A RELATIVE REMEMBERS
ONE MAN’S PILGRIMAGE TO THE SCENE OF THE DAVIS CABINS TRAGEDY By Tom Parrish with edits by John Moore
This feature is a sequel to “The Flood of “55” story which ran in our August/September issue of Pocono Living Magazine. A story of 37 children who perished in a place called “The Davis Cabins” along the Brodhead’s Creek in Stroudsburg, Pa. Tom Parrish, a 68-year-old retired bus operator from Savannah, Ga., visited Pinebrook Park north of Stroudsburg last summer. He went there to pay his respects to family members who were among the nearly 40 killed when the 1955 flood destroyed the Davis Cabins that once occupied the site. Here is his report:
S
ome recall it was a Boy Scout camp that got washed away in the Flood of ‘55 in Stroudsburg. It wasn’t. It was Davis Cabins, or Davis Camp as the press preferred.
Leon Davis was a retired Baptist minister who rented out cabins and a few Quonset huts to church groups on land along Brodhead Creek. Davis and his wife lived on the premises in what was known as the Clubhouse, or Big House. The groups were attending the nearby Pinebrook Bible Conference and Retreat Center, then known just as Percy’s. Percy Crawford was a world-renowned evangelist in the era of radio. His guests at Pinebrook included the Reverend Billy Graham, gospel singer George Beverly Shea and others. Percy’s attracted all the most popular Christian speakers and musical acts of the time. A small bridge straddled the Brodhead Creek and connected the Davis Cabins with Pinebrook. The Brodhead was one of the premier trout streams in the country; it separates Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg. Just a “crick” only 30 feet across on a normal day, it swelled to 300 yards wide at the peak of the 1955 flood. Continued on page 16
← N o collection of images of the flood of 1955 in the Stroudsburgs would be
complete without a photo showing the separated trusses of the “interboro bridge” on opposite shores of Brodhead Creek. There were many such photos and this one appeared in the Harrisburg Evening News. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 POCONO LIVING MAGAZINE© 7
