Susquehanna, River of Dreams

by Susan Q. Stranahan

In Susquehanna, River of Dreams award-winning journalist Susan Q. Stranahan tells the sweeping story of one of America's great rivers – ranging in time from the Susquehanna's geologic origins to the modern threats to its eco-system, describing human settlements, industry and pollution, and recent efforts to save the river and its "drowned estuary," the Chesapeake Bay. The result is a unique natural history of the vast Susquehanna watershed and a compelling look at environmental issues of national importance.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1993

Reviews

[Ed Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stranahan's book centers its nine chapters around key concepts such as geology, economy, floods, pollution, nuclear development, and shad restoration. So not only does the reader need to work at understanding key concepts specific to those fields of study, but then the reader also needs to be able to understand how the Susquehanna fits in to each. Difficult, yes, but entirely worth it.

Here are some of the interesting things I learned while reading the book:

* The Susquehanna begins at Lake Otsego, located in Cooperstown, New York.
*From Lake Otsego to the Chesapeake Bay run 448 miles of Susquehanna River.
*Water takes six days to get from Otsego to the Bay.
*The etymology of "Susquehanna" is both unknown and disputed.
*Scientists believe the geology is a result of Africa slamming into North America 300 MYA.
*The Wright family (as in Wrightsville) settled along the river in 1726.
*No other river east of the Rockies is as prone to ice jams and flooding as the Susquehanna.
*Ben Franklin condemned the Paxton Boys' slaughter of the last Susquehannock men, women, and children.
*Samuel Wright, Susanna Wright's nephew, gave Columbia, PA, its name in 1788.
*Edgar Allan Poe wrote five articles for the "Columbia Spy."
*Trees rank as Pennsylvania's most valuable natural resource, ahead of coal.
*Billions of dollars in lumber are sold to domestic and international markets each year.
*Dirt trails carved by Indians along the floodplains became roads and, later, rail lines and highways
*Coal-mining law enforcement in PA has always been erratic and subject to political pressures.
*Industries, farms, and municipalities dumped chemicals and human waste directly into the river until the Clean Water Act of 1972.
*Abandoned-mine drainage is the major source of water pollution in PA, accounting for about half the total miles of degraded streams.
*Tourism is Lancaster's third largest industry after farming and manufacturing.
*From Lancaster County's southern tip, it is twelve miles to the Chesapeake Bay. (Think runoff.)
*At times the Bay is so depleted of oxygen that bottom-dwelling species cannot survive.
*Each year the livestock of Lancaster produce 4.9 million tons of manure.
*Today nearly half the private water supplies in Lancaster carry traces of fertilizers and pesticides.
*The erection of dams ended shad migrations and decimated the shad population.
*The Holtwood Dam was completed in 1910.

Amazing stuff!

I haven't read any of the other reviews for this book yet, but I did see that it averages something like 3.5 stars out of 5. I can only figure that's from readers who don't have as vested an interest in the Susquehanna. With information like that shared above, how can this not get five stars?! I'm going to go see....

[Armelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written, very interesting, and really, really depressing. Deforestation. Mine run-off. Raw sewage. Dead fish. Corrupt politicians. Stubborn, smug corporations.

The book was written in the early nineties, so we don’t really get “the rest of the story,” but there’s quite a bit of food for thought here.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very readable work of non-fiction, organized thematically and geographically. The author presents a fairly comprehensive story of the historical and contemporary (as of the mid90s) events and activities that dominate the life of the Susquehanna River. Beginning with a geographical and geological survey of its entire length, she moves onto the earliest of colonial development (colonial and postcolonial settlement and development, especially canals), and then the hugely important story of the lumber industry in the 19th century and its effects on the upper reaches of the Susquehanna. The rest of the book looks at current issues, with historical background: flooding, mining, pollution, Three Mile Island and nuclear development along the river. The narrative gradually shifts from stories of exploitation and devastation to restoration and ecological awareness, as she writes about agriculture, the restoration of shad and the overcoming of dams, and finally, the battles and successes when it comes to getting people to think of its watershed and the Chesapeake Bay as one ecosystem and act accordingly. The tone of the narrative is one of a beautiful river, devastated by powerful interests and ignorance of ecology, showing how it has come back strongly but only with efforts to keep up the pressure for the work that remains to be done. The writing throughout is informative but very readable and, like good journalistic nonfiction, is woven together with the stories of interesting people along or involved with the river, from retired guys who fish every day from under the turnpike bridge, to government officials and conservationists who are trying to manage the competing interests and undo a century or more of abuse to this grand waterway. There is a need for a book as reable as this, to follow up on the last twenty-five years.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting; I learned a lot about the area in which I live! Ends on a hopeful note, which was nice -- inspiring to hear about all that was done to reverse the damage to this watershed in such a short time. A bit inspiring in light of the environmental challenges we face today.

[Janelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an interesting book about the Susquehanna River, told through many lenses. I was hooked when I read that the river almost made Columbia, PA, the capital of the U.S. and that it was once possible to depart for Europe from its wharves (39).

Stranahan includes chapters on geology, economic development, logging, floods, pollution, nuclear development, farming, shad restoration, and the river and the bay (the Chesapeake Bay). I thought this was an effective way to tell the many stories of this important and perplexing river. Why perplexing? It isn't navigable in its entirety, and it thwarted capitalist dreams time and again. It almost seemed to tease European settlers, who assumed it would bend to their will and found it fighting back.

The Susquehanna is prone to flooding (understatement). The chapter on floods was my favorite - it was downright riveting. Stranahan writes:

Rivers have always served as magnets to development, for along their bands the land is fertile and flat. The settlements in colonial America spread outward beside rivers, which offered cheap and easy transportation. The occasional flood was welcomed by farmers, for it brought rich sediments that replenished tired soils, and the losses incurred in the regular spring freshets were offset by the benefits derived from them. But people soon came to regard the riverbanks as their own, their tenancy on them as permanent, and the river as the intruder. Dirt trails carved by Indians along the floodplains became roads and, later, rail lines and superhighways. Small settlements became large communities, with river frontage a coveted possession. Industries sought the river for power to run their machinery and to carry away their waste. [118]

Even the engineers who designed dams for the river recognized that they would only mitigate flooding, not control it (too bad citizens didn't understand this). For many years, the federal government refused to fund dams and levees as it considered their benefit (and therefore their cost) to be local. But by 1936, the Army Corps of Engineers stepped in to manage river control projects.

The chapter on pollution was pretty interesting, too. I didn't know there was such a thing as "submarine mining" - it's when boats dredge the river to get fine river anthracite that could be sold to big industry. I also chuckled when a boatmen's club got so frustrated in 1962 that they paid for a billboard at a bridge that said "'You are now about to cross the filthy Susquehanna River. It wasn't always this way, but the political bosses haven't the guts to stop pollution'" (169). The boatmen and fishermen (sic) did a lot to put pressure on the state to tighten laws and clean up the river.

This book was published in 1993; I'd love to see an update. The title came to my attention because it was a PPFF virtual book club pick, and the author even joined the Zoom meeting, but I didn't attend because I hadn't finished the book yet. Now I wish I had!

[Walt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well-written book that blends an overall holistic narrative with personal stories to give the book character. Leaning more towards environmental studies rather than history, the book is organized thematically although the themes loosely follow chronology. The theme of the book is environmental degradation transitioning to environmental stewardship.

The personal narratives are sometimes disorienting because readers unfamiliar with the area, people, or history have difficulty relating to them. I understand one person whose home was flooded by sewage and mine discharge. But many others I cannot identify with. The result was that I glossed over these narratives in search for more concrete history.

The themes: geology, colonization, lumber, mining, floods, Three Mile Island, farming, fishing, and the Chesapeake loosely follow a chronological format. The first and last chapters appear to be tagged on just to provide structure and focus on the river. The other stories can be stand-along chapters linked together by the river. The result is a very biased narrative on economic development.

The bias is most clearly felt in the chapter on fish restoration. Vague mandates about fish restoration going back to the 1860s suddenly became a crusade in the 1970s at a cost of millions of dollars per year for the few companies operating dams built in the 1930s. Stranahan barely mentions the rationale for such a cost benefit analysis except one personal narrative that says something akin to "you can check the health of the river by the health of the fish." Reading as an environmentalist, I was surprised at the costs extorted from the power companies for the fish.

Overall, this was a slow read for me. Stranahan does describe the various industries and the growth along the river since the colonial era (especially in the lower part of the river. I do not recall her mentioning the Northern parts or Binghamton at all); but the focus is on the river, and hence the environment, rather than the people. The narrative has a strong bias that can overwhelm the reader seeking a more general overview of rise and decline of industry in Pennsylvania.

[Frederick Bingham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I jokingly described this book to my wife as a 300 page wikipedia entry, but it's actually a lot more than that. It's a comprehensive exploration of the Susquehanna River from the standpoint of geology, economics, politics, geography, etc.

The highlight of the book, in my opinion, is the chapter about logging. Before white men got there, central Pennsylvania was covered with millions of acres of dense virgin forest. Over the course of about 50 years of the mid-19th century, loggers cut down every last tree. The descriptions of the logging booms on the river, the way they cut the trees down in winter to make it possible to transport them on snow, the logging camps, etc. was mind-blowing. So was the narration of the ceremonial final log raft, which overturned near Harrisburg and killed several people.

Equally compelling was the chapter about coal mining and its impact on the Susquehanna basin, past and present. Amazingly, until about 1970, a miner could dig down and get out the coal. Once the mine was played out, they could walk away without doing any type of mitigation or cleanup. Another amazing incident was when the river broke through into an underground mine - with the help of greedy and incompetent management - and essentially destroyed all the underground mines in the Wyoming Valley. This was the 1959 Knox mine disaster. To try to stem the flow, they diverted a railroad spur and started throwing in anything they could find, like old boxcars, to no avail. 12 miners died in the incident.

I could go on. Three Mile Island and other nuclear industries, over-fertilization, dam-building, etc. all contributed to the degradation of the river. Yet, today it is as clean as it has ever been, and millions of acres of northern Pennsylvania forest are preserved in perpetuity. The overall lesson is that nature, no matter how badly we treat it, given the chance to recover always will.

My only issue with this book is that it is nearly 30 years old. I wish the author would write an update - don't even know if she is still alive.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad read -- contains the right facts and presents them in a way that ties everything together and restrains itself from plodding along. Recommended for enthusiasts of the river and her regions. My biggest gripe with the book however is its limited scope on the geology. For instance, this book never mentions that thr Susquehanna is one of the oldest rivers in the world. The book neither gives mention to the fact that the Susquehanna and the Chesapeake Bay are one, not just figuratively but literally, as the channel trench of the Susquehanna runs underneath the entirely of the Chesapeake all the way to the Atlantic. The Chesapeake is thus her engorged, tidal estuary. Issues of Bay and River are not just inseparable politically, but geologically and ecologically too.

[Betsy Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great book for me, because I have spent all my life on or near the Susquehanna River- on the West Branch, the North Branch, and the main stem. The author does a good job of describing the river’s history and then what happened during the second half of the 20th century. Although more has happened in the 30-plus years since the book was written, that does not detract from the very readable information the book contains.

[Kenton Erb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good history of my own backyard. I just lost interest in it about three quarters of the way through.

[V Rendina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fascinating take on telling the history of the river.

[Dutt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read this book for my environmental literature class. I really enjoyed the descriptions. Also, living near the river I enjoyed the historical background. It spits out a lot of good facts without being super dry.