About 1795, Jacob Tomb settled here and made a life in this wilderness. He and others who followed built primitive water-driven sawmills and sold lumber to local markets. They lashed huge timbers into rafts and floated them downstream to distant markets, but their meddling barely affected the vast forest resource. Far from here, however, the Industrial Revolution was beginning. In 1881, James B. Weed brought his big idea to Slate Run, scheming to purchase the nearby Black Forest and turn its timber into cash. He built a powerful steam-driven sawmill and railroad, and by 1910 the magnificent Black Forest stood no longer. Weed sold what had been the Black Forest, some 15,000 acres, to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for pennies per acre. It was the beginning of a long journey back.