This picture was created from the McAdoo - Hazleton USGS DeLorme derived topographical map. The view shown looks southeast at an elevation angle of 26 degrees from the horizontal. Azimuth is about 320 degrees, A vertical magnification of 4X was applied to make the view more realistic at the typical regional elevation of 1000 to 2000 feet above sea level. Forest land is shown in green; Mine waste, roadway, and community/industrial in brown. Local placenames are shown along with lightly shaded names of where mine 'patch towns' used to be. The '# places', eg, #8, #5, ... refer to old coalworks numbers. The coal companies had shafts or slopes, sometimes colleries, at these places. In the latter years of the Nineteenth Century this area was the locale of Molly Maguire activity, much action happening around Honeybrook #1 and #2, and Audenreid #4. These places have pretty much vanished now, big partially filled in 'strippings' where they used to be.

The Catawissa Creek begins on Spring Mountain in and near McAdoo. It flows to the Susquehanna River. Note the tiny stream high on the north side of the Delano Mountain (Bear's Head). This is the farthest and highest reach of the Schuylkill River, which flows into the Delaware at Philadelphia. Directly below this spring in the ravine is another stream, Messer's Run, which feeds the Lofty Dam. The outflow of the dam meanders to the Catawissa. Hardly shown on this picture is Quakake Creek which begins a little south of McAdoo. This one goes into the Lehigh River at Broad Mountain.

Spring Mountain is a watershed for two large streams, the Catawissa and Quakake Creeks and one major Pennsylvania river, the Schuylkill. (Which fact may well account for its name). Scores of small brooks and springs cascade from its sides, a few with pretty waterfalls. In a depression at its west end near Blue Head there's a mountaintop swamp where the high bush blueberries (swampers) grow.

Below the west end of the mountain there's a ravine that we called 'Wolfe's', after an old derelict farm that used to exist high on the Green Mountain side, going up the abandoned county road to Sheppton. The place was neat the old Green Mountain Slope. Bear and deer abound here. Glen Alden Coal Company dug a drainage tunnel there to drain the mine water from its workings farther east near McAdoo and Audenreid. That tunnel has caved in but the drainage stream still proceeds from the mountain. Near the same place another tunnel drains the Green Mountain mines to the west. A cool rush of air, even on a hot day, replete with disturbed, flying bats flows out from the broken iron gates of the tunnel. Both streams used to have a high content of sulfur, thereby they polluted the Catawissa, but this is somewhat lessened today after fifty years of mine idleness.

See a smaller scale (larger area) terrain view here:

The picture is a 140K Gif. File optimized in Macromedia Fireworks.

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