The Townships

By Christopher Miller

Castanea Township. One of the only township names in the county that my iPhone constantly wants to autocorrect to Castaneda, who was an American writer that was born in Peru, or Castañeda, a word derived from Spain and Portugal, which oddly even though it adds the letter “d” into the mix, means “chestnut forest.”

Other than containing an abundance of chestnuts, Castanea Township is the youngest township in Clinton County aside from Chapman being officially incorporated in 2011 (more on this in a future article on Chapman).

Castanea Township was established and chopped off from Dunnstable Township on December 10, 1877. And to throw some more “word fancy” into the mix and to confuse my iPhone even more, means “chestnut” in Latin.

“The township was organized because of the great length and ill-shaped size of Dunnstable, causing inconvenience to a large number of its inhabitants,” a newspaper article from 1976 reported. And because Lock Haven wanted a piece of Castanea too, a part of the township was annexed to it in 1938.

The present-day village of Castanea was laid out by Jacob Brown and P. W. Keller who purchased the farm of Joseph Hamberger on the southside of Bald Eagle Creek. Early settlers of the region included a family by the name of Harvey.

Castanea, like many of the other townships in the county, was a great center of industry and manufacturing. Early industries here included a post-Civil War brewery, paper mills, a large floral company and greenhouse that was known to have shipped flowers all over North and South America, oil and gas, a factory for tea, the Lock Haven Brick and Tile Company, and chemical manufacturing, as of recent.

Curtis Publishing Company was once a big provider of jobs in the paper manufacturing business in Castanea Township.

“The rapid development and increasing magnitude and circulation of the Saturday Evening Post, the Country Gentleman, and the Ladies Home Journal, publications of the Curtis Publishing Company, made necessary the provision of extra facilities for the supply of magazine paper for. use in these publications,” said an old newspaper clipping found in a Centennial Scrapbook at the Ross Library.

This papermill was also revolutionary in its efforts to prevent pollution and preserve the purity of the water in local streams.

A little known story also surfaced in newspaper archives regarding a quickly defunct tea industry in Castanea.

The American Tea Factory was announced and reported in an 1865 issue of the Clinton Democrat newspaper.

“The tea factory vanished later, due, it is said, to the fact that the plant from which the tea was made disappeared from the hills where it had been harvested.”

“The plant from which this tea is manufactured grows in great luxuriance in the immediate vicinity of the Tea Company’s works,” the article said, and “it being indigenous, required no special cultivation.” Unfortunately, the supply that “seemed to be inexhaustible” was plucked from the plants to extinction and the tea was no longer mass produced after a few short years.

While efforts above ground to cultivate the land for tea were coming to a close, a Lock Haven man digging out a cellar came across a grave at a depth of five feet.

“No care was observed and the remains were thrown out carelessly,” said the news clipping. “A bird amulet of striped slate, a pipe, a large steatite bead and a tube of polished, fine-grained sandstone shaped like a cigar holder were found.” Many Native American remains were known to have been found there as many scattered camp sites were found above and below the creek.

Speaking of Native American burials, no known cemeteries in the modern sense, according to the Cemetery Books, are recorded to have been located in Castanea Township.

“There are rumored to have been graves on the old Basketmaker farm, on top of the mountain in Castanea Township…no graves have been located; however, many years ago, a homeowner on Guardlock Drive sent some young boys over to the mountain to collect stones to help build a retaining wall…one of them was discovered to have an inscription.”

Another location of a possible tombstone was discovered in 1939 near the “Bald Spot” on the mountain. “A triangular stone was inscribed with a sunflower and the date 1710 and at the time of its discovery, it was speculated that the grave was that of a trader enroute to Fort Niagara, the sunflower being used in Roman Catholic grave iconography to denote the faithful responding to God’s grace.” It is not currently known what became of the gravestone, nor is the exact site marked today. In fact, it is not known if the grave is located in Wayne or Castanea Township as it straddles the township line.

Today, Castanea Township is a lovely little community nestled at the bottom and along the sides of the mountain. It actually has some pretty amazing views of Lock Haven and the river from its highest points. About 1,200 people currently call this township home,