Sideling Hill Creek
Profile
Sideling Hill Creek is designated to have “exceptional value”, Pennsylvania’s highest water quality classification, and the Sidling Hill Creek Watershed is an area rich in biological diversity. One reason for this designation is that Sideling Hill Creek packs 287 stream and tributary miles into a 100 square mile land area of deep narrow valleys and steep forested ridges. The Sideling Hill Creek Watershed houses a sparse population and remains three-fourths forested. Only about 2200 residents live in the watershed.
The Sideling Hill Creek watershed contains numerous tributaries and four principal branches (East Branch, West Branch, Piney Creek and Bear Creek). Three-fourths of the watershed lies lie in Pennsylvania with the rest situated in Maryland. At its origins in south central Pennsylvania, the east and west branches of Sideling Hill Creek (better known locally as “Little Creek” and “Big Creek”) straddle a formation known as Addison Ridge. Tributaries to the west branch flow off nearby ridges named Hoop Pole, Raccoon, and Addison. The east branch is fed by tributaries emerging from Buchanan State Forest and Pennsylvania State Game Lands, Ray’s Hill and Town Hill. The east and west branches combine below the hamlet of Purcell and become the main stem of Sideling Hill Creek.
The meandering stream journeys on through the Pennsylvania communities of Silver Mills and Inglesmith, is enlarged by Crooked Run and Piney Creek in Bedford County and Trough Run in Fulton county, then crosses the Mason-Dixon Line into Maryland. Sideling Hill Creek serves as the border separating allegany and Washington Counties in Maryland where it is joined by Bear Creek. Sideling Hill Creek finally empties into the Potomac River as it passes beneath the arch of the old C&O aqueduct in the C&O National Historical Park.
Because Sideling Hill Creek is a tributary of the Potomac River, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay, its watershed is a part of the larger 64,000 square mile Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Protecting Sideling Hill creek helps preserve the Chesapeake Bay, the largest and most productive estuary in the United States.
Natural History
The diversity of the Sideling Hill Creek Watershed attracted naturalists and scientists as long ago as the early 1900s. Early records on the creek are still kept at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, and the Academy of Natural Science in Philadelphia.
At one time chestnut-forested ridges overlooked valleys of conifers such as white pine and eastern hemlock. The chestnut was a valuable tree with beautiful light, rot-resistant wood and large nuts. But the whole area has now become forested with broad-leaf (mostly oak) trees mixed with conifers. A blight, brought to this country from China in about 1910, eventually destroyed the chestnut forests. By 1940 most of the trees were dead and for years their rot-resistant trunks stood like white ghosts on the hillsides. An old gentleman, now gone, said that when the chestnuts bloomed in May it looked like it had snowed on the ridges.
In present day along Sideling Hill Creek, you might find natural shale barren communities on dry, thin-soiled outcrops which host plants like Alleghany Plum, Alleghany Stonecrop, Kate’s Mountain Clover, and Cat’s Paw Ragwort. These are among the twelve rare, endemic (occurring only on the shale barrens and nowhere else) plants that can be found in this watershed. They are generally found on steep, south-facing slopes and cliffs, and are sometimes created by a stream’s meandering over years and undercutting the shale formations. The largest, Sideling Hill Creek Barren, is one of the best such communities in Pennsylvania.
The tiny white flowers of the semi-aquatic endangered Harperella grow on gravel shoals and in rock crevices along and in Sideling Hill Creek. In fact, Sideling Hill Creek contains the world's healthiest population of this globally-rare aquatic wildflower. They resemble its relative, Queen Anne’s Lace, and bloom in August.
Twelve rare, endemic (occurring only on the shale barrens and nowhere else) plants including the nationally-endangered evening primrose, shale ragwort, and Kate's mountain clover.
Shallow but healthy creek bottoms serve as critical habitat for a diversity of freshwater mussels, including the rear green floater. Sideling Hill Creek is home to over forty species of fish as well as the only freshwater sponge found in Pennsylvania.
On the land around the stream one might come across rare insects including the olympian marble butterfly and tiger beetle as well as reclusive wild turkey and bobcat.
Human History
The first European settlers arrived in the Sideling Hill Creek watershed in the 1730’s. The European settlers moved into the region to set up trading posts and hunt the abundant game that lived in the forested ridges and valleys of southeastern Bedford County. Throughout the late 1700’s and into the mid-1800’s the valleys in the Sideling Hill Creek watershed were slowly cleared to make room for agriculture, while the ridges were logged to provide local building materials and household fuel.
By the time the area was “accessible” by mass transport systems, including the B&O railroad in the 1830’s and the C&O canal in the 1840’s, the watershed had already defined itself as a self-sufficient region dependent on small-scale and primarily subsistence agriculture and forestry. Although in many regions the arrival of major transport systems have historically led to an instant rise in the export of raw materials, the arrival of mass transport in the Sideling Hill Creek watershed seems to have had little such impact, with the possible exception of the timber industry. Transporting agricultural and forest products from the watershed to major hubs of commerce such as Cumberland, MD or Washington, D.C. was certainly made easier, however the lack of historically important raw materials in the region, such as coal, led to the preservation of an almost pre-industrial landscape.
Historically, there were approximately twelve small communities in the Sideling Hill Creek watershed, all of which had a post office, a general store, and most had a schoolhouse and church. These communities were self-supporting with a schoolhouse (built near a spring for a water supply), a post office, and a community store. They also offered services like blacksmiths, shoemakers, and wheelwrights. Farm produce would be carried, usually to Cumberland, Maryland, packed in ice and bartered for necessary household items. Icehouses were filled with blocks cut from the nearby winter-frozen stream.
However, as transportation routes became more reliable and people began moving to the cities, these small communities began to disappear. Although many of the communities that once existed in the watershed are now no more than a small cluster of homes, at best, the names of these communities can still be found on most maps. In many cases only remnants of the once thriving community remains such as the Fairview church at Ingelsmith; the mill foundations at Silver Mills; and the general store building at Purcell. From old farm houses to roads that bare the name of the first families to settle the area, the Sideling Hill Creek landscape is dotted with historical reminders that tell the story of place changed by time, but conscious of its historical identity.
Threats & Problems
Growth pressure from nearby urban areas, the failure of small farms to thrive in the face of a more concentrated farming industry, and the choice of many farm children to pursue other occupations often means that the path of least resistance is to subdivide farms into residential lots. The Sideling Hill Creek Watershed has thus far managed to escape commercial development and loss of its forest canopy protection. This may change, however, with the increased immigration of people employed outside of the area.
Other threats to the watershed include exotic invasive species - aggressively spreading species without natural predators. Because they do not have natural predators, they are able to out-compete the native flora and fauna in the area. This problem can be exacerbated by another watershed threat - timber harvesting that takes place in an unsustainable way. Managed timber harvests help maintain the diversity and health of a forest. Without this type of management, the forest's composition can be altered, opening up habitat for undesirable and invasive species.
Trends in the watershed are not entirely man made. Browsing by an overabundant population of white-tail threatens the regeneration of forests, and loss of streamside buffers contributes to nutrients, sediments and other pollutants entering the stream.