and the seemingly endless lands of opportunity.

I'm going back to learn again from the water as I pedal instead of paddle its length. I will be celebrating my 60th birthday in my home town for the first time in at least 25 or 26 years. I will be flowing with the waters as they head south from Ansonia to the Susquehanna at Jersey Shore.

After a kayak trip to the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior in norther Wisconsin five three years ago, I wrote:

Water is special and exciting and fearsome. Canoeing, kayaking, sitting on the bank watching the river flow. These are sacred events, places where and when the holy can break through. One need only live through a major flood, hurricane, or overly windy day to know that this is not something to play with. It is a power greater than oneself and to come face to face with that power in water is awe-inspiring.

This time I will be pedaling a bike, listening, praying, watching, feeling. I will celebrate 60 years of remarkable life where it all began. I will remember those who helped make me who I am- for better or worse. I will give thanks for allowing me to reach this spot. I will look for signs of God in what is, as the Celts called it- a thin place where the separation between this world and the spiritual world is thin.

Again from four years ago:

One learns to be patient and persistent, prepared and practical; a dreamer and a realist. One learns that water truly is the stuff of life. It is no surprise that the basic sacrament is baptism. It is in water that we are most prepared to be reborn. It is through an act with water that we are reminded that while we may be of dust, our salvation is through water - being washed clean. There is a "hauntingness" and a mystical quality to water. It will never leave us. It may very well be the haunting of the Holy Spirit of God that first moved over the face of water and made what God proclaimed as "Good!"

Amen, so be it

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.

On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.
-- Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

But I Can't Forget The Creek

Even though I will not be heading to Pennsylvania in August, I am not forgetting Pine Creek. What started the whole process of thinking about the bike trip was thinking about a memoir/book on what I call the Four Waters that have bounded and filled my life these past 60 years. Three of them are in north central Pennsylvania. The fourth is in northern Minnesota. I have been playing with this idea for well over a year now. I started journaling about it over a year ago and then got stuck.

In many ways Pine Creek is the most foundational of the four waters so I thought about how I could fulfill a dream of traveling the whole length of the creek. Who knows, though. It may be that the book is not to get written or it is to get written without the trip happening yet. And perhaps it is time to leave the creek behind and just start writing. That takes a lot of discipline and focus. I have shown that I can have a strong personal writing discipline with this blog. After all I am nearing 2300 posts and I have been making at least one post for nearly 3 full years. (Since 8/15/05 to be exact.)

So, the bike hike in Pennsylvania isn't the purpose for this summer. It may be just to roll along and see what I can see and discover what it means to be 60 where I am today, not where I used to be. That seems to be the direction that life goes, anyway.

Early Memories of Pine Creek

pmPilgrim photo, 1982

The above picture is a scan from a photo from 1982 or '83. The trains were still running and the rails were still there. But this picture gives the rails a ghostly quality. Within a few years they would be silenced and removed making way for the Pine Creek Rail to Trail where I will be riding in a little over 2 1/2 months.

As I try to remember my earliest memories of Pine Creek it is extremely difficult. How do you pick out the earliest memory of something that was always there. Pine Creek, or often just "The Creek" (pronounced "crick"), was as much a part of life as the Susquehanna River and Bald Eagle Mountain. It never wasn't there. But as I rummage around in the recesses of memory several memories came up that stand out.

Perhaps the earliest was a train derailment up the creek at Slate Run if I remember it correctly although it could also have been Cedar Run. It was in the mid-1950s and I remember the family piling in the old Packard and heading up to see it. Somewhere in my batches of slides from that era are a couple pictures of the derailment. They are washed out now and I wish I could put my hands on them easily.

What I remember most about the derailment was that there was a box car filled with watermelons. Or at least that's how I remember it. I don't think we went down and got a close-up view but I do remember wishing we could get some of that watermelon.

Perhaps the most lasting image of the creek for me has always been the sharp sides along the road that follows the creek. In many places there isn't a lot of space between the side of the hills and the railroad or the creek itself. In spring th road signs warning of "Falling Rock" were heeded because there were big rocks, boulders, along the side of the road. As the snows melted and the water came off the steep sides toward the creek at the bottom of the valley, it would often bring rocks and boulders down on the road.

Just as interesting was the ice that formed along the rocky sides. It was often still there into April or even later depending on the year. In the shadier sections it always reminded us of the long cold winters of those years. It also reminded those of us who lived in town why many of our classmates didn't get to school when we were able to. We didn't think of it as wilderness then. But we knew that life was harder the further up the creek you went.

Now a whole lot has changed in the years since. The road isn't much wider (if at all). There has been very little development although some think the Rails to Trails will add some needed dollars in tourism which may change some of the dynamics. But the creek is still the centerpiece. And it is not always a friendly, benign neighbor.

But that is for another time.

Twelve Weeks To Go

This is what the bridge shown in my masthead above looks like when heading downstream on the Pine Creek Rail to Trail. When I was a kid and we would drive up The Creek for some reason or another this bridge (and one closer to town) always intrigued me. There was alsways something about them that made me want to get out in the middle of the bridge and just look up and down The Creek.

I was always too much of a wimpy, scaredy-cat to walk out on the rails that were there then. I know others probably did. I don't think many people ever jumped off the bridges- the water level is not all that deep and a permanent spinal cord injury was sure to follow. But I never did that myself. I would just look longingly.

Actually, in those years me and wilderness would not have been two things that easily came together. It wasn't necessarily because I liked the comfort of a nice bed with a roof over my head. It was fear. Fear of bears and animals in general. Fear of snakes, especially the dreaded rattlesnakes that were - and are - prevelant in the area. One of the white missionaries from the 1700s even commented on that in one of his reports in his diary. In some ways I am surprised Tiadaghton (the Indian name for the creek) didn't mean Rattlesnake Waters.

The other thing was that when you grow up in a place like the Pine Creek/Susquehanna Valley you don't know what you have. The mountains, the waters, the trees are all psrt of the expected scenery. It is only when you leave that you realize what you had. Which is what has happened to me over the years. I think it also made me more open and aware of the need for wilderness of some kind in my life.

I use the word wilderness quite broadly to actually mean nature in general. Nature and "tame" wilderness can be found in parks in the middle of cities as well as in one's backyard where a stream comes up out of the ground. It can be in the trees and life from a park that your backyard abuts to. Such contact with the "nature" world was so in-bred into me as I was growing up that I didn't even notice it.

But then I found myself looking for the parks and quiet places. I became aware of being a "river rat" who looked for water to connect with. I began to sense those "Thin Places" as the Celts called them where the separation between heaven and earth was for some reason "thinner" than others. As I looked backward then I realized that Pine Creek and the Susquehanna River were two important places in making me who I am and turning my spirituality into reality for me.

So in August we will be back there. Twelve weeks from today is my 60th birthday and I will complete the last few miles of the 60 Miles for 60 Years bike trip. We plan on staying in the valley near the Creek for the whole week, though, and just letting the wildnerness surround and carry us.

I hope to post something each week on the journey and its roots. It is all part of the Rolling Toward (and Through) Sixty for me. I will try my best to bring you along.

Pine Creek- Tiadaghton - 14 Weeks to Go

Pine Creek Gorge Panorama, taken from West Rim Trail in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, USA. View is of the "Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania" looking south, Pine Creek and the rail-trail are visible.(from Wikipedia)

Just some information about Pine Creek. Fourteen Weeks to go until my 60 miles for my 60th.

According to Wikipedia:

• Pine Creek is named for the many pine trees that lined (and now again line) much of its banks. The Iroquois called Pine Creek “Tiadaghton”, which according to Steve Owlett in Seasons Along The Tiadaghton: An Environmental History of the Pine Creek Gorge, either meant “The River of Pines” or “The Lost or Bewildered River.”
  


• Pine Creek is the largest “creek” in the United States.Pine Creek's watershed covers 979 sq. mi, the largest watershed of all tributaries of the West Branch Susquehanna River.
  

Also, in another article on Wikipedia:

• The Pine Creek Rail Trail is approximately 65 miles from end to end, and it generally follows a north-south orientation. The trail is located wholly within Tioga and Lycoming Counties.

• The trail's northern terminus is near the intersection of U.S. Route 6 and Pennsylvania Route 287, about 3 miles north of Wellsboro. The trail parallels Route 6 in a southwesterly direction for about 6 miles until it reaches the village of Ansonia. From there the trail parallels Pine Creek as it goes south along the floor of the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania. It passes through Leonard Harrison State Park and the Tioga State Forest. Approximately 17 miles south of Ansonia, the trail passes through the village of Blackwell. The section between Ansonia and Blackwell is very remote, and much of the trail is inaccessible by road.

• South of Blackwell, the trail enters Lycoming County and the Tiadaghton State Forest. It parallels Pennsylvania Route 414 for about 25 miles. Pennsylvania Route 414 ends in the unincorporated village of Waterville. South of Waterville, the trail parallels Pennsylvania Route 44 for approximately 17 miles until the trail reaches its southern terminus in Jersey Shore. Between Blackwell and Jersey Shore, the trail crosses the highway and Pine Creek several times, and it is almost always within sight of both the road and the creek.

• The earliest industry in the region was logging. In the years between 1820 and 1883, trees were floated down the creek to sawmills in Jersey Shore and Williamsport. In 1883, the Jersey Shore, Pine Creek and Buffalo Railway opened. Sawmills were constructed in several communities along the creek, and finished products were carried out by train. Coal mining was another important industry, and coal was also shipped along the railroad.

• After a series of reorganizations, the railroad along Pine Creek became a part of the New York Central Railroad and eventually Conrail. Freight and passenger service continued for many years. In 1988, Conrail ended rail service. The tracks were removed, and the first section of the Pine Creek Rail Trail opened in 1996. The trail opened in stages with the most recent section (from Ansonia to just north of Wellsboro) being completed in 2007. The trail is operated by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

• In 2001, an article in the USA Today newspaper named the Pine Creek Rail Trail one of "10 great places to take a bike tour" in the world. It was one of only five places in the continental United States on the list, which was compiled by Patricia Vance, author of bicycle touring guides. The article cited the "Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania" as "idyllic in fall" and mentioned the "gorge with views of the cliffs and mixed hardwood forest".