Did you know that Pike County in the Poconos is Pennsylvania's fastest growing county? Nearby Wayne County is growing by leaps and bounds as well. The Lake Wallenpaupack area is one of Northeast PA's most popular spots.
A little history of Pike County and Lake Wallenpaupack...
Pike County, created in 1814 from part of Wayne County, Pennsylvania, was named for General Zebulon Pike. Milford, Pennsylvania, the county seat, was incorporated in 1874 and named for Milford Haven of Wales.
The first inhabitants were the Leni Lenape, later known as the Delaware Indians. The first European to visit to the region was Captain Arent Schuyler in 1694, sent by Governor Benjamin Fletcher of the colony of New York determine whether the French were trying to enlist the Indians against the English. In 1696, governor Fletcher authorized a number of citizens of Ulster County to buy land from the Indians near New York. Descendants of those settlers became the first Europeans to settle in Pike County.
Early settlers included Nicholas Depui in 1725, Thomas Quick, who settled on the site of Milford in 1733, and Andrew Dingman in 1735, at what would become Dingmans Ferry. Settlers had good relations with the Indians at first; but as more settlers moved into the area, land disputes developed. The famous Walking Purchase of 1737 took in more than half of the present day Pike County and led to violence.
In the early 1800s, coal was discovered nearby in the area of present-day Carbondale, but an economical means of transporting the coal to New York was needed. A combination of a gravity railroad from Carbondale to Honesdale, and canal from Honesdale to New York was proposed. In 1823 the state of New York approved the building of the Delaware and Hudson Canal, a 108-mile (174 km) waterway between Honesdale and the Hudson River terminus near present day Kingston, New York. Work on the canal began in 1825 and was completed in 1828. The canal system proved profitable except where the barges crossed the Delaware. John Roebling proposed running the canal right over the river on an innovative suspension bridge/aqueduct, built in 1848; the suspension design called for only three piers (instead of the normal five), which allowed more room for ice floes and timber rafts to pass underneath. Three other suspension aqueducts were built for the canal.
The canal and aqueduct carried coal boats over the Delaware for the next fifty-one years. Then new New York and Erie Railroad proved cheaper and had the advantage of running in the winter when the canal froze over. By 1898 the canal was abandoned. Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct, possibly the oldest suspension bridge in America, is a National Historic Landmark.
In 1926, the Pennsylvania Power and Light Company built a dam on Wallenpaupack creek at Wilsonville for an electric generating plant. Construction of the dam required a crew of 2,700 men and took two years to complete at a cost of $1,026,000. Nearly a hundred landowners were bought out and farms, barns, and homes were razed or moved along with 17 miles (27 km) of roads and telephone lines and a cemetery.
Geography of Pike County and Lake Wallenpaupack
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 1,468 km? (567 mi?). 1,416 km? (547 mi?) of it is land and 51 km? (20 mi?) of it is water. The total area is 3.50% water.
The terrain rises rapidly from the river valley in the east to the rolling foothills of the Poconos in the west. The highest point is one of two unnamed hills in Greene Township that top out at approximately 2,110 feet (643 m) above sea level. The lowest elevation is approximately 340 feet (103.6 m), at the confluence of the Bush Kill and the Delaware.
