Stillwater Lake (Pennsylvania)

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Stillwater Lake is a man-made lake that covers approximately 315-acres. Stillwater is located in Pocono Summit, Pennsylvania at an elevation of 1811 feet. The lake is feed by Dotter's Run and Duck Puddle, along several underground springs. The lake flows to Lake Naomi via Tunkhannock Creek.

The lake is currently home to the Boy Scout's Camp Minsi and the "Stillwater Estates" housing development.

1 Lake Features
2 History
3 Surrounding Swamps
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Lake Features

Platt's Point
Rubel Cove
Minnich's Point
Robbin's Cove
Yost Island

[edit] History

The area where the lake is located was once a swamp. The Native Americans of the area called it “Klampeechen Chuppecat” which translates to deep, dark swamp.

In the 1870s, like most of the land in the Pocono Plateau, businessmen began buying up the land and clear-cutting the plateau to harvest the lumber. The swamp was destroyed and cut away to make room for a man-made lake designed to transport the cut timber downstream to sawmills. Three very small streams and underground springs fed the newly made “Lake Stillwater”, with Tunkhannock Creek being the major outlet for the lake. A dam was built to control the water flow and the level of the lake. Logs were sent from Lake Stillwater down Tunkhannock Creek to Lake Naomi, and then down another stream to the sawmill on Lake Pocono.

With the dwindling forests and growing markets, the businesses who had harvested all of the lumber began looking for new avenues of revenue -- they turned to the ice industry. From the late 1880s until the 1930s, the ice industry of the Poconos was king. Numerous ice companies sprung up in the area as ice was harvested from the shallow freshwater lakes. Soon, the Pocono Mountain Ice Company, run by Samuel Rubel, became the leading ice company in the area, buying up many of the smaller ice companies. Large ice houses were built around Lake Stillwater to store the large blocks of ice. Remnants of some of those facilities can still be seen on the south and eastern side of the lake today.

Pennsylvania was the nation's third largest producer of ice, following Maine and New York. Pennsylvania consumed about 1 million tons annually, cut on the state's lakes and rivers. Aside from Stillwater Lake, Pocono Mountain Ice Company harvested ice on Saylor's Lake, Trout Lake, Lake Naomi, Pocono Lake, Mountain Spring Lake, and the Lakes at Tobyhanna. It was reported that the Pocono Mountain Ice Company was harvesting ice for 6 cents per ton. Ice workers out on the lake were paid 30 cents an hour, while those working in the icehouse, where 300-pound ice cakes were being pushed around, were paid 35 cents an hour. The Pocono Mountain Ice Company employed over 500 men during the height of the harvest. Beginning in the 1930s with the advent of refrigeration, the harvesting of the ice from the lakes became less and less profitable. Eventually, the ice companies folded, while still controlling large tracts of land.

In 1949, Samuel Rubel and the Mountain Ice Company donated a majority of the land around Lake Stillwater to the Boy Scouts of America's Bethlehem Area Council. The remaining land was sold to developers.

[edit] Surrounding Swamps

As Stillwater Lake was once a swamp itself, many smaller swamps still surround and border the lake Many feed, or are fed, by Stillwater. These include: