Lock Haven, Pennsylvania

===19th century===
[[File:Canal Monument in Lock Haven Pennsylvania.JPG|thumb|A canal monument incorporating an old canal lock in downtown Lock Haven|alt=A stone and metal monument and stone retaining walls commemorate a former canal lock. A sidewalk runs by the memorial and between the retaining walls on a lush bed of grass.]] 
Lock Haven was laid out as a town in 1833,<ref name="PHMC early"/> and it became the county seat in 1839, when Clinton County was created out of parts of [[Lycoming County, Pennsylvania|Lycoming]] and [[Centre County, Pennsylvania|Centre]] counties.{{sfn|Linn|1883|p=489}} Incorporated as a [[Borough (Pennsylvania)|borough]] in 1840 and as a city in 1870,<ref name="PHMC early">{{cite web | title = Clinton County – 7th class |publisher = Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission |url =http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/BAH/DAM/counties/pdfs/Clinton.pdf |access-date = November 27, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150514223232/http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/BAH/DAM/counties/pdfs/Clinton.pdf|archive-date=May 14, 2015|url-status=live}}</ref> Lock Haven prospered in the 19th&nbsp;century largely because of timber and transportation. The forests of Clinton County and counties upriver held a huge supply of white pine and hemlock as well as oak, ash, maple, poplar, cherry, beech, and magnolia. The wood was used locally for such things as frame houses, shingles, canal boats, and wooden bridges, and whole logs were floated to [[Chesapeake Bay]] and on to [[Baltimore]], to make [[spar (sailing)|spars]] for ships. [[Log driving]] and [[Timber rafting|log rafting]], competing forms of transporting logs to [[sawmill]]s, began along the West Branch around 1800. By 1830, slightly before the founding of the town, the lumber industry was well established.{{sfn|Miller|1966|pp=109–111}}

The [[Pennsylvania Canal (West Branch Division)|West Branch Canal]], which opened in 1834, ran {{convert|73|mi|km|0}} from [[Northumberland, Pennsylvania|Northumberland]] to Farrandsville, about {{convert|5|mi|km|0}} upstream from Lock Haven. A state-funded extension called the Bald Eagle Cut ran from the West Branch through Lock Haven and [[Flemington, Pennsylvania|Flemington]] to Bald Eagle Creek. A privately funded extension, the [[Bald Eagle and Spring Creek Navigation]], eventually reached [[Bellefonte, Pennsylvania|Bellefonte]], {{convert|24|mi|km|0}} upstream. Lock Haven's founder, Jeremiah Church, and his brother, Willard, chose the town site in 1833 partly because of the river, the creek, and the canal. Church named the town ''Lock Haven'' because it had a canal [[Lock (water transport)|lock]] and because it was a haven for loggers, boatmen, and other travelers. Over the next quarter century, canal boats {{convert|12|ft|m|0}} wide and {{convert|80|ft|m|0}} long carried passengers and mail as well as cargo such as coal, ashes for lye and soap, firewood, food, furniture, dry goods, and clothing. A rapid increase in Lock Haven's population (to 830 by 1850){{sfn|Wagner|1979|p=42}} followed the opening of the canal.{{sfn|Miller|1966|pp=44–46}}

A Lock Haven [[log boom]], smaller than but otherwise similar to the [[Susquehanna Boom]] at Williamsport, was constructed in 1849. Large cribs of timbers weighted with tons of stone were arranged in the pool behind the [[Dunnstown, Pennsylvania|Dunnstown]] Dam, named for a settlement on the shore opposite Lock Haven. The piers, about {{convert|150|ft|m|0}} from one another, stretched in a line from the dam to a point {{convert|3|mi|km|0}} upriver. Connected by timbers shackled together with iron yokes and rings, the piers anchored an enclosure into which the river current forced floating logs. Workers called ''boom rats'' sorted the captured logs, branded like cattle, for delivery to sawmills and other owners. Lock Haven became the lumber center of Clinton County and the site of many businesses related to forest products.{{sfn|Miller|1966|pp=111–119}}

The [[Philadelphia and Erie Railroad|Sunbury and Erie Railroad]], renamed the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad in 1861, reached Lock Haven in 1859, and with it came a building boom. Hoping that the area's coal, iron ore, white pine, and high-quality clay would produce significant future wealth, railroad investors led by Christopher and John Fallon financed a line to Lock Haven. On the strength of the railroad's potential value to the city, local residents had invested heavily in housing, building large homes between 1854 and 1856. Although the Fallons' coal and iron ventures failed, [[Gothic Revival architecture|Gothic Revival]], [[Greek Revival architecture|Greek Revival]], and [[Italianate architecture|Italianate]] mansions and commercial buildings such as the Fallon House, a large hotel, remained, and the railroad provided a new mode of transport for the ongoing timber era. A second rail line, the [[Bald Eagle Valley Railroad]], originally organized as the Tyrone and Lock Haven Railroad and completed in the 1860s, linked Lock Haven to [[Tyrone, Pennsylvania|Tyrone]], {{convert|56|mi|km|0}} to the southwest. The two rail lines soon became part of the network controlled by the [[Pennsylvania Railroad]].{{sfn|Wagner|1979|pp=9–60}}

During the era of [[Log driving|log floating]], logjams sometimes occurred when logs struck an obstacle. Log rafts floating down the West Branch had to pass through chutes in canal dams. The rafts were commonly {{convert|28|ft|m|0}} wide—narrow enough to pass through the chutes—and {{convert|150|ft|m|0}} to {{convert|200|ft|m|0}} long.<ref name=theiss>{{cite journal | last = Theiss | first = Lewis Edwin | title = Lumbering in Penn's Woods | journal = Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies | volume = 19 | issue = 4 | pages = 397–412 | publisher = Pennsylvania Historical Association | location = University Park, Pa. |date=October 1952 | url = http://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/view/22227/21996| format = [[PDF]] | id = psu.ph/1133209642 | access-date = February 3, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150616050600/https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/view/22227/21996|archive-date=June 16, 2015|url-status=live}}</ref> In 1874, a large raft got wedged in the chute of the Dunnstown Dam and caused a jam that blocked the channel from bank to bank with a pile of logs {{convert|16|ft|m|0}} high. The jam eventually trapped another 200&nbsp;log rafts, and 2&nbsp;canal boats, ''The Mammoth of Newport'' and ''The Sarah Dunbar''.{{sfn|Miller|1966|pp=119–120}}

In terms of volume, the peak of the lumber era in Pennsylvania arrived in about 1885, when {{nowrap|1.9 million logs}} went through the boom at Williamsport. These logs produced a total of {{convert|226|e6board feet|e3m3|abbr=off|lk=on}} of sawed lumber. After that, production steadily declined throughout the state.<ref name=theiss/> Lock Haven's timber business was also affected by flooding, which badly damaged the canals and destroyed the log boom in 1889.{{sfn|Miller|1966|p=59}}

The Central State Normal School, established to train teachers for central Pennsylvania, held its first classes in 1877 at a site overlooking the West Branch Susquehanna River. The small school, with enrollments below 150 until the 1940s, eventually became Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania.<ref name = lhuphistory>{{cite web | title = Lock Haven University: A Brief History | publisher = Lock Haven University | url = http://www.lhup.edu/library2/archive/briefhistory.htm | access-date = October 13, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120217095059/http://www.lhup.edu/library2/archive/briefhistory.htm|archive-date=February 17, 2012}}</ref> In the early 1880s, the New York and Pennsylvania Paper Mill in [[Castanea Township, Clinton County, Pennsylvania|Castanea Township]] near Flemington began paper production on the site of a former sawmill; the [[paper mill]] remained a large employer until the end of the 20th&nbsp;century.