Ricketts
A ghost town in Ricketts, Pennsylvania, Ricketts is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Former lumber-company settlement straddling Sullivan and Wyoming counties. HauntHunt files it with 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 Ricketts 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
Ricketts stood on Mehoopany Creek on North Mountain, the high country where Luzerne, Wyoming, and Sullivan counties meet — the last major lumbering frontier of northeastern Pennsylvania. Colonel R. Bruce Ricketts owned most of the mountain's timberland, and from 1890 the Trexler and Turrell Lumber Company ran a full company town on his lands: a large hardwood mill, rows of company houses, a hotel, stores, churches, a school, and a depot on the Lehigh Valley Railroad's Bowmans Creek Branch, which had reached the settlement in 1893.
For two decades the town shipped mountain hardwood by the trainload — in 1902 the branch carried an estimated 4,582 cars of lumber and ice, which strung together would have run thirty-three miles.
When the timber ran out
The end came on schedule rather than by accident: the merchantable timber was gone. Trexler and Turrell's core mill operation ended in June 1913, and the company town emptied; a return logging campaign reused the works in 1916-17 before the last crews left. The rails came up in stages as the branch retreated toward Dallas, finally closing entirely in December 1963.
The site today lies in state game land country near Ricketts Glen State Park, marked mostly by stone foundations, mill races, and the railroad grade — a walk hikers describe as foundations in forest. The research notes flag a documentation wrinkle worth keeping: the principal source reverses its own township assignments between passages, so the archive records the multi-county location without pinning an exact pin. The emptiness, at least, is precisely documented.
Documented history
Trexler and Turrell operated this lumber settlement on Mehoopany Creek. Its core business ended in June 1913; logging reuse followed in 1916–17. Ricketts's history is documented — boom, bust, and desertion all on record, the lore layered on top. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. 'Ghost Towns of North Mountain' documents the entry. It is the kind of fact the rest of the dossier leans on.
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
Historical article reverses its uptown/downtown township assignments between two passages; retain multi-county location without assigning an exact point. Verify game-land boundary and current access.