Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Shamokin Dam, PA

Shamokin Dam is a borough in Snyder County that sits on the western bank of the Susquehanna River, just south of where the river's West Branch and North Branch join.

The name Shamokin comes from the Delaware word Shahëmokink, meaning 'place of eels,' and the borough also takes its name from a 10-foot-tall dam built across the Susquehanna River in the 19th century.

Shamokin Dam was founded by George Keen in 1745 and was first called Keensville; most of its early residents were canal workers, raftsmen, and shad and eel fishermen.

The old river dam supplied water to the Susquehanna Division of the Pennsylvania Canal on the west bank and supported steamboat ferries run by Ira T. Clement between Shamokin Dam and Sunbury from 1772 until a bridge replaced them in 1907; the dam itself was destroyed by ice in March 1904.

A toll bridge completed in 1907 linked Shamokin Dam to Sunbury for $150,000, charging 3 cents for walkers, 4 cents for bicyclists, and 15 cents for horses, buggies, and motor cars.

Shamokin Dam is not the city of Shamokin — that coal city lies about 14 miles to the east in Northumberland County.

The 2020 census counted 1,652 people in Shamokin Dam, and at the 2000 census its residents lived in 688 households.

The borough's Fabridam Park sits beside the Adam T. Bower Memorial Dam on the Susquehanna, and its other parks include Weller Field, Attig Park, and Jack Treas Park.

The Sunbury Generation Station, a coal-fired power plant commissioned by PP&L in 1949 and put into operation in 1953 along the river in Shamokin Dam, was rated at about 421.7 megawatts.

U.S. Routes 11 and 15 run through Shamokin Dam as a major travel artery, lined with the borough's commercial development.