© Frank H. Jump
Recalling old Wilsonville: Before the Wallenpaupack dam by Peter Becker
This view of Wilsonville shows the bridge spanning the Wallenpaupack Creek, just north of where today the PPL dam is located and approximately the site of Mangan Cove. The Owego Turnpike crossed the bridge; at far right, the road from Hawley crosses the Owego and continues through the Wallenpaupack River Valley, now submerged. Note the batching plant on the hillside. The large building was the Taft House, which was relocated to Route 6 across from the dike by an agreement with the electric company. An 1872 map lists it as “F. W. Farnham.” Farnham & Colingwood had a lumber business, saw mill and grist mill in this immediate area. Log rafts could not be floated over the falls, so they had a monoply on the business. © Dr. William Ungerer
Palmyra Twp. (Pike) —
An early crossroads community in the Lake Region that predates Hawley is the hamlet of Wilsonville. Once the center for man’s industrial prowess for taming the power of water, taming the same water source on a grander scale in the 1920’s brought its grand finale.
While Wilsonville was largely taken away and its grounds flooded when Lake Wallenpaupack was formed, today some call the area along the lake shore by the historic name. A PPL campground in the area still keeps the Wilsonville name alive.
Wilsonville is named for the Hon. James Wilson, one of the first justices of the Supreme Court and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. In 1793 he purchased 12,150 acres known as the Manor of Wallenpaupack, including this hamlet settled on the Wallenpaupack Creek falls.
While we have record that Wilson started a hemp and flax mill at the base of the falls in the 1790’s at what was known Paupack Eddy- today Hawley-we have yet to know to what extent Wilson visited or lived in this area, still largely a virgin wilderness. His mill at Paupack Eddy failed for lack of material. Wilson died in 1804, and six years later his land was sold at a sheriff’s sale.
Originally the hamlet of Wilsonville was known as Factoryville. Philadelphia businessmen Rev. Richard Peters, Henry Drinker and Abel James tried, possibly as early as 1768, to establish a community centered around raising sheep and producing wool. The plan was abandoned by 1769 as the pioneers learned the ruthless wilderness was not fit for raising sheep.
The area soon prospered due to the falls, with several saw mills being erected between Wilsonville and Paupack Eddy. The same region thrives with commercial activity today, including the Lake Region IGA market and many other businesses. Hawley Silk Mill and Ledges Hotel, two local bluestone landmarks, began in the late 19th Century as factories powered by the same series of falls.
The falls at Wilsonville dropped 70 feet. Three more falls followed before the last at the foot in Paupack Eddy, 325 feet lower in elevation from Wilsonville. Historian Phineas Goodrich wrote in 1880 of the falls’ great power, “Nothing of the kind of equal magnitude can be found in Northern Pennsylvania.” Wilsonville was so prosperous that it was chosen for a the county seat of Wayne County between 1799 and 1802. The hamlet was centrally located in what was then a much broader county, from which Pike County was annexed in 1814.
By 1822, however, the village had so declined there was only a tavern house operated by Leonard Labar. In 1829, the Wallenpaupack creek valley was considered as a route to bring coal from the mines to meet the Delaware & Hudson canal at Paupack Eddy. A rail system would bring the coal as far as the forks of the Wallenpaupack, and then the coal would be taken by a canal or floated 16 miles down the creek to the falls at Wilsonville, and transferred to a short canal or railway to descend to the canal from Honesdale. The idea was dropped in favor of the gravity rail system laid out by the Pennsylvania Coal Company entering northwest of town.
The lumber capacity of mill operations in the area was estimated at 10 million board feet a year in the mid-19th Century, but by 1886 most of the immense virgin trees had been cut. An 1872 atlas shows that Welwood Avenue in Hawley was the way people would travel from this direction to reach Wilsonville. Bellemonte Avenue, which is today Route 6, had not yet been constructed. The road out of Hawley crossed the old Milford-Owego Turnpike just north of a bridge that spanned the Wallenpaupack Creek at Wilsonville. This was just north of the PPL dam which was was built nearly 50 years later.
The Milford-Owego Turnpike was an early and important toll road that nearly follows present-day Route 6 in Pike County, and State Route 3028, still called Owego Turnpike, west of Hawley and heading to Waymart. Part of the Owego Turnpike is submerged beneath the northern tip of Lake Wallenpaupack. The entrance road into the Woodlyn Shore development is part of the old Owego, accessed from Route 590 and directly across from where the modern-day Owego begins.
Early pictures show Wilsonville as a pleasant place, with businesses, houses, roads, trees and flower beds. Much would change with the plans of the forerunner of the Pennsylvania Power & Light Company, eyeing the same creek as a source for its planned hydroelectric generators.
Surveys for the lake were made beginning in 1907, by the Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey Power Company. Surely residents of Wilsonville and farmers in the Wallenpaupack valley could see it would soon be time to move. The power company had to acquire nearly 12,000 acres from nearly 100 property owners. James Butler, an agent for the company, was persuasive in acquiring options.
Many homes and barns were razed or relocated; a cemetery was moved and 17 miles of road were rerouted. Once the project was completed in 1926, Pennsylvania Power & Light Company , through mergers of several stock companies, acquired the rights and properties of the original power company developer.The great dam markedly changed the landscape and diminished the historic falls, but ushered in a new era of industry and prosperity to what became the Lake Region. – The News Eagle – Hawley, PA
