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Random Artifact Time: Oleona Railroad Company Stock Certificate

North-central Pennsylvania had many short line logging railroads that were incorporated in the late 19th and early 20th century in service of the lumber industry. These railroads often only lasted a few years as production would move elsewhere after land was clear cut or a mill closed. One such railroad was the Oleona Railroad Company which transported lumber cut in the Kettle Creek Valley. Incorporated in 1901, the Oleona RR ran eight miles from Cross Fork, PA to Oleona, PA. The Goodyear Lumber Company financed and built the railroad but the only trains that operated on it belonged to the Lackawanna Lumber Company and the Pennsylvania Stave Company. Eventually, the Oleona RR was combined with the Oleona and Germania Railroad, an independent operator with five miles of track from Oleona to Germania Brook, resulting in a single 13 mile-long short line. After the last lands owned by the Lackawanna Lumber Company in the Kettle Creek Valley were cut the railroad was sold to the American Sugar Refining Company in 1908, the parent company of the Pennsylvania Stave Company. When their stave mill, located in Cross Fork, closed in 1912, the Oleona Railroad was dismantled. The two Shay locomotives that operated on the line were transferred to other logging railroads owned by the Brooklyn Cooperage Company, a subsidiary of the American Sugar Refining Company.