Mountain Springs Ice-Harvesting Village
A ghost town in Pennsylvania, Mountain Springs Ice-Harvesting Village is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Abandoned settlement associated with commercial natural-ice harvesting. It sits in the archive under ghost towns. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. It stands abandoned — what remains is the shell and the record.
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Is Mountain Springs Ice-Harvesting Village haunted?
No claims are filed here — the record keeps this place for its documented history, not for a haunting on file.
The record — long form
Mountain Springs grew out of a failed dam. In October 1890 the Albert Lewis Lumber & Manufacturing Company began a log-and-timber dam on Bowmans Creek near Bean Run, in Ross Township on North Mountain — the first site washed out on soft creekbed, and a second attempt a year later produced Splash Dam No. 1, a forty-acre log pond feeding splash floods that carried timber 7.7 miles down to the mill at Stull.
When the railroad came in 1893 the splash dam lost its purpose, and Lewis converted the pond to a second industry: natural-ice harvesting, under the Mountain Springs Ice Company he and Arthur L. Stull built together — the same partnership behind the ice house at Bear Creek. A village accreted around the dam: workers' houses, ice houses, and a Lehigh Valley siding for the outbound cars.
Fifty-eight years of winter harvest
The company carried on after Lewis's 1912 departure under the Stull family, and Splash Dam No. 2 — built in 1909 a mile upstream — added a second forty-acre pond; the research notes fix a common error: the village belongs at Dam No. 1, while No. 2 had an ice house but no settlement. Ice cutting ended when postwar refrigeration did — harvesting stopped in 1949, and the last family left Mountain Springs in 1954.
The site now lies inside state game lands adjoining Ricketts Glen State Park, drained ponds and foundations where F. Charles Petrillo's North Mountain ghost-town history mapped them. The file keeps it as documented industry — no haunting claim attached.
Documented history
The village served Ice Dam No. 1 on Bowmans Creek. Ice harvesting ended in 1949 and the final family departed in 1954. The town's documented rise and abandonment is the record the rest of the file stands on. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. The record appears in 'Ghost Towns of North Mountain'. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from.
Verified historyF. Charles Petrillo / Harveys Lake History
Sources on file
- 01Ghost Towns of North MountainF. Charles Petrillo / Harveys Lake History · historical society · A2
Field notes & open questions
Village belongs at Dam No. 1, not Dam No. 2, which had an ice house but no village. Exact historic footprint and current game-land access remain unverified.