FOEESTEY AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT. 5 



Six and eight room frame houses with up to half an acre of land 

 can be bought for from $200 to $400. 



Most striking of all, perhaps, is the rise and fall of Cross Fork, 

 in the hills of southeastern Potter County. In the fall of 1893, 

 before lumbering operations started, perhaps five or six families 

 were living on the site where two years later stood a busy town. 

 For some 14 years Cross Fork led a feverish existence while the 

 forest wealth was stripped from the surrounding hills. The life 

 of the town was, of course, the big sawmill, which bad a daily 

 capacity of 230,000 board feet and was up to date in every respect. 

 In 1807 a stave mill was established also, and various other minor 

 wood-using industries existed at different times. In its prime Cross 

 Fork had a population of 2,000 or more and was generally known 

 as one of the liveliest, most hustling places in the State. A branch 

 line of the Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad was built to the town. 

 Stores of all kinds flourished. There were seven hotels, four 

 churches, a Y. M. C. A. with baths and gymnasium, a large, up-to- 

 date high school, two systems of waterworks, and two electric light 

 systems. 



But the prosperity of the town was as short-lived as the timber 

 supply. In the spring of 1909 the big sawmill shut down for good. 

 From then on the population dwindled rapidly. Fires became so 

 frequent that the insurance companies canceled their policies. Five- 

 room frame houses with bath were offered for sale for from $25 to $35 

 without finding a buyer. In the winter of 1912-13 the stave mill 

 also ceased operations, and the next fall railroad service, which for 

 sometime had been limited to three trains a week, stopped altogether. 

 To-day the total population consists of but 60 persons. It if had not 

 been for the State, which bought up the cut-over lands and has under- 

 taken in earnest the work of reconstruction, the town would be as 

 desolate as the surrounding hills. As it is, Cross Fork is now a quiet 

 little hamlet, the merest shadow of its former self and without hope 

 for an industrial and useful future until the timber grows again. 



The cut-over lands of the Lake States tell the same story of tem- 

 porary prosperity characterized by the rise and fall of mushroom 

 towns. Immense tracts of little value for anything except timber 

 production have been left dotted with deserted villages as the lumber 

 industry devastecl them and swept on. Meredith, for example, was 

 once a prosperous town in the northeastern corner or Clare County, 

 Mich., for which one looks in vain on any modern map. To-day its 

 hotels are in ruins, the town hall has been moved elsewhere, the rail- 

 road which connected it with the outside world has been torn up, and 

 its population has dwindled from 500 to 3. 



