Lake Naomi Way Before the Dam

Map of the 1779 Sullivan Trail – Click the map to see a blow-up of the trail that ran right through Pocono Pines and the region. This map is likely the one that best defines the history of what would become the Pocono Pines and Lake Naomi Region of the Pocono Plateau. As you’ve seen, the Ice Age left what was always known as a swamp on the plateau. The 1779 map showcases the red trail that would later become part of the stagecoach turnpike, the railroad, and the auto highway system we know today.

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We need to start with a brief history lesson. If you read the entire Lake Naomi series, you’ll learn all kinds of things about the evolution of the Pocono Mountains and the Lake Naomi region. However, there were some interesting geological events that took us back to the ice age first. When the polar ice glaciers started south, eroding the Appalachians, the Pocono Mountains served as a natural barrier. But those glaciers were thousands of feet thick and no match for the mountain range.

The series I’ve been researching began as an effort to rebuild my youthful memories of growing up on Lake Naomi in the Poconos starting in the 1960s. As the stories came together, I wanted to start an online dialog with others who might remember or are making their memories right now. We created an associated Facebook Group, called Lake Naomi Memories, for anyone to share their memories that help create a digital history footprint on the web. Oh, and they’ll certainly help me remember as well. Link below – enjoy the series!

The Pocono Plateau, the Indians, the Swamp, and a River

The History of the Lake Naomi Region in just 9 historical references:

1. 2.6 million – 11,700 years ago – The Pleistocene Ice Age carves the Pocono Plateau.
2. c. 10,000 years ago – Paleo-Indians arrive after the glaciers recede.
3. 1779 – June to October, General John Sullivan blazed the Sullivan Trail during the Revolutionary War.
4. 1803–1818 – The Wilkes-Barre and Easton Turnpike opens the region to stagecoach travel.
5. 1856 – The DL&W opens its railroad line, making it one of the earliest to cross the plateau.
6. 1893–1939 – The Wilkes-Barre and Eastern Railroad carries coal, lumber, and ice across the plateau.
7. 1895 – Franklin and Rufus Miller, brothers, construct a dam that becomes Miller Lake, later renamed Naomi. Their goal was to flood part of Tunkhannock Creek to create a massive lake for the ice-harvesting industry.
8. 1910s–1920s – Route 940 is laid out, bringing the first vacationers by automobile.
9. 1963 – Logan Steele develops the Lake Naomi community, ushering in a new era of recreation.

What most people don’t know is that the Naomi area is part of the larger Pocono Plateau, a flat area where the glaciers shaved off the top of the mountains. When the ice finally receded, they left marshlands all around the top of a mountain. Strange as I thought, aren’t swamps at the low point in the physical landscape? Yes and no. This area, being the flat spot, also had marshes left behind, swampy areas all over the top of the mountain. In fact, both north and south of Naomi were full of wetlands. So when the Miller brothers came to seek their fortune in the ice harvesting business, there were already others here doing the same thing: making dams, making lakes, and harvesting their fortunes.

The Pocono Plateau is a high, broad upland that forms the central backbone of the Pocono Mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania. The tallest spot in the Pocono Mountains is Big Pocono, which reaches an elevation of about 2,133 feet above sea level. It sits at the summit of Camelback Mountain in Tannersville, Monroe County. This peak is part of Big Pocono State Park, which offers sweeping 360-degree views of eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and even parts of New York on clear days.

Lake Naomi’s elevation is approximately 1,740 feet above sea level, but its location between Locust Ridge and Camelback Mountain makes it a suitable spot for a lake. And with the railroad going through in 1893, it became an ice harvesting no-brainer for the Millers.

1800s – The Story of Lake Naomi’s Upper Tunkhannock Creek

Long before Lake Naomi sparkled as a summer retreat, a modest waterway shaped the valley in Pocono Pines. This stream was Upper Tunkhannock Creek, sometimes misremembered in old references as “Tuckhonneck”, a high-quality coldwater fishery that rose from Stillwater Lake and meandered east to west through the low ground. It carved a simple, direct path: entering the basin at what is now Naomi’s eastern inlet, flowing steadily along the valley floor, and exiting where the modern dam and spillway stand today.

As the map below shows, in 1860, the Pocono Pines area was known as the hamlet of Tompkinsville in Tobyhanna Township, as the settlement grew around the enterprises of Edward Pierce and Andrew W. Tompkins, local mill owner and businessman whose names appear on the 1860 Monroe County map below. Tompkins established a sawmill and related operations on the Tobyhanna Creek in the mid-19th century, and the little industrial hamlet that developed there naturally took his name.

Then there’s a Fred K. Miller on the map, who we’ve determined was actually a Fred (Frederick) Pierce Miller, who landed in the region in the mid-1800s as a lumberman, farmer, stagecoach operator, and innkeeper who set up shop on the Sullivan Trail near present-day Firehouse Road and 423 in what our research was also referred to as “Millertown.”

Among the three contiguous settlements of Tomkinsville (Andrew W. Tomkins), Hauser’s Mill (Charles Hauser), and Millertown (Fred P. Miller) (now comprising Pocono Lake and Pocono Pines), one could find a post office, a hotel, three stores, two clothespin factories, two saw mills, a shoe peg factory, a blacksmith, a wheelwright shop and roughly fifty dwellings.

Early Recollections: Fishing on the Creek

Now we introduce a member of ANOTHER Miller family: the Easton, PA Miller Family. Thomas Miller’s memories of fishing on the Tackhonnock Creek, the older rendering of what we now call Upper Tunkhannock Creek, capture a very different Pocono landscape than the one most people recognize today at Lake Naomi.

Thomas Miller is remembered as one of the early 19th-century settlers along Upper Tunkhannock Creek, in what later became Pocono Lake and Pocono Pines (Tobyhanna Township, Monroe County, Pennsylvania). Local tradition recalls him fishing along the “Tackhonnock Creek” (an older rendering of Upper Tunkhannock Creek) in the early 1800s, well before the construction of the Naomi dam and the creation of Lake Naomi.

In the mid-1800s, before dams reshaped the watercourse, the creek ran clear and narrow through a wooded, marshy valley. Accounts of Miller and his family describe the stream as lively, fed by the cool outflow of Stillwater Lake. It wound its way past open meadows and dense groves of hemlock and pine, its riffles teeming with brook trout. Fishing was not yet a sport in the modern sense, but rather a daily rhythm of rural life, providing food on the table and time spent outdoors in the fresh air of the Pocono Mountains. And Thomas Miller loved it.

For Miller, whose family was among the earliest settlers in the Pocono Plateau, the “Tackhonnock” was both familiar and revered. He recalled slipping through thickets along its banks, rod in hand, listening for the splash of trout darting beneath undercut roots. Local boys competed over who could pull the first catch at daybreak, often using simple poles cut from saplings and bait gathered nearby.

Landscape Before the Dam

The stream’s course was direct: east to west below the Locust Ridge in the basin that would later become Lake Naomi. Its pools formed natural resting holes for fish, especially near what Miller called the “deep bend” toward the west, where today’s dam stands. The creek also drew wildlife. Deer watered along its sandy shallows, and millers eyed its steady flow as a potential source of power for sawmills and grist operations.

Without the lake, the valley floor had a different character, with grassy clearings broken by numerous scattered rocks and ridges, which later became peninsulas and islands when the water rose. For Miller, that landscape was inseparable from the act of fishing: the landmarks along the creek served as guides to the best spots, handed down as family lore.

From Sullivan’s Trail, to the Stagecoach Era: How a Military Road Became the Pocono Highway

When you drive along PA-940 or pass through Pocono Pines, Pocono Lake, or Blakeslee, it can be hard to picture that this quiet stretch of road once carried armies, stagecoaches, and freight wagons. The story of the Sullivan Trail and its rebirth as the Easton–Wilkes-Barre Turnpike is one of the most important in Monroe County history.

In the summer of 1779, during the Revolutionary War, General John Sullivan led thousands of Continental soldiers north from Easton into the wilderness of the Pocono Plateau. His mission was to strike Iroquois villages allied with the British in New York. To get his men, cannon, and wagons through the mountains, Sullivan’s troops hacked out a rough road across the Blue Mountain and into the high country. Locals remembered the swath as the “Sullivan Trail.” Though primitive, it revealed a workable route through one of Pennsylvania’s most forbidding landscapes.

After the Revolution, entrepreneurs recognized the value of that military path. In 1803, the legislature chartered the Easton–Wilkes-Barre Turnpike Company. Over a decade of work, laborers widened Sullivan’s corridor, cut ditches, and built bridges. By 1815, a toll road linked Easton to Wilkes-Barre, spanning more than 60 miles across mountains, forests, and rivers. Tollgates were set up every 10 to 15 miles. Inns and taverns sprang up beside them, offering meals, whiskey, and a bed to travelers who could pay.

Share a Memory – Join the Online Discussion

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About The Author

Brooks founded Mr. Local History, along with his wife, Jill, and the Mr. Local History project. Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, and raised in Westfield, Brooks graduated from Westfield High School in 1980 and later from Bryant University. For over two decades, Brooks, along with his brother Brian and younger sister Cee Cee, spent their summers on Lake Naomi with their parents, Frank and Caryolyn Betz, who had lived on Canoe Brook Road since the mid-1960s.

He and his family owned the Pocono Boathouse (Pocono Pines, PA) and the Cranford Canoe Club in the 1960s through the 1990s.

There are likely many gaps in the history that I hope to fill, along with a return visit to Lake Naomi to reminisce and reflect on these stories. This story is part of a series dedicated to the history of Lake Naomi, Pocono Pines, and the memories of my family spending time together. Thanks for reading.

My Lake Naomi /Pocono Pines Area History Series