Where the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Begins

On November 6, 2010, Jill Bieri of Chesapeake Experience led a Walk and Talk at New Quarter Park. I took this picture of her standing beside a drawing of the Chesapeake Bay watershed that was made by some of her campers. She laid it out on the basketball court in order to explain the definition of a watershed and just how large the 64,000 square mile Chesapeake Bay watershed is. It includes all or parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Washington D.C., Virginia and West Virginia. Its Susquehanna River headwater begins at Otsego Lake, in Cooperstown, New York.

As the Walk and Talk group moved from the spot where Jill began the program to Queen's Creek, where she talked more about the Bay's ecology, I overheard one of the participants saying that he remembered reading about the Susquehanna's headwaters in The Pioneers, the first of the so-called Leatherstocking Tales by the first great American novelist, James Fenimore Cooper. I interrupted to tell him about my Driving Around the Chesapeake Bay Watershed project, and he was kind enough to find, copy, and send the reference for me.

In the Introduction to The Pioneers, Cooper says that he delineates the the central New York area with details he remembers from his youth. He published the book in 1824, so the area probably wasn't too much changed from the time he describes in his history of Otsego and the Susquehanna at the time that "it is connected with civilized man." Here are two paragraphs from the Introduction:

"Otsego, in common with most of the interior of the province of New York, was included in the county of Albany previously to the war of the separation. It then became, in a subsequent division of territory, a part of Montgomery; and finally, having obtained a sufficient population of its own, it was set apart as a county by itself shortly after the peace of 1783. It lies among those low spurs of the Alleghanies which cover the midland counties of New York, and it is a little east of a meridional line drawn through the centre of the State. As the waters of New York flow either southerly into the Atlantic or northerly into Ontario and its outlet, Otsego Lake, being the source of the Susquehanna, is of necessity among its highest lands. The face of the country, the climate as it was found by the whites, and the manners of the settlers, are described with a minuteness for which the author has no other apology than the force of his own recollections."

"In 1779 an expedition was sent against the hostile Indians, who dwelt about a hundred miles west of Otsego, on the banks of the Cayuga. The whole country was then a wilderness, and it was necessary to transport the baggage of the troops by means of the rivers--a devious but practicable route. One brigade ascended the Mohawk until it reached the point nearest to the sources of the Susquehanna, whence it cut a lane through the forest to the head of the Otsego. The boats and baggage were carried over this "portage," and the troops proceeded to the other extremity of the lake, where they disembarked and encamped. The Susquehanna, a narrow though rapid stream at its source, was much filled with "flood wood," or fallen trees; and the troops adopted a novel expedient to facilitate their passage. The Otsego is about nine miles in length, varying in breadth from half a mile to a mile and a half. The water is of great depth, limpid, and supplied from a thousand springs. At its foot the banks are rather less than thirty feet high the remainder of its margin being in mountains, intervals, and points. The outlet, or the Susquehanna, flows through a gorge in the low banks just mentioned, which may have a width of two hundred feet. This gorge was dammed and the waters of the lake collected: the Susquehanna was converted into a rill. When all was ready the troops embarked, the damn was knocked away, the Otsego poured out its torrent, and the boats went merrily down with the current."