Remembered Childhood, Fishing expedition, The Potholes, Leaping rock to rock, Seeking that hidden bass, Lurking in the shadow of eroded rock, Will I make it to the next boulder? or get wet? Leaping, Tackle box rattling, Bouncing lures, Tangled treble hooks…

by Bob Baumbach

   The Susquehanna River, mighty and wide, was a natural draw for a fifteen year old fisherman. I would form a bond with a particular area of the river that still lures me to her today as a sixty year old. The section below the York Haven Dam and very near to the infamous Three Mile Island is dotted with a unique boulder field. This area is known as Conewago Falls. The Conewago Potholes are spectacular rock, some larger than semi trailers and taller than a man. The Potholes are made of diabase rock ( from Susquehanna, River of Dreams, by Susan Q. Stranahan). The area was first documented in 1948 by H. H. Beck in Prolonged drouth uncovers geologic phenomenon, a Pennsylvania Internal Affairs Bulletin, v 16, no.2, pp. 3-6.

   In the late summer during times of no rain the river would lower to reveal immense boulders eroded by thousands of years of swirling boiling water from winter melt and spring showers. The water drilled holes into the igneous rock forming some “potholes” big enough for a man to climb into. The rock in many places takes on a surreal landscape of arching and curved organic forms.

From Lumbering in Penns Woods by Lewis Edwin Theiss

“Below Harrisburg a few miles lie the so-called Conewago Falls. Here the Susquehanna rushes down a river bed that is worn to fantastic shape. Elsie Singmaster’s book Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna pictures that river bottom on page 185. The picture. taken during a protracted period of drought, shows the river bed absolutely dry. And such a fantastic, grotesque, amazing array of potholes, perpendicular crags, eroded boulders, upright rocks, one could not even imagine. Well, the spring flood, rushing down over this uneven floor, is torn and whipped and churned into indescribable fury. The water comes tearing down this frightful slope with terrifying speed. Here it leaps upward in great comber. There it swirls savagely about a sunken rock.”