Almost nothing is more joyful this Labor Day weekend than a trip to Lake Nockamixon in Upper Bucks County. Picnicking, boating and hiking woodland trails around the 8-mile-long finger lake at the foot of lofty Haycock Mountain is unforgettable. It’s a supremely beautiful experience for my family, but unfortunately at the cost of lost history when it was built by state prisoners a half-century ago.
State government unveiled its intention in 1960 to build a dam across Tohickon Creek to create Nockamixon State Park. The idea was to flood a valley referred to by residents as their personal “Brigadoon.” A hearing at the local high school drew 800 enraged residents. They denounced the seizure of 290 farms, homes, businesses, 18th century Tohickon Village and its rare, stone-arched bridge immortalized by painter Daniel Garber. Emotions boiled, requiring state troopers to keep the peace.
Despite the fury, the state prevailed in creating the county’s largest state park covering portions of Bedminster, East Rockhill, Tinicum, Haycock and Nockamixon townships. Everything was plowed under so as not to leave future water hazards. A general store, grist mill, saw mill, tannery, houses, barns, iron bridges, trees, gardens and a cave known to contain Indian artifacts succumbed. Inmates from Montgomery County’s Graterford State Prison provided labor in building the park. They were housed in temporary mobile homes on what is now a peninsula opposite the dam. The only evidence today is a footpath designated “prison camp trail.”
Workers completed the project in June 1973. It took six months for the reservoir to reach its brim. Boaters celebrated with an inaugural launch party in 1974. A marina was added three years later as well as an Olympic-sized swimming pool, rental cabins and picnic grounds.
Lost under the lake was the beautiful village and its stone bridge left intact 70 feet below the surface. As the Bucks County Historical Society put it, “The end of Tohickon Village is a melancholy one indeed.”
I was reminded of all this by Jeff Miller of Perkasie, who grew up in Tohickon Valley:
“I read all your columns and love reading them. They are what is so vital and refreshing and much needed today to remember community, family and our local history. Your past career in journalism and your inclusion of your grandchildren in your visits to local places of interest warms my heart that their grandfather makes the effort to educate, inform, and spend cherished time with his family while doing so.
“I am 62 years old and grew up in Upper Bucks near Lake Nockamixon. I lived elsewhere in the country for a few years as did my three brothers. This served as an education for us as to how other people live, often differently from us. In the end, most of us returned to the area.
“I grew up with my mother’s and father’s families nearby and heard stories about the families in the neighborhood dating back to the early 1900s. We moved to the farmhouse my father lived in as a boy. The house belonged to the McCarty family who settled by Haycock Creek which is one of a few creeks that feed Lake Nockamixon.
“I witnessed Lake Nockamixon being built, in part, by area prisoners. I recall homes that were taken by eminent domain for the lake. Foundations are still evident in a few places with most under the lake. Some roads which ran through the lake area now dead end at the lake edges. I remember swimming holes in the winding creeks that ran before the lake appeared; old swimming holes that my grandfather and my mother and her siblings, along with the community, used.
“I explain all this because some folks are still alive who are older than I, and still recall the stories about the homes and small villages which were either beside or under the lake area. But these stories will vanish soon when they are gone. My mother at 83 lives next to me and has been one source of the stories. Others have photos of homes and the farms and area before the lake was built. I think a small book with photos was published by a resident and is available through Amazon.
“Most people don’t know there is buried history under the lake. Many people from local counties and as far as Allentown, Philadelphia, and even NYC, now swim, boat, and walk at the second largest man-made lake in Pennsylvania.
“In any event, kudos on your stories about the past of local places and people. I value your stories and look forward to more!”
In 2017, I wrote about Lake Nockamixon and Tohickon Village. “The village beneath the waves” is included in Volume 2 of my “Bucks County Adventures” series available at book stores in Doylestown and Lahaska.
Sources include “Our Lost Tohickon Valley” by Marjorie Goldthorp Fulp and Pamela Feist Varkony published in 2010, and “Local residents tell story of life and land before Lake Nockamixon” by Erin DuBois published by the Perkasie News Herald on Nov. 6, 2010. Information on Nockamixon State Park is posted on the web at dcnr.pa.gov/StateParks/FindAPark/NockamixonStatePark/Pages/default.aspx.
Carl LaVO can be reached at carllavo0@gmail.com.
