Cammal is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in McHenry Township,

Lycoming County Lycoming County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 114,188. Its county seat is Williamsport. The county is part of the North Central region of the commonwealth. Lycoming County compris ...

, in the U.S. state of

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

. It lies along Pine Creek in the

Pine Creek Gorge Pine Creek Gorge, sometimes called The Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania, is a gorge carved into the Allegheny Plateau by Pine Creek in north-central Pennsylvania. It sits in about of the Tioga State Forest. The gorge begins south of Ansonia, ne ...

, upstream of Waterville, along

Pennsylvania Route 414 Pennsylvania Route 414 (PA 414) is a state highway located in Lycoming, Tioga, and Bradford counties in Pennsylvania. The western terminus is at PA 44 in Waterville. The eastern terminus is at US 220 in Monroe. The first leg of the highw ...

. Mill Run, which flows through the nearby Tiadaghton State Forest, enters Pine Creek at Cammal.. The

Pine Creek Rail Trail The Pine Creek Rail Trail is the only rail trail in the Appalachian Mountains of north-central Pennsylvania. The trail begins just north of Wellsboro, runs south through Pine Creek Gorge (also known as the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania) and end ...

passes through Cammal.

History

''Cammal'' is a contraction of ''Campbell'', the last name of early

settler A settler or a colonist is a person who establishes or joins a permanent presence that is separate to existing communities. The entity that a settler establishes is a Human settlement, settlement. A settler is called a pioneer if they are among ...

s in the region. Around 1820, Michael Campbell began farming about upstream from Cammal along Pine Creek. His brothers, Abner and George, built a mill along Mill Run. Subsistence farming, the economic mainstay in the early decades, was joined by other enterprises after the arrival of the railroads in the latter part of the 19th century. A post office opened in the village in 1884. The

New York Central Railroad The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected New York metropolitan area, gr ...

built a line through the

, and by the 1890s three logging railroads—the Trout Run Railroad, the Cammal and Black Forest Railroad, and the Oregon and Texas Railway (named for two nearby mountains)— connected to the main line at Campbell. During these boom years, the village had stores, four hotels with saloons, four churches, an

International Order of Odd Fellows The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) is a non-political, non-sectarian international fraternal order of Odd Fellowship. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Wildey in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Evolving from the Odd Fellows, Order ...

meeting hall (which sometimes doubled as a church), and a weekly newspaper, the ''Pine Creek Pioneer''. Local industries included a hemlock sawmill and other forest-products companies. In 1905, after the supply of local timber dwindled, the sawmill and other timber-related industries closed. Residents who remained in Cammal found new sources of income: growing and selling

ginseng Ginseng () is the root of plants in the genus ''Panax'', such as South China ginseng (''Panax notoginseng, P. notoginseng''), Korean ginseng (''Panax ginseng, P. ginseng''), and American ginseng (''American ginseng, P. quinquefol ...

through about 1940 to Chinese buyers from

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

, providing services to tourists and sportsmen, and working for the railroad or the state forestry or highway departments. In 2002 the post office closed. However, in the early 21st century, the village still has a few businesses including a saloon and restaurant, a campground, and a community center in the former Odd Fellows hall.

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania Unincorporated communities in Pennsylvania