Drafts

[alatt]

Driving down Wycoff run road towards Sinnamahoning you cross three small streams White Oak, Laurel, Gore. Each one ends with the word Draft. What is a draft, where does the word originate?

 

[outsider]

I always understood it to mean a hollow.

 

[Bamboozle]

A "draft" is a stream/creek to my Virginia buddies. Sort of like "hollow/run/fork" up in Potter/Tioga.

So linguistically you could have White Oak Creek, White Oak Hollow, White Oak Run, White Oak Draft, etc.

They also call branches "prongs" instead of "fork", I guess 'cause forks have prongs. ;-)

 

[sarce]

Up in SNP they call every small brookie stream a river, with a few "hollows". Funny how it varies by region. But I agree, draft is similar to "run" or "hollow"

Then down in Appalachia it would be a Holler

 

[salmonoid]

Could there be an element of drafts in PA related to our logging heritage? The topography would make them natural funnels for moving logs off the hillsides and early movement of logs was often facilitated by draft animals.

 

[troutbert]

As others have said, it's another name for small streams.

An article I read speculated that the name have come from people feeling cool drafts of air along those streams during warm weather.

A geography professor at Penn State once wrote an article about these names for small streams and how it varied by region and how different ethnic groups used different names.

The term "brook" is very commonly used in New England. And in some areas in northcentral PA that were settled by people who moved down from New England.

The term "run" is probably the one most commonly used in PA.

The term "kill" is common in the Poconos and in some areas of NY and NJ. That comes from the Dutch, and just means stream.

 

[redietz]

salmonoid wrote:
Could there be an element of drafts in PA related to our logging heritage?

I was more thinking that it might be related to British "drift" (as in the battle of Rorke's Drift) which means a ford, or a shallow river.

 

[JackM]

Whatever the origin, the draft should be drig free.

 

[tomitrout]

Here's an interesting map and discussion relating to naming conventions:

https://derekwatkins.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/generic-stream-terms/

 

[ryansheehan]

JackM wrote:
Whatever the origin, the draft should be drig free.

You made me spit water through my nose with that one!

 

[Swattie87]

troutbert wrote:

An article I read speculated that the name have come from people feeling cool drafts of air along those streams during warm weather.

This was my understanding too. If you ride a bike down the Pine Creek or Lehigh Gorge trails on a hot Summer day it feels like air conditioning at the mouths of those hollows and people congregate at them to cool off. Cool air sinking from higher on the mountain is the mechanism.

 

[SurfCowboyXX]

The Dutch called them "kills", hence the Schuykill River and the marshy, creeky area near NYC known as "the Kills".