The Inexorable Lure of Howard Falls
Background
In earlier blogs, we explored a variety of subjects related to Howard Falls, the surrounding landscape, and the people of the area.
Formation of the Falls Run Gorge
The Invisible Lines of Early Surveys through the Wilderness
The History of Franklin Township
While these blogs collectively offer a wealth of information on how glaciers shaped the area’s present geography, how it was originally surveyed, and how early settlers improved it, they do not fully explore the “The Why” of the settling of Howard Falls by the Howard Family in the 1830s. Understanding “Why” the Howard family was drawn to a section of remote wilderness that existed then, and is now known as Howard Falls could not be adequately told without these prior blogs as vital background.
So now let’s learn what lured the Howard family, nearly 200 years ago, into the unbroken wilderness of one of the most remote areas of Erie County, PA, with difficult access from only one road into the entire region.
The Early Survey Maps
In 1791, a remarkable map of Pennsylvania was jointly published by John Adlum (1759–1836) and John Wallis (1775–1810). Adlum was a surveyor, soldier, and later a pioneering figure in American viticulture, whose extensive fieldwork gave him firsthand knowledge of Pennsylvania’s terrain and waterways. Beginning in 1789, he surveyed portions of northwestern Pennsylvania, including the region around Presque Isle (now Erie), investigated the navigability of the Susquehanna River, and potential transportation routes into the Commonwealth’s western lands. His partner, Wallis, was the eldest son of prominent landowner and surveyor Samuel Wallis (1736–1798), who had amassed substantial landholdings in western Pennsylvania and worked on an ad hoc basis as a land surveyor for the Holland Land Company. Together, Adlum and the younger Wallis brought considerable knowledge of Pennsylvania’s expanding western frontier to their map.
The Adlum-Wallis map, formally titled A Map Exhibiting a General View of the Roads and Inland Navigation of Pennsylvania, and Part of the Adjacent States, was compiled from actual surveys at the specific request of the Society for Promoting the Improvement of Roads and Inland Navigation. Founded in 1789 and led by financier Robert Morris, the Society sought to identify and promote transportation improvements that would better connect Pennsylvania’s established eastern communities with its developing western lands. Reflecting this ambitious vision, the map depicts existing and proposed roads, waterways, canals, and portage routes, along with detailed diagrams illustrating canal locks.
Original copies of the map are exceedingly rare today, with fewer than twenty known in American institutions, including the Library of Congress, Boston Public Library, and Yale University. Significantly, a copy of the map was also reported to have once hung in the Wilcox Bank in Girard, Pennsylvania.
It is remarkable too, given its early date, that significant Erie County named features are shown on the map. As illustrated below, the map shows a simplified version of Elk Creek, including a tributary which is likely the final segment of Falls Run as it flows north, as well as Walnut Creek and Harbour Creek. It also shows the Portage Escarpment Trail, established when the French traveled between Fort Presque Isle (Erie) to Fort La Beauf (Waterford), now present day US Route 19.
The 1791 map shows no townships, as Erie County did not begin forming townships until 1800, when 16 original townships were established. Later, as population growth accelerated, six more townships were formed between 1826 and 1920, bringing the total to 22 today.
Next, we move forward about 30 years to an early map of Erie County prepared by David Dougal (1778–1881), an eccentric surveyor and land speculator, who, despite considerable wealth, famously chose to live in near-squalor. Dougal’s survey, dating to about 1818, was part of a statewide effort to produce detailed county maps for the Pennsylvania Land Office and provides a remarkably detailed picture of Erie County during its early development.
Foremost, the map shows the county’s new townships, although in a somewhat unfamiliar configuration. Absent are Girard and Franklin Townships, which would not be formed until 1832 and 1844, respectively. We have added their later boundaries to the enlarged map with red dashed lines to show their relative location in western Erie County. Girard was created from portions of Springfield, Fairview, and Elk Creek townships, while Franklin was created from portions of McKean, Elk Creek, and Conneautte (now Washington) townships.
Other interesting features relevant to our story need to be pointed out on the map. Most importantly, a new road was created from Waterford (Fort Le Beauf) to Lexington (now Platea) across southern Erie County. It would be the only road in Franklin Township for another 20 years and thus the first access for settlers, including the Howard family. That road is now ‘Old State Road’ and was created by the state of Pennsylvania around 1810 as a segment of a new road system that generally followed Native American trails in northern and central parts of the state.
The 1818 map also clearly shows the road from Waterford to Erie, as its importance grew with roads from other parts of the state leading first into Waterford, and then on to Erie. In addition, both Elk Creek and Walnut Creek, the largest streams in western Erie County, are mapped more fully. In particular, Elk Creek now shows its southern branch, and more clearly shows the Falls Run tributary as it heads south toward Howard Falls.
Elijah Smith’s homestead is also shown in future Girard Township, on the southern bank of Elk Creek, with more on his importance to come later in this narrative.
Here comes the Canal
About ten years later, in 1831, Pennsylvania began work on the Beaver and Erie Canal, also known as the Erie Extension Canal, part of the Pennsylvania Canal system. This system was used to transport materials and people efficiently before the advent of railroads and the improved roads of today. The Erie Extension Canal consisted of three sections: the Beaver Division, the Shenango Division, and the Conneaut Division. The canal ran 136 miles north–south along the western edge of the state from the Ohio River to Lake Erie through Beaver, Lawrence, Mercer, Crawford, and Erie Counties. It used 137 locks to overcome a change in elevation of 977 feet, or about seven feet per lock.
In 1838, contracts were awarded for the final 45 miles of the Conneaut Division to Erie, and when the Erie Canal Company finished construction in 1844, the entire length of the three divisions became open to traffic. While each of the three sections had their own unique engineering challenges, the Conneaut Division into Erie County was perhaps the most daunting of the three. As the canal left the area of Conneaut Lake in Crawford County, a series of locks took it over the St. Lawrence Continental Divide and on toward Lake Erie. Crossing the Divide was a challenge in itself, but much more lay ahead. A cluster of 28 steeply graded locks over a 2-mile segment were required to be built in the Lockport (Platea) area to manage the drastic drop in elevation of about 200 feet down the Portage Escarpment before reaching Elk Creek, and then more elevation change as it continued on to Girard and Erie
A typical lock for the Erie Extension canal can be seen at Sharpsville, PA, as the canal came through Mercer County as part of the Shenango Division. It is the only surviving lock of the 137 locks that were originally built. Opened in 1840, this lock allowed canal boats to transition from the Shenango River into the canal channel, managing a 7-foot difference in water level. After the canal’s demise, workers disassembled all other locks and reused the stone in other building projects throughout the area. As the photograph shows, a typical lock required a substantial amount of stone blocks, uniformly sized so that the joints could be mortared watertight. As the canal came through Erie County, it was going to need very large quantities of building stone.
(Photographer Unknown)
(Photographer: Forest McDermott, circa 1980)
Elijah Smith
Elijah Smith, a stone mason, moved from Grafton, VT, to Girard, PA, with his nephew, Henry Howard, in the early 1830s, probably before 1832. He settled along Elk Creek, about 3 miles above the mouth at Lake Erie (shown on the 1818 map). Contracts for building the Conneaut Section began to be awarded in 1838, and his masonry expertise would be critical in building the locks needed to navigate the Portage Escarpment.
Living along the banks of Elk Creek, Elijah knew that there was no suitable building stone in that area. He needed to find it elsewhere, and was on the lookout for suitable outcroppings of Devonian sandstone. That stone comes in many forms, as the following table shows. For his work on the canal locks, he needed ‘Building Stone,’ likely Venango Lower Sandstone, which splits into thick, blocky pieces. Finding that material was not simple, but he knew it was most likely found above the Portage Escarpment, where the stone came from a different stratum than those in the Elk Creek area.
Various people had looked for suitable building stone in southwestern Erie County, including a ‘Mr. Fletcher’, who had reported promising outcroppings along the upper reaches of Falls Run. Elijah asked his nephew, Henry Howard, to explore that area in more detail, but doing that was no simple matter. With no roads in the area, the only viable access was by following the Run upstream, and that is when Henry came upon what would become ‘Howard Falls’. From viewing the face of the Falls, it was evident that there was suitable Building Stone in the surrounding landscape.
A likely challenge for Elijah and Henry was locating the Falls on available maps and figuring out how to reach it by land. As they followed Falls Run south to the Falls, Henry knew they must be somewhat close to the Old State Road across the region. It became the only initial access to the Falls area. There were no other roads.
To secure the site for the Quarry, as shown on the following map, Elijah Smith obtained an option on Block 50, just north of the Falls. Henry Howard acquired land in Block 53, and settled his family there. The Quarry was an overwhelming success and began to furnish building stone for the Canal locks, 3 miles to the west. Then about 1839, Levi Howard and his family joined Henry at Howard Falls, purchasing a homestead in Block 59.
Epilogue
In our blog ‘The Timeless Face of Howard Falls, ’ we discussed how the Falls has drawn people to it for a myriad of reasons, and with this blog we add another draw. When Elijah and Henry saw the Falls for the first time, they knew it pointed to exactly what they were looking for as a source of building stone. It set in motion the settling of the area by the Howard Family, and it was a thriving industry for the region for nearly a century. Over time, they developed an in-depth understanding of the Stone, its qualities, how to work it, and how to use it in building structures. They quarried “Venango Lower Sandstone,” which is accessible in only a half dozen areas across Erie County, none closer to the Erie Extension Canal than the Howard Quarry.
The ‘History of Erie County, Pennsylvania’, 1884, by Samuel P. Bates, gives a good overview of the material.
Venango Lower Sandstone.– This famous “Third Sand” of the old oil regions outcrops on the great divide, and may also be seen in French and Le Boeuf Creek Valleys at the head of Elk Creek and Black Run and along Conneaut Creek, four miles above and below Spring Post Office. Its exposures always show it charged with petroleum, even where it is a sand and not a gravel rock. Its lower layers yield excellent building stone nearly everywhere, and it is the principal quarry rock of Erie County. There is often a division into an upper gravel or pebble rock and a lower sandstone. Petroleum pervades both, but there is more in the gravel rock. Among the quarries where it is taken out for building purposes are the Carroll quarries, Le Boeuf Township; Doolittle’s quarry, Amity Township; Allen’s quarry, two and one-half miles from Doolittle’s; Reynolds’ quarry, Summit Township; Howard’s quarry, Franklin Township; and Goodban’s, northeast from Howard’s.
DDHoward
September 2026