es a day.[5] This meant that a trip of approximately two days brought
him from Fort Augusta to the Fair Play country.

Indian paths were the primary means of ingress and egress, although
supplemented by the waterways which they paralleled. In addition to the
Great Shamokin Path, there were paths up Lycoming Creek (the Sheshequin
Path), and up Pine Creek, besides the path which followed Bald Eagle
Creek down into the Juniata Valley. These trails and adjoining water
routes were usually traveled on horseback or in canoes, depending upon
the route to be followed. However, the rivers and streams were more
often passages of departure than courses of entry.

Established roads, that is authorized public constructions, were not to
reach the West Branch region until 1775, although the Northumberland
County Court ordered such construction and reported on it at the October
term in 1772.[6] Appointments were made at the August session of 1775
"to view, and if they saw cause, to lay out a bridle road from the mouth
of Bald Eagle Creek to the town of Sunbury."[7] It was not until ten
years later that extensions of this road were authorized, carrying it
into the Nittany Valley and to Bald Eagle's Nest (near Milesburg, on the
Indian path from the Great Island to Ohio).[8]

Travel was usually on horseback or on foot. Canoes and flatboats, or
simply rafts, were used on the rivers and creeks where available.
Wagons, however, appeared after the construction of public roads and
were seen in the Great Runaway of 1778.[9]

The problem of communication between the frontier and the settled areas
was a difficult one compounded by the natural geographic barriers and
the fact that post and coach roads did not extend into this central
Pennsylvania region. As a result the inhabitants had to depend upon
occasional travelers, circuit riders, surveyors, and other Provincial
authorities who visited them infrequently. Otherwise, the meetings of
the Fair Play tribunal, irregular as they were, and the communications
from the county Committee of Safety were about the only sources of
information available. Of course, cabin-building, cornhusking, and
quilting parties provided ample opportunities for the dissemination of
strictly "local" news.

Newspapers were not introduced into the upper Susquehanna Valley until
around the turn of the century. The _Northumberland Gazette_ was
published in Sunbury in 1797 or 1798.[10] The first truly West Branch
paper was