Where Go the Boats? June 6, 2019

Copyright © 2019                               John F. Oyler 

June 6, 2019

Where Go the Boats?

“Where Go the Boats?” was of my favorites in “The Child’s Garden of Verses” when I was small, an early indication of a life-long fascination with creeks. “Away down the river, a hundred miles or more,other little children shall bring my boats ashore” appropriately describes the feeling all young children have whenever they are presented with the opportunity to play in a small creek.

Whether it be tossing rocks and creating splashes, or floating “Pooh sticks” under a bridge, or building tiny dams and bridges, children cannot resist creeks. One of the highlights of our family’s annual visit to my father’s home in Franklin County was playing in “Uncle Joe’s Creek”. It was just the right size, big enough for Joe and me to float toy boats down it and to simulate the battle of the Monitor and Merrimack. It is no surprise that I have become a lifelong amateur hydrologist.

I just finished reading “The River Why”, a delightful coming-of-age novel by David James Duncan about a fly fisherman on one of Oregon’s coastal rivers. In one episode, Gus, the protagonist, sets out to find the source of his mythical Tamanis River and eventually follows it to a tiny spring high on a Coastal Range mountain. 

This too has a familiar feel; when we were young, an annual rite was to follow the small creek in Cow Hollow through the Indian Tunnel under Mayview Road a couple of miles to its source just before you get to Morrow Road. I presume the creek still exists; Google Map labels the area “Ravine Park”. The Upper St. Clair Township website describes it as “10.51 undeveloped acres near Mayview and Morrow Roads”. It also shows the stream running past Morrow Road, with its source near Mayview. Looks like we never went far enough.

It was a special treat to hike up Cow Hollow in the spring when there were tiny waterfalls at the end of each intersecting gully, a miniature version of Yosemite Valley or the Columbia River Gorge.

Another memorable expedition was up Coal Pit Hollow, tracing its creek to its source. We would go down Chartiers Street to Dewey Avenue, and then follow the railroad south to the place where the creek runs under it (now Bursca Drive). At that point we would follow the creek west, cross the Washington Pike, and enter the hollow. It runs several miles to the southwest, almost to Hickory Grade Road. Today the creek passes under I-79 in a culvert after skirting the edge of Hickory Heights Golf Club; I am not sure a hike up it would be as much fun as it was seventy-five years ago.

Finding the source of Chartiers Creek was well beyond our ambitions. If we can believe today’s maps the source is southwest of Washington, Pa., very close to Route 18, perhaps two miles south of Lone Pine Golf Course, in a small wooded area. Sounds like a good excuse for a trip down that direction this summer. 

Less than half a mile west of the Chartiers Creek source is the source of Tenmile Creek which wanders south sand east through Prosperity, Amity, and Marianna before entering the Monongahela at Millsboro, then rejoining Chartiers Creek seventy five miles downstream at McKees Rocks. 

Once the protagonist of the River Why found the source of his river and realized how insignificant it seemed, he concluded that “source” was an improper name for it. After all, the source of a river is the sum of all its tributaries, plus the rain that falls into it. Consequently the source of Chartiers Creek includes Cow Hollow Creek, Coal Pit Run, and even the tiny stream in the woods where I live.

Our stream is indeed tiny; between rainstorms its flow is of the order of magnitude of perhaps one gallon per minute. Its floodplain is four or five feet wide, with a tiny rivulet meandering back and forth across it. Despite its size it is a magnificent hydrologic laboratory, demonstrating a wide variety of open channel flow phenomena in a few hundred yards.

The path that neighborhood children take to elementary school crosses the stream near the bottom of our one-sided dead-ended street. At this point the stream passes through a twenty-four-inch diameter culvert about twenty feet long. Recently the municipality elected to combat erosion and over-wash by installing an ugly collection of concrete wing-walls and rock-filled gabions at the entrance to and exit from the culvert, a jarring contrast to an otherwise attractive natural site.

Upstream from the culvert the stream presents a perfect example of meandering, with the classic gentle slope on the inside of each curve and the steep cliff on the outside, albeit at a miniature scale. Initially it is difficult to imagine a trickle of water like this carving out the bank and undermining major trees, but seeing the stream after a heavy rain is a completely different story. It is fascinating to observe the way the actual course of the stream changes with each storm.

Downstream from the culvert the stream begins to cut a deeper gully as it cuts its way through each different stratum of rock it encounters. According to geologists, the surface rocks in this area are of the Pittsburgh formation of the Monongahela group of the Pennsylvanian system of the Paleozoic era, deposited about three hundred million years ago. They are characterized as “shale and claystones”.

Several transitions from harder to softer strata have produced lovely little waterfalls. One is “as straight as a string” across the creek bed, with water flowing uniformly across its edge and then down its vertical face. Another is the classical rainbow shape with a narrow stream being discharged at its center and cascading wildly to the pool below.

One relatively straight stretch of the stream appears to be flowing on pavement, a wide smooth surface of rock with transverse joints at regular intervals. The downstream end of this stretch is another tiny waterfall terminating in a bed of sand and rock fragments. During the “dry season” the stream disappears completely as it is absorbed by the aquifer beneath it.

Geologists date the creation of our current landscape to the Tertiary Period of the Cenozoic Era (beginning sixty-six million years ago). We presume that, at that time, most of this area was a nearly flat peneplain about twelve hundred feet above sea level and that our current topography is the result of erosion in the years since then. That length of time does make it credible that such a tiny creek could carve such a deep valley.

When I finally get my time machine perfected, one of my first trips back in time will be to Uncle Joe’s Creek”. I hope my brother and I will be able to locate our old toy boats.