White Oak Run is a tributary of Roaring Brook in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is approximately long and flows through Jefferson Township, Madison Township, and Roaring Brook Township. The watershed of the stream has an area of . The stream flows through the Curtis Reservoir, which is dammed by the Curtis Dam. The surficial geology in the vicinity of the stream's mouth includes alluvium, Wisconsinan Till, and bedrock.

Course

White Oak Run begins in Jefferson Township. It flows south-southwest for a few tenths of a mile and enters a lake. From the southern end of the lake, it flows south for several tenths of a mile before crossing

Pennsylvania Route 590 Pennsylvania Route 590 (PA 590) is a state highway located in Lackawanna, Wayne, and Pike Counties in Pennsylvania. The western terminus is at PA 435 in Elmhurst Township. The eastern terminus is at PA 434 in the community of Greeley in ...

and entering the Curtis Reservoir, where it flows southwest and enters Madison Township. At the southwestern edge of the reservoir, the stream turns west and enters Roaring Brook Township. A short distance further downstream, it reaches its confluence with Roaring Brook at the Elmhurst Reservoir. White Oak Run joins Roaring Brook upstream of its mouth.

Tributaries

White Oak Run has no named tributaries. However, it does have two unnamed tributaries, both of which enter the stream from the right. One of the tributaries reaches its confluence with White Oak Run in the Curtis Reservoir.

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 White Oak Run is above sea level. The elevation near the source of the stream is between . The

surficial geology Superficial deposits (or surficial deposits) refer to geological deposits typically of Quaternary age (less than 2.6 million years old). These geologically recent unconsolidated sediments may include stream channel and floodplain deposits, beach ...

in the vicinity of the lower reaches of White Oak Run consists of alluvium. Slightly further from the stream, there are areas of a glacial or resedimented till known as Wisconsinan Till, as well as

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 ...

containing conglomeratic sandstone, sandstone, and

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 ...

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 White Oak Run has an area of . A reach of the stream is within the United States Geological Survey quadrangle of Moscow. A 72-acre (29-hectare) reservoir known as the Curtis Reservoir is situated on White Oak Run. It is dammed by the Curtis Dam. In the late 1970s, the dam was judged to be unsafe, but not in critical condition. The reason for this was an inadequate spillway that was only capable of handling 17 percent of the Probable Maximum Flood without overtopping the dam. A failure of the Curtis Dam could cause a failure of the Elmhurst Dam further downstream, which could lead to a loss of life.

History

White Oak Run was entered into the Geographic Names Information System on August 2, 1979. Its identifier in the Geographic Names Information System is 1193654. In the early 2000s, the Lackawanna River Watershed Conservation Plan recommended that Roaring Brook Township, Madison Township, and Jefferson Township include protection of Keyser Creek in their zoning plans.

References