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Potter County, PA
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Created on March 26, 1804 from part of Lycoming County
and named for General James Potter of Cumberland and
later Northumberland Counties, hero of both the French
and Indian and Revolutionary Wars, and a member of the
Supreme Executive Council and the Council of Censors. It
was attached to Lycoming County until 1814 when it was
authorized to elect commissioners jointly with McKean
County. McKean and Potter Counties were separated in
1824, but Potter was still attached to McKean for
judicial purposes. It was fully organized in 1835.
Coudersport, the county seat, was laid out in 1807 and
incorporated as a borough on February 7, 1848. It was
named for Jean Samuel Couderc, an Amsterdam banker.
 An
uninhabited section of overly large Lycoming County, the
county was created by the legislature on the same day as
McKean and Tioga, to reduce Lycoming County to
manageable size. John Keating of Philadelphia owned and
developed much of the area. Many early settlers were New
Englanders who came from New York; there were only
twenty-three residents in 1810. The east-west road
across the county sparked commercial progress. A lumber
economy led to a population peak of 30,621 in 1900, but
then it declined as the forests disappeared. A Norwegian
colony started by utopian violinist Ole Bull failed in
1852–53. Before 1860 farmer-lumbermen using small water
mills cut most of the lumber in northern section. The
virgin white pines were all gone by 1880. Commercial
lumbering began in 1837 at Millport. Goodyear Brothers
of Buffalo, N.Y. started a second lumber boom in 1884,
using railroads and power mills. There was a large
tannery at Costello in 1886. Galeton, acquired by the
Goodyears, had railroad shops, a tannery, a sawmill, and
a brewery. The western section was exploited by a
Scranton based company, which did not diversify as
Galeton had. It died when the trees were gone, in 1912.
Most of the tanneries closed before 1930. Acetate,
charcoal, wood alcohol, wood tar were produced from
small hardwoods until about 1950. Gas, discovered after
1900, led to glass manufacture that lasted a few
decades. Deep gas, discovered in the 1930s, was piped
out and sold elsewhere. Today there is some dairy
farming in the north, and potatoes have grown well since
the 1920s; farms occupy 14 percent of the land. Carbon
is now produced. The Bayless Paper Company, begun in
1901 near Austin, did well until its dam burst in 1911.
Rebuilt, it carried on until a 1942 flood destroyed it
again. |
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