How did Cabin Run in Pennsylvania get it’s name? This page provides a brief history about Cabin Run in Pennsylvania, the people who settled on it, and the industry rising around it.
A small creek in the shallow valley lying between Plumsteadville and Pipersville. It rises in the northwestern part of Plumstead Township, crosses the township line into Bedminster Township, then returns to Plumstead northwest of Smiths Corner, and six miles from its source empties into Tohickon Creek. Cabin Run has been so known for at least 175 years. It is figured on the Scull map of the Province of Pennsylvania, 1770, although Scull spells the name “Cabbin.” Reading Howell follows the same spelling on his map of the State (1792). Its name was derived from log cabins and small stone houses built in early times along its course. Ruins of some of these buildings and their enclosures could still be seen in secluded parts of the valley only a few years ago. The abandoned gardens were specially interesting. 01d-fashioned garden flowers and herbs, screened by wooded banks from north winds, still bloomed as of old. A variety of cultivated blackberry canes bore large and luscious fruit. Some of the plants had escaped over crumbling walls and through rotted pale-fences to open spaces and become perfectly naturalized. On the site of one of the houses, which had been occupied by Samuel Worthington, part of the fireplace and the chimney could still be seen in I goo. Another house was owned by Michael Sharp, who sold it to Frederick Worman. Worman dismantled it and used the lumber for a new house at another location. A third house was occupied by Samuel Wismer, who died there. Indians and wild beasts were plentiful along this run in the days of the white pioneers. The stream was first crossed by fords. The first bridge carrying (Route 611) across it was stone, built quite early and subsequently replaced by a concrete structure. The second bridge, a covered structure near the stream’s junction with Tohickon Creek, has no date stone. It is 82 feet long and exceptionally wide, two cars being able to pass without difficulty. The Loux Mill bridge was the last built across this stream at Loux Mill ford on the Pipersville-Carversville Road. This was a dangerous ford and people in the vicinity petitioned for a bridge in 1872. The County Commissioners refused to grant a bridge. That year Reed Myers, a popular young man, was drowned while crossing the ford, and this incident led to the erection in 1874 of the present covered bridge, which has a length of 60 feet. This is next to the last covered bridge built in this county. Two mills were located on Cabin Run, the Leatherman grist, saw and cider mill on Route 611, no longer in operation, and the Loux mill, a combined grist and saw mill, operated for many years by John Loux and sold by him to Samuel Louder, who dismantled it at least thirty years ago.
Source: MacReynolds, George. Place Names in Bucks County Pennsylvania, 2nd Edition. Doylestown, PA: The Bucks County Historical Society, 1955.