For thousands of years, Native Americans traversed this region in dugout canoes and over a far-reaching network of footpaths. White settlers followed and expanded these paths. Lumbermen floated billions of board feet of logs and lumber on the Allegheny and Susquehanna Rivers and their tributaries. By the mid-1800s, a canal system along the West Branch of the Susquehanna moved people and goods up- and downriver. Often mired in mud and snow, settlers sought better ways to travel overland. Railroads penetrated the region by the late-1800s, transforming both land and local communities. Locomotives hauled away the region's natural riches of coal, logs, lumber, hemlock bark for tanning, charcoal, and crude oil and returned great, though often short-lived prosperity to local communities. By the 1930s, automobiles began to eclipse rail travel as paved roads covered over dirt. Today, residents and visitors alike cross this landscape with ease for work and leisure, and terrain that once hindered travel now invites visitors to hike, bike, ski, horseback ride, snowmobile, and paddle into the Pennsylvania Wilds.