 Like all streams in Lycoming and Sullivan Counties , Plunketts Creek served as an area for settlers to establish <unk> , mills , and to a lesser extent , farms . Barbours , the first village on the creek , was founded in 1832 , when John S. <unk> , a Scottish immigrant , built a sawmill opposite the mouth of Plunketts Creek on Loyalsock Creek . Originally known as " <unk> 's Mills " , the village is in a rare area of flat land in the narrow Loyalsock valley and contains the mouths of both Plunketts and Bear Creeks . Barbours became a lumber center which owed " its existence to those forested mountains and the creeks that flow out of them " . John <unk> arrived in 1856 and became a prosperous <unk> and farmer . His family became prominent in Barbours , and in 1997 , his 86 @-@ year @-@ old granddaughter , <unk> <unk> <unk> <unk> , recalled that in her childhood " every family that had 15 cents to their name had a sawmill for cutting lumber . " By 1878 the village had several blacksmiths , a temperance hotel , its own post office , many sawmills , a school , and a wagon maker . Barbours flourished throughout the rest of the nineteenth century . 
