History and Culture of the George's Creek Watershed

The George's Creek watershed encompasses 74 square miles of land area that drains into Georges Creek.  Most of the George's Creek watershed (67%) is within Allegany County, MD.  The word Allegany comes from the Algonquian words oolikhanna, which means beautiful stream and/or Aliconie meaning people of the mountain streams.  Garrett County, MD drains the other 33% of the Georges Creek watershed. George's Creek gets its name from George Washington Cresap, who was the son of the Lenape Nation Fish Tribe Chief Nemacolin.  George Washington Creasap was born in the 1730s and given the name Lonacona by his father Nemacolin. Nemacolin and his father Checochinican were close friends with American frontiersman Thomas Cresap and also George Washington.  Thomas Cresap asked Nemacolin to help him find the easiest path from Cumberland, MD to what is now Pittsburgh, PA to further the advancement of white settlements.  Nemacolin and his two sons William and Lonacona helped Cresap map the trail.  When the trail was finished, Lonacona wished to return to Maryland with the Cresap family and Nemacolin gave his permission.  Thomas Cresap gave Lonacona the name George Washington Cresap to protect him from white violence.  Lonacona or George used what we now call the George’s Creek valley as his hunting and fishing grounds. 

The earliest settlers came to the George’s Creek valley from Europe in the late 1700s.  In 1837 a group of Baltimore and London, England investors (The George’s Creek Coal and Iron Company) bought 11,000 acres in the George’s Creek watershed and built an iron furnace complex to manufacture pig iron.  With this venture the town of Lonaconing was born. When coal was discovered to be more abundant than iron ore in the watershed, coal mining became the predominate industry, and by 1855 the iron furnace shut down.  More and more immigrants came to the George’s Creek valley to work in the highly productive coalmines. Coal was shipped by rail after the B&O reached Cumberland in 1842. In addition to the B&O, the Western Maryland and Cumberland and Pennsylvania Railroads provided rail service to the field in the 20th Century. Coal was often shipped to the Maryland Steel Company at Sparrows Point, Maryland (later owned by Bethleham Steel). Coal camp life in the George’s Creek valley differed from other coal mining areas. The miners themselves were unusual, brought here from Wales and northern Europe as skilled workmen. They did not live in company houses, or have to deal with a company store. They could read and write, and paid for their children's education 40 years before the State provided free public schools.  A canal was used to transport coal from here. Sometimes African-American slaves were employed in the mines.

Other industries appeared along George's Creek.  In 1907, the Klotz Throwing Company built a silk throwing mill in Lonaconing.  Many such silk mills were built around the mining towns of Appalachia in this decade to take advantage of the cheap and abundant labor provided by the wives and children of coalminers.  By 1910 the U.S. had become the world’s leader in thrown silk production.  Today, the last remaining and intact silk mill in the United States still stands in Lonaconing.  The silk throwing industry, like most every other industry in the Georges Creek valley, had its fate interwoven with the coal mining industry in some way.

During the peak production years between 1900 and 1918, deep underground coalmines in the two-county region produced between four and five million tons annually.  This coal helped to fuel the American Industrial Revolution and heat American homes.  To avoid excessive water accumulation in the deep mines, most coal seams were mined up dip of the anticlines. Consequently, the water, polluted by acid, iron, sulfur, aluminum, and other toxic ions drained away from the mines and into oolikahannas (beautiful streams).  This type of water pollution is called acid mine drainage.  In the 1940s (after World War II) new mining technologies began to evolve.  The development of large earth moving vehicles made it possible to remove the earth on top of a coal seam in order to mine it. The surface mining method requires less manual labor, and consequently fewer laborors.   As surface mining replaced deep mining in the George’s Creek watershed, deep mines were abandoned and thousands of miners found themselves out of work.  With the dominating industry in the area needing fewer employees, the workers of the George’s Creek watershed were forced to move out.