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Forest County, PA
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Created on April 1, 1848, from part of Jefferson County.
Part of Venango County was added on October 31, 1866. It
was named for its extensive forests. It was attached to
Jefferson County until 1857 when Marienville became the
county seat. Tionesta, the county seat after 1866, was
incorporated as a borough on February 28, 1856, and was
named for the Tionesta Creek.
 Tom
Cook acquired the first timber lands near Cooksburg.
Cyrus Blood founded Marienville as a center for the
lumber industry and succeeded in having the county
formed by the legislature. Leather tanning was an
important enterprise. Until about 1900 timber barons
shaped events, but by then the original timber was
largely gone. The state purchased the Cook family lands
and preserves them for recreation. Today, the Allegheny
National First covers over 40 percent of the area, and
additional lands are owned for commercial lumber
production. There was a brief oil boom, and glass was
manufactured at Marienville from 1914 to 1982 relying on
the abundance of natural gas, which produces intense
heat quickly. The population peak of 11,000 occurred in
1900. Farming has never been very successful and is
confined to only two percent of the countryside. The
construction of the Tionesta Creek Dam considerably
altered the topography. Forest County’s border lines
were not clearly defined until 1867. |
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