Montour Run is a tributary of Fishing Creek in

Columbia County, Pennsylvania Columbia County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in Northeastern Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 64,727. Its county seat is Bloomsburg. The county was created on March 22, 1813, from part ...

. It is the last named tributary to join the creek and is long. The stream's watershed has an area of approximately 4.7 square miles and is located in Montour Township, Columbia County and Cooper Township, Montour County. The annual load of sediment in the watershed is , most of which comes from agricultural lands.

Minnow Minnow is the common name for a number of species of small freshwater fish, belonging to several genera of the families Cyprinidae and Leuciscidae. They are also known in Ireland as pinkeens. Smaller fish in the subfamily Leusciscidae are co ...

s live in the stream. A. Joseph Armstrong called the stream "undistinguished" and "not an impressive stream" in his book ''Trout Unlimited's Guide to Pennsylvania Limestone Streams''.

Course

Montour Run begins in the western reaches of Montour Township, near the western edge of Columbia County. The headwaters are slightly south of

U.S. Route 11 {{Infobox road , country=USA , type=US , route=11 , map={{maplink, frame=yes, plain=yes, frame-align=center, frame-width=290, frame-height=330, type=line, from=U.S. Route 11.map , map_custom=yes , map_notes=US 11 in red, US 11E in blue, US 11W in ...

and near the community of Grovania. The stream flows east for a short distance and passes a

landing strip According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt, concrete, o ...

, roughly following U.S. Route 11, before turning east-southeast and receiving an unnamed tributary from a

quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their envi ...

. Shortly after receiving the tributary, it turns east-northeast and then east. After a short distance, it turns northeast, continuing to follow U.S. Route 11. The stream passes through a

pond A pond is an area filled with water, either natural or artificial, that is smaller than a lake. Defining them to be less than in area, less than deep, and with less than 30% emergent vegetation helps in distinguishing their ecology from th ...

and crosses under

Pennsylvania Route 42 Pennsylvania Route 42 (PA 42) is a state route located in central Pennsylvania. The southern terminus of the route is at PA 61 in Centralia. The northern terminus is at U.S. Route 220 (US 220) in Laporte. The route heads north through Columbia ...

before turning east-southeast and reaching its confluence with Fishing Creek near Rupert.

Hydrology

The daily

sediment Sediment is a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of wind, water, or ice or by the force of gravity acting on the particles. For example, sand an ...

load in Montour Run is . This equates to per year. A 28.2% reduction in the load would be required for the stream to meet the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's standards. Of the of sediment that flows through Montour Run per year, per year comes from croplands. comes from hay and pastures, comes from

stream bank In geography, a bank is the land alongside a body of water. Different structures are referred to as ''banks'' in different fields of geography, as follows. In limnology (the study of inland waters), a stream bank or river bank is the terrai ...

s, and comes from land classified as "transition" by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. Annually, of sediment in the stream comes from land classified as "low-intensity development" by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and per year comes from forests. No sediment in the watershed comes from wetlands. Most of the streams in the watershed of Montour Run do not meet the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's

water quality Water quality refers to the chemical, physical, and biological characteristics of water based on the standards of its usage. It is most frequently used by reference to a set of standards against which compliance, generally achieved through tr ...

standards, but a tributary in the northwestern reaches of the watershed do meet the standards. The average annual rainfall in the Montour Run watershed between 1976 and 1992 was . The average annual

runoff Runoff, run-off or RUNOFF may refer to: * RUNOFF, the first computer text-formatting program * Runoff or run-off, another name for bleed, printing that lies beyond the edges to which a printed sheet is trimmed * Runoff or run-off, a stock market ...

during this time period was . The stream has a high water temperature.

Geography and geology

Montour Run looking downstream in its middle reaches

The watershed of Montour Run is located in the

ridge and valley The Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, also called the Ridge and Valley Province or the Valley and Ridge Appalachians, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian division and are also a belt within the Appalachian Mountains extending ...

physiographic region of the

Appalachian Mountains The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. They ...

. The elevation in the watershed ranges from less than to more than above sea level. 50 percent of the rock in the watershed of Montour Run is

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4) and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especial ...

25 percent is

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

, 20 percent is

interbedded In geology, interbedding occurs when beds (layers of rock) of a particular lithology lie between or alternate with beds of a different lithology. For example, sedimentary rocks may be interbedded if there were sea level variations in their sedim ...

sedimentary rock Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic particles at Earth's surface, followed by cementation. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause these particles ...

. The remaining 5 percent is

carbonate A carbonate is a salt of carbonic acid (H2CO3), characterized by the presence of the carbonate ion, a polyatomic ion with the formula . The word ''carbonate'' may also refer to a carbonate ester, an organic compound containing the carbonate g ...

rock. The

Mahantango Formation The Devonian Mahantango Formation is a mapped bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland. It is named for the North branch of the Mahantango Creek in Perry and Juniata counties in Pennsylvania. It is a member of the Hamilton Gro ...

is found in the lower reaches of the Montour Run watershed, as is the

Marcellus Formation The Marcellus Formation or the Marcellus Shale is a Middle Devonian age unit of sedimentary rock found in eastern North America. Named for a distinctive outcrop near the village of Marcellus, New York, in the United States, it extends throughou ...

. Both of these formations are from the

Middle Devonian The Devonian ( ) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic era, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the Silurian, million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Carboniferous, Mya. It is named after Devon, England, wher ...

. 95 percent of the soil in the Montour Run watershed is in the hydrologic soil group B, while 5 percent is in the hydrologic soil group C. Montour Run is wide. The banks of the stream experience

erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is distin ...

Watershed

Montour Run looking upstream in its middle reaches

The watershed of Montour Run has an area of approximately 4.7 square miles. The watershed is in Montour Township, as well as Cooper Township, in

Montour County Montour County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in Northeastern Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 18,136. Its county seat is Danville. The county is named for Andrew Montour, a prominent Mét ...

. Agricultural land, including

cropland Agricultural land is typically land ''devoted to'' agriculture, the systematic and controlled use of other forms of lifeparticularly the rearing of livestock and production of cropsto produce food for humans. It is generally synonymous with bot ...

, hay, and

pasture Pasture (from the Latin ''pastus'', past participle of ''pascere'', "to feed") is land used for grazing. Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, cattle, sheep, or swine ...

s, makes up 45.7% of the land in the watershed and forests make up 40.5% of the land. 13.1% of the land is classified as "low-intensity development" by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and 0.7% of the watershed is

wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The ...

. Hay and pastures occupy 800.6 acres of the watershed of Montour Run and 538.7 acres of the watershed are occupied by cropland. There are NWI wetlands and steep slopes on the lower reaches of Montour Run. There are of streams in the Montour Run watershed.

History

Montour Run is named after

Madame Montour Madame Montour (1667 or c. 1685 – c. 1753) was an interpreter, diplomat, and local leader of Algonquin and French Canadian ancestry. Although she was well known, her contemporaries usually referred to her only as "Madame" or "Mrs." Montour. She ...

. A stone arch bridge was built over the stream near Bloomsburg in 1880 and it underwent repair in 1927. It is long and as of 2009, 150 vehicles per day travel over it.

Biology

Montour Run is considered by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to be a coldwater fishery. The only fish living in the stream are

minnow Minnow is the common name for a number of species of small freshwater fish, belonging to several genera of the families Cyprinidae and Leuciscidae. They are also known in Ireland as pinkeens. Smaller fish in the subfamily Leusciscidae are co ...

s. The

riparian buffer A riparian buffer or stream buffer is a vegetated area (a "buffer strip") near a stream, usually forested, which helps shade and partially protect the stream from the impact of adjacent land uses. It plays a key role in increasing water quality i ...

is limited in some places along Montour Run.

Conservation farming Conservation agriculture (CA) can be defined by a statement given by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as "Conservation Agriculture (CA) is a farming system that can prevent losses of arable land while regenerating degrad ...

is not practiced in the upper reaches of the watershed.

References

{{authority control Rivers of Columbia County, Pennsylvania Tributaries of Fishing Creek (North Branch Susquehanna River) Rivers of Pennsylvania