Stillwater Lake (Pennsylvania)

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Stillwater Lake
Stillwater Lake in the summer
Stillwater Lake in the winter
Location	Pocono Summit, Pennsylvania
Coordinates	41.1219° N 75.4239° WCoordinates: 41.1219° N 75.4239° W
Lake type	artificial lake
Primary inflows	Dotter's Run Hawkeye Run Pocono Summit Creek
Primary outflows	Tunkhannock Creek
Basin countries	United States
Max. length	0.87 mi (1.4 km)
Max. width	1.24 mi (2.0 km)
Surface area	315 acres (127 ha)
Average depth	4.7 ft (1.4 m)
Max. depth	8 ft (2.4 m)
Water volume	1,480 acre-feet (1,830,000 m³)
Surface elevation	1,811 ft (552 m)
Islands	6

Stillwater Lake is a man-made lake that covers approximately 315 acres (1.27 km²). The lake is located in Pocono Summit, Pennsylvania at an elevation of 1,811 feet (552 m). Feed by Dotter's Run, Hawkeye Run, Pocono Summit Creek, and several underground springs, the lake flows out to Lake Naomi via Tunkhannock Creek. The lake is a central part of the Tunkhannock Creek Watershed, part of the Upper Susquehanna River Basin, which eventually drains into the Chesapeake Bay.

The lake is currently home to the Boy Scout's Camp Minsi, which encompasses 1200 acres (5 km²) of relatively flat woodlands along the shores of Stillwater.

In 2002, Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) reclassified the dam on Stillwater Lake as a B2 High Hazard Dam. Funding was approved in the 2006 Pennsylvania State R-CAP Budget to repair the dam, however the legislators have yet to release the already approved funds for the project. If the prescribed repairs are not implemented by 2009, the DEP will move to breach the dam and drain the lake. The Scouts are currently petitioning the legislators to release the $3,000,000.00 of approved funding in order to repair the dam and essentially save their camp, as well as the watershed and neighboring communities.^[1]

1 Lake features
2 History
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Lake features

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

As Stillwater Lake was once a swamp itself, before being dammed and turned into a lake. Many smaller swamps still surround the area. Many feed, or are fed, by Stillwater. These include: Deer Swamp, Wismer's Swamp, Huckleberry Swamp, Hawkeye Run Swamp and Fox Run Swamp.

[edit] History

The area where the lake is located was once a swamp. The Native Americans of the area called it "Klampeechen Chuppecat" which, in Lenape, translates to deep, dark swamp.^[2]

In the 1870s, like most of the land in the Pocono Plateau, the land was was clear-cut and harvested for 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. A dam was built to control the water flow and the level of the lake, while three very small streams and underground springs fed the newly made "Lake Stillwater". Tunkhannock Creek was the major outlet for the lake and logs were sent from Lake Stillwater down Tunkhannock Creek to Lake Naomi and then onto 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 (now Minsi Trails Council). The remaining land was sold to developers.