Susquehanna

Course

Both branches and the lower Susquehanna were part of important regional transportation corridors. The river was extensively used for muscle-powered ferries, boats, and canal boat shipping of bulk goods in the brief decades before the Pennsylvania Canal system was eclipsed by the coming of age of steam-powered railways. While the railroad industry has been less prevalent since the closures and mergers of the 1950s–1960s, a wide-ranging rail transportation infrastructure still operates along the river's shores.

Also called the Main Branch Susquehanna, the longer branch of the river rises at the outlet of Otsego Lake in Cooperstown, New York. From there, the north branch of the river runs west-southwest through rural farmland and dairy country, receiving the Unadilla River at Sidney.

History

The Susquehanna River has played an important role in the history of the United States. In the late 17th century, William Penn, the founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, negotiated with the Lenape (Delaware) to allow European settlement along the lower Delaware River—part of Lenapehoking, the ancestral homeland of the Lenape. He then negotiated with the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) to open land for settlement along the Susquehanna. In the first half of the 18th century, thousands of German and Scots-Irish immigrants flooded into the lower Susquehanna River valley and established farms and villages. By the late 18th century, the river became an important transportation corridor as goods and foodstuffs were brought to markets downriver.

Geology

The Susquehanna River is likely an old river, cutting across the grain of ancient rift basins in the Piedmont as well as faults and folds of the Appalachians. It may have been established during the late Jurassic, Cretaceous or Tertiary Periods, tens to more than one hundred million years ago, when southeasterly drainage to the Atlantic Ocean Basin was established. The list of rivers by age gives its age as 270-340 million years.