Miami, and the Maumee. It hardly makes any real
difference to the geography of the Fair Play territory, or to the
delimiting of its boundaries, which stream was the Tiadaghton. Actually,
it was the doubt about it which drew in the squatters and created Fair
Play. These settlers justified their contention that the Tiadaghton was
Pine Creek by moving into the territory and holding onto it. This may be
reason enough for calling the famous tree the Tiadaghton Elm, even if
early travelers and the proprietary officials said that the Tiadaghton
was Lycoming Creek.[38]

The topography of the region also influenced the delineation of what we
call Fair Play territory. The jugular vein which supplies the life-blood
to this region is undoubtedly the West Branch of the Susquehanna River.
This branch of the great river, which drains almost fifty per cent of
the State, follows a northeasterly course of some forty miles from the
Great Island, which is just east of present Lock Haven, to what is now
Muncy, then turns southward.[39]

The West Branch of the mighty Susquehanna, which has plagued generations
of residents with its spring floodings, was the primary means of ingress
and egress for the area. Rich bottom lands at the mouths of Lycoming,
Larrys, and Pine creeks drew the hardy pioneer farmers, and here they
worked the soil to provide the immediate needs for survival. Hemmed in
on the north by the plateau area of the Appalachian front and on the
south by the Bald Eagle Mountains, these courageous pioneers of frontier
democracy carved their future out of the two-mile area (more often less)
between those two forbidding natural walls. With the best lands to be
found around the mouth of Pine Creek, which is reasonably close to the
center of this twenty-five-mile area, it seems quite natural that the
major political, social, and economic developments would take place in
close proximity--and they did.[40]

Thus, an area never exceeding two miles in width and spanning some ten
miles (presently from Jersey Shore to Lock Haven) was the heartland of
Fair Play settlement. Lycoming Creek, Larrys Creek, and Pine Creek all
run south into the West Branch, having channeled breaks through the
rolling valley which extends along the previously defined territory.

"The land was ours before we were the land's," the poet said, and it
seems apropos of this moment in history.[41] Fair Play territory,
possessed before it was owned and operated under _d