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The Endless Mountains are a geographical, geological, and cultural region in Northeastern Pennsylvania. [1] The Endless Mountains region includes Bradford, Sullivan, Susquehanna,and Wyoming counties. The highest peak in the region is the North Knob of Elk Mountain at 2,693 feet (821 meters). The dissected plateau is a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains.
Part of the Appalachian Mountains chain, the region does not consist of true mountains, geologically speaking, but instead a dissected plateau that is part of the Allegheny Plateau. The Catskill Mountains are the highest expression of the plateau, located to the east of the Endless Mountains, and separated from them by the Delaware River.
The current geography was slightly modified during the last ice age by the Wisconsin Glacier about 15,000 years ago. Glacial striations can be found on the rocks of some of the high ridges, but the area was at the margin of the ice sheet, and the impact was much less than in New York just to the north.
The mountains are made up of sedimentary rocks (mostly sandstone and shales, with a little conglomerate) that were part of a lowland that collected sediments eroded from mountains to the southeast in Mississippian and Pennsylvanian geologic time. The area has been uplifted and lowered several times. The highest points are all nearly the same elevation, establishing that the area had once been eroded into a nearly level peneplain, which has since been uplifted. The present Susquehanna River established its meandering course during that time, when it was a mature stream on a topography of very low relief. When the area was uplifted, the river's bends were preserved as incised meanders. The large river cut a deep valley and established a low baseline for its tributaries, which then cut the plateau into the rugged hills of the present day.
Several Native American bands settled the area in prehistoric times. By the early colonial period, Munsee-Lenape, Susquehannock, and Iroquois peoples were the principal occupants of the region. The majority of the local place names were derived from the Munsee-Lenape, however; places like Lock-ah Hanna (Lackawanna or Sand River), Tunk Hanna Unk (Tunkhannock or Bend River Place), Why-ohm Ing (Wyoming or Food Place), Min Nees Unk (Minisink), Toe-be Hanna (Tobyhanna or Cool River), Mesh-op Ing (Meshoppen), Why-ah-loose Ing (Wyalusing), Schick-shin Ing (Shickshinny), and Mawsch Unk (Bear Place, present-day Jim Thorpe) are examples. The Munsee and other native peoples like the Shawnee, Nanticoke, Conoy, and Tutelo were evicted by the terms of the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, which was between the Iroquois League and the British Crown.
After 1768, hundreds of British, Irish, and German families flooded in from New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to occupy lands purchased from the Susquehanna and Connecticut Land companies of Connecticut. These settlements eventually led to armed conflict with the Penn proprietors (William Penn's sons, Richard and Thomas, and his grandson, John), who also claimed the land. (See Pennamite Wars). During the American Revolution in 1778, a combined British, Tory, Iroquois, Munsee, and Lenape force attacked the Wyoming Valley settlers on the eastern edge of this region, and killed many of the settlers. Washington sent Major General John Sullivan on a campaign to destroy the Iroquois threat by a "scorched earth" drive up the Susquehanna and Chemung Rivers into central and western New York.
The region's economy was formerly based on mining, lumbering (especially of hemlock for tanning) and industry but is now largely agricultural with forestry and tourism contributing to the economic base. Much of the land is steep, but there are a few good farms on rolling hilltops or valley bottoms; many of these farms have been occupied by Mennonite and Amish people who have migrated northward as their traditional homelands became developed.
Quarrying remains an important local industry with the region's high quality blue stone being particularly valuable. The area is on the edge of Pennsylvania's Coal Region, with some minor veins of coal extending into the area.
Camptown, Pennsylvania in the Endless Mountains is featured in the lyrics of "Camptown Races", an 1850 song by Stephen Foster.
The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, are a mountain range in eastern to northeastern North America. Here, the term "Appalachian" refers to several different regions associated with the mountain range, and its surrounding terrain. The general definition used is one followed by the United States Geological Survey and the Geological Survey of Canada to describe the respective countries' physiographic regions. The US uses the term Appalachian Highlands and Canada uses the term Appalachian Uplands..
The Lenape, also called the Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada.
The Susquehanna River is a major river located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, overlapping between the lower Northeast. At 444 miles (715 km) long, it is the longest river on the East Coast of the United States. By watershed area, it is the 16th-largest river in the United States, and also the longest river in the early 21st-century continental United States without commercial boat traffic.
Lenapehoking is widely translated as 'homelands of the Lenape', which in the 16th and 17th centuries, ranged along the Eastern seaboard from western Connecticut to Delaware, and encompassed the territory adjacent to the Delaware and lower Hudson river valleys, and the territory between them.
The Catskill Mountains, also known as the Catskills, are a physiographic province and subrange of the larger Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined as those areas close to or within the borders of the Catskill Park, a 700,000-acre (2,800 km2) forest preserve protected from many forms of development under New York state law.
The Allegheny Mountain Range, informally the Alleghenies, is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada and posed a significant barrier to land travel in less developed eras. The Allegheny Mountains have a northeast–southwest orientation, running for about 300 miles (480 km) from north-central Pennsylvania, southward through western Maryland and eastern West Virginia.
The Cumberland Plateau is the southern part of the Appalachian Plateau in the Appalachian Mountains of the United States. It includes much of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, and portions of northern Alabama and northwest Georgia. The terms "Allegheny Plateau" and the "Cumberland Plateau" both refer to the dissected plateau lands lying west of the main Appalachian Mountains. The terms stem from historical usage rather than geological difference, so there is no strict dividing line between the two. Two major rivers share the names of the plateaus, with the Allegheny River rising in the Allegheny Plateau and the Cumberland River rising in the Cumberland Plateau in Harlan County, Kentucky.
The Allegheny Plateau is a large dissected plateau area of the Appalachian Mountains in western and central New York, northern and western Pennsylvania, northern and western West Virginia, and eastern Ohio. It is divided into the unglaciated Allegheny Plateau and the glaciated Allegheny Plateau.
The Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, also called the Ridge and Valley Province or the Valley and Ridge Appalachians, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Highlands division. The physiographic province is divided into three sections: the Hudson Valley, the Central, and the Tennessee.
The Kittanning Path was a major east-west Native American trail that crossed the Allegheny Mountains barrier ridge connecting the Susquehanna River valleys in the center of Pennsylvania to the highlands of the Appalachian Plateau and thence to the western lands beyond drained by the Ohio River. Kittanning Village was the first major Delaware (Lenape) Indian settlement along the descent from the Allegheny Plateau.
The West Branch Susquehanna River is one of the two principal branches, along with the North Branch, of the Susquehanna River in the Northeastern United States. The North Branch, which rises in upstate New York, is generally regarded as the extension of the main branch, with the shorter West Branch being its principal tributary.
A dissected plateau is a plateau area that has been severely eroded such that the relief is sharp. Such an area may be referred to as mountainous, but dissected plateaus are distinguishable from orogenic mountain belts by the lack of folding, metamorphism, extensive faulting, or magmatic activity that accompanies orogeny.
The Wyoming Valley is a historic industrialized region of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The region is historically notable for its influence in helping fuel the American Industrial Revolution with its many anthracite coal-mines. As a metropolitan area, it is known as the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area, after its principal cities, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. With a population of 567,559 as of the 2020 United States census, it is the fifth-largest metropolitan area in Pennsylvania, after the Delaware Valley, Greater Pittsburgh, the Lehigh Valley, and the Harrisburg–Carlisle metropolitan statistical areas.
Tunkhannock Creek is a 42.3-mile-long (68.1 km) tributary of the Susquehanna River in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Regions of Pennsylvania in the United States include:
The West Branch Susquehanna Valley of central Pennsylvania, United States, in the Ridge-and-valley Appalachians, is the low-lying area draining into the West Branch Susquehanna River southeast of the Allegheny Front, northeast of the Bald Eagle Valley, southwest of the Wyoming Valley and north of the water gap formed between Shamokin Mountain and Montour Ridge.
Teedyuscung was known as "King of the Delawares". He worked to establish a permanent Lenape (Delaware) home in eastern Pennsylvania in the Lehigh, Susquehanna, and Delaware River valleys. Teedyuscung participated in the Treaty of Easton, which resulted in the surrender of Lenape claims to all lands in Pennsylvania. Following the treaty, the Lenape were forced to live under the control of the Iroquois in the Wyoming Valley near modern-day Wilkes-Barre. Teedyuscung was murdered by arsonists in the night of April 19, 1763. This marked the beginning of the end of the Lenape presence in Pennsylvania. Teedyuscung's son Chief Bull conducted a raid on the Wyoming Valley that was part of a greater Indian uprising. As a result, the Lenape were forced to move west of the Appalachian Mountains by the Royal Proclamation of 1763.
The Minisink or Minisink Valley is a loosely defined geographic region of the Upper Delaware River valley in northwestern New Jersey, northeastern Pennsylvania and New York.
The Munsee are a subtribe and one of the three divisions of the Lenape. Historically, they lived along the upper portion of the Delaware River, the Minisink, and the adjacent country in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. They were prominent in the early history of New York and New Jersey, being among the first Indigenous peoples of that region to encounter European colonizers.
The gaps of the Allegheny, meaning gaps in the Allegheny Ridge in west-central Pennsylvania, is a series of escarpment eroding water gaps along the saddle between two higher barrier ridge-lines in the eastern face atop the Allegheny Ridge or Allegheny Front escarpment. The front extends south through Western Maryland and forms much of the border between Virginia and West Virginia, in part explaining the difference in cultures between those two post-Civil War states. While not totally impenetrable to daring and energetic travelers on foot, passing the front outside of the water gaps with even sure footed mules was nearly impossible without navigating terrain where climbing was necessary on slopes even burros would find extremely difficult.
41°37′18″N76°03′08″W / 41.6218°N 76.0521°W
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