Conestoga Fun Facts

In this post I will look at some general information about the Conestoga River. Hopefully you will find this interesting.  The more time I spend photographing the river the more I come to realize that we have a tremendously beautiful natural resource right in our back yards. It is easy to ignore the river as we drive hastily over the bridges as we go about our business. And for too long we have neglected and abused this blessing. So the next time you travel over or near the Conestoga, take a moment to reflect on its tranquil beauty.

(The featured photo above was taken along Boot Jack Road not far from the headwaters of the Conestoga.)

Frank R. Diffenderfer, Associate Editor of the Lancaster New Era from 1877 until 1913 had this to say about the Conestoga, “One of the most beautiful streams in the world flows quietly through the green meadows and along the sunny braes of Lancaster County for a distance of more than sixty miles in area, affording endless themes of beauty to the brush of the painter and the fancy of the poet.”

The Conestoga gets its name from a village of Susquehannock people that were living in the area in the 17th century. The name of their village was “Kanastoge” which means “place of the immersed pole”. The stream and the valley through which it flowed were called “Conestoga” by the English.  For most of it’s history since that time the Conestoga was known as the Conestoga Creek. I will cover the change of designation to “river” later on in this post.

The name “Conestoga” was made famous in many other ways, most notably the Conestoga Wagon that served as the primary haulers of freight before the invention of steamship. Also, in the 19th century, a cigar made from the tobacco of the valley was called the Conestoga (usually shortened to “stogie”).

Source to Mouth

The Conestoga River begins at the point where the West branch, flowing down from the great swamp in State Game lands of Brecknock Township, joins with the East branch flowing out of Elverson. There have been attempts to find the precise source of the river on the West Branch. Ad Crable, staff writer for Lancaster Newspapers, wrote an article about one such attempt. (If you have a subscription to LNP you can read it here.) I’m not convinced that they found the source, however. At least according to Google maps, the river goes much further than the point where they stopped. And most likely there are many springs that feed into the stream at that location.

In any case, for my purposes, the Conestoga starts where the two branches meet.

The West Branch (top) joins the East Branch (right) to form the Conestoga proper flowing off to the left.

From that point the river flows a bit over sixty miles through rich farmland and around the city of Lancaster to the point where it empties into the Susquehanna River at Safe Harbor, the place once called “The Port of Lancaster”.

The Conestoga River empties into the Susquehanna River at the “Port of Lancaster”.

Tributaries

The principle named tributaries are (in order of flow):

  1. The Little Conestoga (#1) which joins just below Weaver’s Mill Covered bridge
  2. Cedar Creek joins near to where the Conestoga crosses Reading Road (Rt. 625)
  3. The Muddy Creek joins just above Hinkletown.
  4. The Cocalico Creek joins in West Earl township just south or Rt. 222.
  5. The Lititz Run which joins at Pinetown.
  6. The Mill Creek joins south of Lancaster near to the town of Lyndon.
  7. The Little Conestoga (#2) joins across from Boyscout Road.
Safe Harbor park in the fall.

Creek or River?

The Conestoga was called Conestoga Creek through most of it’s history since the first English and German settlers came to the county. Judging by it’s size it hardly qualifies as a river especially when compared to the Susquehanna, Delaware, or Mississippi. So why is it called the Conestoga River?

In 1912,  Frank Diffenderffer wrote a plea for the Conestoga Creek to be designated as a river. Diffenderffer laments that in the Old World streams of less than half the Conestoga’s length and width are called rivers but here in the New World no stream less than a thousand miles long and a mile wide may by rightly called a river. Diffenderffer writes “they live on the banks of a little stream on which nothing larger than a toy canoe can float, and delight in calling it a river, and singing its praises in song, while we live our lives away on a larger and more beautiful stream,see its charms every day in the year, and content ourselves with speaking of it under the undignified name of a ‘creek.'” He goes on to point out that the word “creek” originally meant “a small inlet of the shore of the sea or of a river”. He goes on to describe several Old World rivers that are smaller than the Conestoga and makes the plea that we no longer refer to the Conestoga as a “creek”. He said the Conestoga, “… is a river in all that constitutes a river, just as truly as are some of the most noted streams of the world which have been called rivers for thousands of years.” In spite of Diffenderffer’s plea, the Conestoga was not officially designated a river until 1973.

A misty spring morning on the Conestoga River.

Finally, I will leave you this piece from the Scottish poet, James D. Law:

“Not Turner’s noted crook of Lune,
Nor Byron’s wide and winding Rhine,
Nor Burns’ banks of Bonny Doon
Nor boasted Tweed, nor lauded Tyne,
Not Delaware nor Brandywine,
Nor Spey, nor Tay, nor Don nor Dee,
Nor Shakespeare’s Avon, still more
fine.
E’er seemed so beautiful to me—
As tranquil Conestoga!” – James D. Law

8 comments on “Conestoga Fun Facts

  1. Nice one, Don. Can you add a caption to the top photograph?

    • For some reason WordPress doesn’t show the caption on the photo that I pick as the “featured” photo. But I’ll see what I can do.

  2. Love this Don. Thanks!

    Love the poem too.

    ~Ed

  3. Appreciate the background on the Conestoga. The river designation came about as a result of Congresssman Eshelman’s attempts to secure funds to enhance the “river”

  4. I grew up on a hill above the Conestoga. I was drawn to it in all phases of my life. My fondest memories have everything to do with the beautiful river.
    This touched my heartstrings, thank you for sharing.

  5. Thank you for these “fun facts.” Growing up just outside Millersville along “Creek Drive” the river passed in front of our house. We always called “the crick.” It was a source of fun (swimming, boating, a little fishing). It was also a source of awe. During Agnes, the Conestoga was definitely a raging RIVER that delivered about 4 feet of water into the first floor of our house. I also remember vividly the loud thunder-like cracking noise of an ice jam as huge sections of ice broke up. And watched in amazement as large chunks of ice were forced along the bank scraping and pushing earth like a huge bulldozer. We moved into our house in 1950 when one of the damns from the old canal system was still in place at Slackwater just outside Millersville. It was a few miles downstream from where we lived but I believe it was still being used for power for a paper mill or small electric power plant. Whenever the flow was blocked at the damn, water would back up into the stream that ran along side our barn. When that happened, huge carp would swim up into the stream and become trapped when the water receded. I remember wading into the stream and grabbing carp by hand and helping them back in the “crick.” We were shocked around the mid-50’s when we looked out one morning and the level of the crick had dropped 4 or 5 feet. We later learned that the damn at Slackwater broke causing the level to drop. Another awesome event occurred years later when the water flow dropped to a trickle for about 1/2 day. We never knew why but speculated that upstream the river broke though and filled the stone quarry along Wabank Road near Quaker Hills. My brother and I have become very interested in the old canal and have tried to envision what it would have been like to live in our house during the time the canal was in operation and watch packet boats passing by and passengers drinking, singing and some walking on the tow path. The Conestoga is a big part of my memories, so THANK YOU for you posts.

  6. Would we calll Little Conestoga #1 The Little Conestoga River and Little Conestoga #2 The Little Conestoga Creek? Seems confusing to have two Little Conestoga Creeks.

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