The South Mountain Region connects portions of Adams, Cumberland, Franklin, and York counties in south central Pennsylvania. It covers approximately half a million acres from a forested upland ridgeline to fertile agricultural valleys. The South Mountain Partnership is a regional, landscape-scale conservation project in one of seven Conservation Landscapes identified by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR).
The Chesapeake Bay Trust recently selected the South Mountain Region to participate in a capacity building program. The 12 Core Partners below are working to decide on the group’s goals and priorities and create a governance structure in order to apply for funding over the next 2-3 years of this project.
- Audubon Pennsylvania
- Cumberland Area Economic Development
- Cumberland Valley Visitors Bureau
- Capital Resource Conservation & Development
- Cumberland County Planning Department
- Dickinson College
- Franklin County Planning Department
- Franklin County Visitors Bureau
- Partnership For Better Health
- Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania
- Wilson College
- York County Planning Commission
In 2017, the Center for Land Use and Sustainability developed a story map to illustrate the project funded through the South Mountain Mini-Grant program, as well as establish a sustainable framework to update and maintain this product over the long term. This student created story map shows the locations of each funded project, either the geographic location of an on-the-ground project or the location of the lead organization, along with photos and text describing the project and, where relevant, links to documents or reports that came out of the project. Explore the story map here: https://arcg.is/GH5br.
South Mountain is a landscape containing significant cultural resources that are heavily utilized. These different, and often competing, uses require cooperation from a variety of interested parties. Prehistoric archaeological sites in the region face pressure from decades of artifact collecting, timber sales, and other potentially destructive activities. Resource managers and researchers often encounter difficulties in locating prehistoric cultural features (specifically metarhyolite quarries) using traditional field methods alone. This project has provided a regionally specific tool for those interested parties as they try to balance the needs of the users of each landscape. Modeling, predicting and mapping these sites gives us to greater insight, not only as specific cultural features, but also their relationship to each other and the broader pre-historic landscape. We hope to foster a greater understanding of the importance of South Mountain’s prehistoric cultural resources, while at the same time preserving these sites for future examination.
Through this research, we were able to find previously unrecorded prehistoric quarry (archaeological) sites. Our team developed field computer techniques to help distinguish cultural sites and natural features, and compiled a database that will be useful for future archaeological investigations. Our most important contribution was the discovery of a large number of isolated quarry locations and far fewer quarrying complexes consisting of multiple individual quarries. This suggests that although there was widespread use of metarhyolite, metarhyolite from certain locations had characteristics that made it much more desirable. Future research should focus on determining those specific metarhyolite characteristics.
PennDOT archaeologist Joe Baker (left) and others examine prehistoric artifacts piled at the base of a tree by illegal artifact collectors
Large quarry pit with hiking pole for scale
Large metarhyolite outcrop in the Carbaugh Run Natural Area
Claire Jantz, Ph.D. – Past Director
Deputy Secretary
Paul Marr, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Geography-Earth Science
Joshua Barth
Graduate Student Fellow
