Neptune's Needle

444 miles long; rising in Otsego L., central N.Y., and winding SE and SW through E central Pa. to Chesapeake Bay near Havre de Grace, Md. The bay is the drowned lower course of the river that has resulted from a post-Pleistocene rise in sea level. The West Branch (c.160 miles), which rises in the Allegheny Mts., W Pa., and follows a circuitous course E to Sunbury, Pa., is the river’s chief tributary in Pa. The Susquehanna R. traverses an anthracite coal region, which in the 19th cent. spawned the major heavy industrial coal and steel core of the U.S.; the many significant mining and industrial cities on its banks were forced to scale down production as the steel and coal industries declined in the early 1980s. These include Binghamton and Oswego, N.Y., and Pittston, Wilkes-Barre, Harrisburg, and Scranton (on the Lackawanna tributary), Pa.

The shallow, swift-flowing river is unsuited for navigation. Several hydroelectric power plants are located on the Susquehanna; the Conowingo plant (Md.) is one of the largest non-Federal power stations in the nation. The Susquehanna and its tributaries have extensive flood-control works. However in June 1972, the river, swollen by the torrential rains of Hurricane Agnes, breached 40-ft/12-m dikes in places and flooded much of the basin, causing one of the greatest flood disasters in U.S. history.

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Compiler

Peter Richards