Jamison City

The Pennsylvania Copper and Mining Company started operations in 1901 and mined some copper assaying an average of 4% copper. The company advertised that they were located in the "Atlantic Copper Belt at Central Pennsylvania" and that they opened sixteen mines and erected a smelting plant "capable of handling 150 tons of ore a day." Many local residents invested in the company, although the stock prospectus boldly stated that there was "no personal liability to the maker." The company faced continuing hard times and was sold at a sheriff's sale in March, 1909.

Col. John Jameson and three partners purchased the farms where the village is now located and laid out the area in an undertaking called the Jamison City Land Company. The company purchased approximately 217 acres in Columbia County for $4,798 (slightly more than $22 per acre) between March, 1888, and December, 1889. Twenty acres valued for tax purposes at $50 were also purchased in Sullivan County. In 1890, as an example, the land company sold seventy-five lots, usually measuring 40 feet by 140 feet in size, about half to private parties and half to Thomas Proctor of Boston for company housing for his mill workers. Between 1891 and 1893, the land company succeeded in selling only four lots, one of which was to the Sugarloaf School District for a dollar. (The gross profits of the Jamison City Land Company from 1889 to 1911, when it suspended operations, was a reported $4,367.50.)

Jamison City Grammar School		A view of the Jamison City Grammar School. This school was "over the bridge," in Columbia County. There were a total of two rooms, one on the first floor, one on the second floor. Grades 1-4 went on the first floor. Grades 4-8m, on the second floor. Grades 8-12 went to Sugarloaf. About 1927, this building was torn down and lumber taken to help build the present Sugarloaf school. The Davidson Township School was in Sullivan County for residents of that county.

To provide additional rental housing, Thomas Proctor purchased thirty-six lots to the east across Fishing Creek in what became known as "Hoboken." Early maps indicate that a considerable number of lots were available for purchase on the East side of the creek in Sullivan County. Proctor also built thirteen two-story frame houses behind the tannery heating plant in Sullivan County beside Blackberry Run—one red house for the tannery superintendent, while the others were rented to German-speaking laborers in an area commonly called "Germantown."

To learn more about the era of the tannery in Jamison City, go here.

Col. Jameson was president of the Bloomsburg and Sullivan Railroad until 1886 and was the chief contractor for the project. Benton K. Jamison of Philadelphia, a financier in coal mines and railroads, determined management policy and direction and was "the ultimate authority on railroad operation, personnel and financing."

The Post Office Department established a post office on March 2,1889, at "Jameson City." B. K. Jamison convinced authorities to change the village name by substituting the "i" in his name for the "e" in the original name. The post office name was changed to Jamison City on November 28, 1890, the same month that Jamison's banking company was forced to close. The Jamison City Post Office was disestablished September 30,1927.

The post office interior was on display for many years at the Little Lumber Company, Benton. The interior is still owned by the Little family.

Jamison City and Long Pond became connected in September 1891 when construction was completed on a corduroy "pleasure" road, joining the short-lived plank road in Jamison City. Today, that road down the mountain is simply referred to as the "township road." Little is written of the Jamison City plank road, but it is assumed that planks about eight feet long, laid on wooden rails and secured to the ground by foot-long spikes were used to transport the two- and four-horse teams of leather, bark and hides.

The early days of Jamison City included mining coal and copper, both of which proved unsuccessful. Two men named Craig and Blanchard purchased a large tract of land to find coal but their effort was unsuccessful. Early settlers knew of the presence of copper. A vein was opened in the Fritz Hill area when a butcher named Sutliff discovered a copper vein in 1897.

Jamison City's drinking water came from at least three sources, since because of the tannery no one could drink from Fishing Creek. One source was Blackberry Run. Water lines, catch basins and a reservoir about 700 feet from Fishing Creek can still be seen up VanSickle Hollow at the base of Central Mountain, near where the Columbia County School House was located. Another catch basin can be viewed from Main Street by looking toward the shelf where the Proctor Hotel sat, now directly behind Donald Kocher's house.

The "Doctor's" Residence			Jamison City Hotel

Jamison City consisted of about eighty-five houses and an estimated 350 people between 1890 and 1893, with the population topping at an estimated 500 people during 1904-1907, the most active years of cutting timber, dropping to 300 between 1909 and 1912, and to almost none by the time of the tannery closing. The size of the population of Jamison City will long be debated, and while it is true that families were very large at that time, the above figures are believed accurate in lieu of population figures exceeding a thousand.

The Frank Mather store with the Proctor Hotel on the shelf behind the store. The store building remains; the hotel is gone.   Photo courtesy of Doris Harvey

The Elk Tanning Company built a tannery near Blackberry Run in 1888/1889, one of the largest in the state with a capacity to strip over 600 hides every eight hours. About 75 men were employed. Hides were brought in on the Bloomsburg and Sullivan Railroad, since it was cheaper to bring hides to the bark than it was to take the bark to the hides. It was said that "it cost as much to ship a hide from Bloomsburg to Jamison City as it did to ship said hide from Chicago to Bloomsburg." The price for shipping hides is unclear, but a Bloomsburg and Sullivan Company letter dated July 25, 1888, offered Col. Corcoran the rate of $2.60 per ton for bark from Central to Philadelphia via the Pennsylvania Railroad.

The hides were stored in "Hide Houses," which held about twenty-seven boxcar loads of hides, then taken to the "Beam House" where some forty men split the hides and removed the hair. The 654-foot main tanning building had 348 vats in which the hides were dipped for two weeks, then oiled and taken to a drying area. Twenty-three men and their teams were required to move the thirty-six tons of bark a day. They also sold the ash to local farmers for $1.50 a load. The remains of the 160-foot brick tower for the tannery heating plant can still be seen on the Kapeck property.

Early in 1889 the Fishing Creek Lumber Company was formed by Col. James Corcoran of Williamsport. This picture of the Lumber Company courtesy of Raymond Hacker.

Col. Corcoran was one of three partners in the Jamison City Land Company, an owner of the Elk Tanning Company and owned a considerable amount of land in Sullivan County. The "great flood of 1889" devastated Williamsport and wiped out his mill, lumberyard and other businesses in that town. Jamison City concurrently experienced hard times during 1889 as unemployment and debts mounted. Col. Corcoran by the end of the year faced bankruptcy and litigation. He sold the lumber company and the tannery to Thomas E. Proctor in March, 1890, and moved to Michigan.

Proctor continued the tannery and the Phoenix Lumber Company and purchased thousands of acres. He also purchased at least five other tanneries in Pennsylvania and became president of the huge United States Leather Company during 1893. Although his operations appeared to have been profitable, Proctor took all of the profits out of Jamison City--and possibly out of the state. The Union Tanning Company, a subsidiary of the United States Leather Company, continued the operation of the tannery from 1894 when Proctor died. The Elk Tanning Company took over the company ten years later. The saw mill reorganized as the Keystone Lumber Company and operated until the formation of the Central Pennsylvania Lumber Company in 1902.

A view of the extensive lumber yards of the Central Pennsylvania Lumber Company .

During the Proctor years, the mill was able to average over 70,000 feet per day selling the rough lumber for up to $8 per thousand board feet, and the tannery was able to process 1,200 hides daily, making it the largest operation in Pennsylvania.

Part of the tannery was destroyed by a blaze in March, 1895. In the spring of 1896, a timber fire above Jamison City burned for weeks destroying thousands of trees and threatened to destroy the entire village in a fire local residents still insist could have been deliberately set. For two weeks, workers from the tannery and the saw mill fought fires without pay. In November, 1896, heavy rains caused flooding of the village, and the dam at the saw mill broke spreading "thousands of logs" throughout the village. In May, 1898, the mill burned at a loss of $30,000 in equipment and buildings. It was subsequently rebuilt. A diphtheria epidemic hit in 1907-1908. In 1909, ice on the mill pond froze 13 inches thick.

Cutting ice from the mill pond in Jamison City. In Davidson Township, there were 30 to 50 houses like the ones shown in this picture. Photo courtesy of Doris Harvey.

After the mill closed, the tannery remained in operation until it closed in 1925. From then on, Jamison City no longer played a vital role in the local economy.

The first train to run on B & S tracks and the first to arrive in Jamison City, decorated with flags in commemoration of the occasion. The cars are wooden. The engineer on the left, applying oil, is George P. Geese.

By 1926, it was economically necessary to curtail all railroad service to Jamison City and gangs tore up the track to Benton in 1927. On October 13, 1928, the Bloomsburg and Sullivan Railroad Company was sold at a sheriffs sale to the Reading Railroad Company. The last passenger train from Benton ended its trip in Bloomsburg Saturday, November 15,1930. Freight service continued until 1969. The "B and S" railroad tracks to Bloomsburg were taken up in 1971.

A Bloomsburg & Sullivan train at the station in Jamison City.   Photo courtesy of Phillip A. Shultz

From 1926 until 1932, Jamison City was truly a ghost town. There had been five taverns, four hotels, five grocery stores and meat markets, three general merchandise stores, a blacksmith shop, a wagon wheel hub factory, the tannery, the saw mill, the brothels at the Bush House and the Exchange Hotel--but no churches until November 19,1893. The county line divided the town, which may have accounted for the fact that there was never a local governing body. The tannery, about a dozen houses and the timber and bark which supplied the tannery and sawmill were in Sullivan County. The sawmill, the business portion of the town and nearly all of the residents were in Columbia County.