Phillips Creek (also known as Philips Creek) is a

tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage ...

of Huntington Creek in

Luzerne County, Pennsylvania Luzerne County is a county in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and is water. It is Northeastern Pennsylvania's second-largest county by total area. As of ...

, in the United States. It is approximately long and flows through Fairmount Township. The watershed of the creek has an area of and has no named tributaries. The creek is considered by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission to be

Class A Wild Trout Waters Class A Wild Trout Waters are the highest biomass class given to streams in Pennsylvania by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. They are considered to contain the highest-quality naturally reproducing trout populations in Pennsylvania. Th ...

for brook trout throughout its entire length. Glacial till, alluvium, sandstone, and shale can be found in its vicinity. Its course has been altered by glaciation and it is in the vicinity of North Mountain. At least one bridge has been built over the creek and a number of hunting cabins and cottages existed in the area. The creek's discharge has a 10 percent chance of reaching 915 cubic feet per second in any given year.

Course

Phillips Creek begins in a deep valley near North Mountain in Fairmount Township. It flows south for nearly a mile before passing 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 receiving two unnamed tributaries, one from the

left Left may refer to: Music * ''Left'' (Hope of the States album), 2006 * ''Left'' (Monkey House album), 2016 * "Left", a song by Nickelback from the album ''Curb'', 1996 Direction * Left (direction), the relative direction opposite of right * L ...

and one from the

right Rights are law, legal, social, or ethics, ethical principles of Liberty, freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convent ...

. The creek then flows south-southeast for a considerable distance before leaving the valley and crossing

Pennsylvania Route 118 Pennsylvania Route 118 (PA 118) is a state route located in northeastern Pennsylvania. The western terminus of the route is at PA 405 in Hughesville. The eastern terminus is at PA 415 in Dallas. The road is known briefly as East Wa ...

. It then turns southwest and then west, entering another valley between Jackson Hill and Bethel Hill. The creek flows south-southwest and then south-southeast for approximately two miles (three kilometers). It then leaves the valley and reaches its confluence with Huntington Creek. Phillips Creek joins Huntington Creek upstream of its mouth.

Tributaries

Phillips Creek has no officially named tributaries. However, it does have several unnamed tributaries.

Hydrology

The concentration of

alkalinity Alkalinity (from ar, القلوي, al-qaly, lit=ashes of the saltwort) is the capacity of water to resist acidification. It should not be confused with basicity, which is an absolute measurement on the pH scale. Alkalinity is the strength of ...

in the waters of Phillips Creek is 6 milligrams per liter. At the mouth of Phillips Creek, its discharge has a 10 percent chance of reaching 915 cubic feet per second in any given year. It has a 2 percent chance of reaching 1630 cubic feet per second and a 1 percent chance of reaching 2015 cubic feet per second. The creek has a 0.2 percent chance of reaching a top discharge of 3177 cubic feet per second in any given year.

Geography and geology

The elevation near the

mouth In animal anatomy, the mouth, also known as the oral cavity, or in Latin cavum oris, is the opening through which many animals take in food and issue vocal sounds. It is also the cavity lying at the upper end of the alimentary canal, bounded on ...

of Phillips Creek is above

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardised g ...

. The elevation of the creek's

source Source may refer to: Research * Historical document * Historical source * Source (intelligence) or sub source, typically a confidential provider of non open-source intelligence * Source (journalism), a person, publication, publishing institute o ...

is between . Its elevation at the base of North Mountain is approximately above sea level. The headwaters of Phillips Creek are in North Mountain. The creek has an obstruction in its lower reaches, near Huntington Road. The Gauckler–Manning coefficient value of the creek is 0.045 for its

channel Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to: Geography * Channel (geography), in physical geography, a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water. Australia * Channel Country, region of outback Austral ...

and ranges from 0.070 to 0.100 for its

overbank An overbank is an alluvial geological deposit consisting of sediment that has been deposited on the floodplain of a river or stream by flood waters that have broken through or overtopped the banks. The sediment is carried in suspension, and becaus ...

. Phillips Creek attempted to flow down the valley of Lick Branch prior to the glaciation of the area. However, a mass of till under Pennsylvania Route 118 diverted it over a

saddle The saddle is a supportive structure for a rider of an animal, fastened to an animal's back by a girth. The most common type is equestrian. However, specialized saddles have been created for oxen, camels and other animals. It is not kno ...

to the west, causing it to end up in its present course. There is a series of

waterfall A waterfall is a point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in several wa ...

s at the point where the creek is cutting through the saddle. A portion of the creek is located in a deep and narrow

gorge A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosion, erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tenden ...

. Shortly after they were created, the gorge and the waterfalls were deepened by Lake Bowman, a nearby

glacial lake A glacial lake is a body of water with origins from glacier activity. They are formed when a glacier erodes the land and then melts, filling the depression created by the glacier. Formation Near the end of the last glacial period, roughly 10,0 ...

. Downstream of the saddle, the creek is an "overfit stream", meaning that it is too wide for its valley. For this reason, the gorge is gradually widening. A deep col is located between the creek and the valley of

Bowman Creek Bowman Creek (also known as Bowmans Creek or Bowman's Creek) is a tributary of the Susquehanna River in Luzerne County and Wyoming County, in Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is approximately long and flows through Ross Township and Lake To ...

. The col contains a wide ledge of

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) ...

at above sea level. In its lower reaches, Phillips Creek is surrounded by

bedrock In geology, bedrock is solid Rock (geology), rock that lies under loose material (regolith) within the crust (geology), crust of Earth or another terrestrial planet. Definition Bedrock is the solid rock that underlies looser surface mater ...

made of interbedded reddish-gray

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 ...

and

. Some areas near the creek are on Wisconsinan

Till image:Geschiebemergel.JPG, Closeup of glacial till. Note that the larger grains (pebbles and gravel) in the till are completely surrounded by the matrix of finer material (silt and sand), and this characteristic, known as ''matrix support'', is d ...

. Most of the till in the vicinity of the creek is expected to be more than thick. Wisconsinan Ice-Contact Stratified Drift and

alluvium Alluvium (from Latin ''alluvius'', from ''alluere'' 'to wash against') is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. Alluv ...

are also found along parts of the stream, especially in its middle and upper reaches. Additionally, an

alluvial fan An alluvial fan is an accumulation of sediments that fans outwards from a concentrated source of sediments, such as a narrow canyon emerging from an escarpment. They are characteristic of mountainous terrain in arid to semiarid climates, but a ...

is present in the creek's upper reaches.

Watershed

The

watershed Watershed is a hydrological term, which has been adopted in other fields in a more or less figurative sense. It may refer to: Hydrology * Drainage divide, the line that separates neighbouring drainage basins * Drainage basin, called a "watershe ...

of Phillips Creek has an area of . The creek is entirely within the

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

quadrangle of Sweet Valley. Phillips Creek is one of the main sources of

flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

ing in Fairmount Township, along with Kitchen Creek. The creek flooded in 1972 and 1975. A number of

hunting cabin A cottage, during Feudalism in England, England's feudal period, was the holding by a cottager (known as a cotter or ''bordar'') of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager had to provide ...

s and

cottage A cottage, during Feudalism in England, England's feudal period, was the holding by a cottager (known as a Cotter (farmer), cotter or ''bordar'') of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager ...

s existed in the watershed in the 1970s. At the time, these were the only disturbances to the forests on North Mountain There is a small

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

in the upper reaches of the creek.

History

Phillips Creek was entered into the

Geographic Names Information System The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and locative information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories, Antarctica, and the associated states of ...

on August 2, 1979. Its identifier in the Geographic Names Information System is 1183672. A prestressed box beam

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

was constructed over Phillips Creek in 1993. It is long and carries Huntington Creek Road. In 1991, plans were made to replace a bridge carrying the road T-620 over the creek for a cost of $277,000.

Biology

A section of Phillips Creek is considered by the

Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission is an independent state agency responsible for the regulation of all fishing and boating in the state of Pennsylvania within the United States of America. Unlike many U.S. states, Pennsylvania has a separ ...

to be Class A Wild Trout Waters for

brook trout The brook trout (''Salvelinus fontinalis'') is a species of freshwater fish in the char genus ''Salvelinus'' of the salmon family Salmonidae. It is native to Eastern North America in the United States and Canada, but has been introduced elsewhere ...

. This section stretches approximately from the creek's headwaters to Pennsylvania Route 118. The section of the creek that stretches from Pennsylvania Route 118 to its mouth is also considered to be Class A Wild Trout Waters, but for both brook trout and

brown trout The brown trout (''Salmo trutta'') is a European species of salmonid fish that has been widely introduced into suitable environments globally. It includes purely freshwater populations, referred to as the riverine ecotype, ''Salmo trutta'' morph ...

. This section is long. The creek is one of six direct tributaries of Huntington Creek to be designated as Class A Wild Trout Waters. The others are

Mitchler Run Mitchler Run is a tributary of Huntington Creek (Pennsylvania), Huntington Creek in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is approximately long and flows through Ross Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Ross Township. The wat ...

, Shingle Run, Arnold Creek, Lick Branch, and part of Kitchen Creek. However, Phillips Creek was stocked in 1933–1934. In the early 1900s, mammals such as

bobcat The bobcat (''Lynx rufus''), also known as the red lynx, is a medium-sized cat native to North America. It ranges from southern Canada through most of the contiguous United States to Oaxaca in Mexico. It is listed as Least Concern on the IUC ...

s and

bear Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae. They are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Nor ...

s were observed in the vicinity of Phillips Creek.

References

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