The topography of the region also influenced the delineation of what we call Fair Play territory. The jugular vein which supplies the life-blood to this region is undoubtedly the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. This branch of the great river, which drains almost fifty per cent of the State, follows a northeasterly course of some forty miles from the Great Island, which is just east of present Lock Haven, to what is now Muncy, then turns southward.[39]
The West Branch of the mighty Susquehanna, which has plagued generations of residents with its spring floodings, was the primary means of ingress and egress for the area. Rich bottom lands at the mouths of Lycoming, Larrys, and Pine creeks drew the hardy pioneer farmers, and here they worked the soil to provide the immediate needs for survival. Hemmed in on the north by the plateau area of the Appalachian front and on the south by the Bald Eagle Mountains, these courageous pioneers of frontier democracy carved their future out of the two-mile area (more often less) between those two forbidding natural walls. With the best lands to be found around the mouth of Pine Creek, which is reasonably close to the center of this twenty-five-mile area, it seems quite natural that the major political, social, and economic developments would take place in close proximity--and they did.[40]
Thus, an area never exceeding two miles in width and spanning some ten miles (presently from Jersey Shore to Lock Haven) was the heartland of Fair Play settlement. Lycoming Creek, Larrys Creek, and Pine Creek all run south into the West Branch, having channeled breaks through the rolling valley which extends along the previously defined territory.
"The land was ours before we were the land's," the poet said, and it seems apropos of this moment in history.[41] Fair Play territory, possessed before it was owned and operated under _de facto_ rule, would be some time in Americanizing the sturdy frontiersmen who came to bring civilization to this wilderness.
[1] Carl L. Becker, _Beginnings of the American People_ (Ithaca, N. Y., 1960), p. 182.
[2] Turner, _Frontier and Section_, p. 51.
[3] Frederick Jackson Turner, _The Frontier in American History_ (New York, 1963), p. 9.