Lewisburg Public Paddle
Renew (or build) your connection to the Susquehanna River with gear you can borrow through Lewisburg Public Paddle.
Lewisburg is a river town, we’re even a "River Town" according to the Susquehanna Greenway Partnership’s criteria, but we aren’t well connected to the river. The Lewisburg River Town Team is trying to fix that. To that end, we introduced the Lewisburg Public Paddle in 2018. This is a set of equipment sited at Lewisburg Landing (the park adjacent to and including the St George St boat ramp on S Front St) to facilitate public access to the river.
Keep reading to learn about
- How it Works
- How to Sign Up
- What's Ahead
Thanks to generous support from the Lindig Lewisburg Foundation Fund, the First Community Foundation of Pennsylvania, Bucknell University’s Community Engagement Fund, the Community Learning Space, the Sea Tow Foundation, and the Borough, Lewisburg Neighborhoods has been developing Lewisburg Landing as a public amenity and park. It includes some basics like signage and seating, plus there is also now a boat rack (a repurposed boat trailer) equipped with some canoes and kayaks for public use as well as their ancillary gear like paddles and life vests. The boats and paddles will be locked with access only for those subscribed, but the PFDs are freely offered on loan.
Please return everything when you are finished with them so someone else can use them! That’s true of all the gear, but perhaps especially the unlocked life vests.
- Step 1 — Attend a Safety Briefing.
- Step 2 — Complete a liability waiver.
- Step 3 — Pay or Volunteer.
See details below.
How Public Paddle Works
Canoes and kayaks can be borrowed for quick jaunts on the river. Anyone wishing to get access to the boats will need to contact the LN office, make a small annual contribution ($30 or two hours of volunteer time), attend a safety briefing, and sign a liability waiver. The boats are intended mostly for brief out and back outings from the landing. People borrowing them will need to assume there will be some upstream paddling required.
In future it may be possible to borrow the boats for longer point-to-point outings, but the borrower will be responsible for getting the boat back to Lewisburg and will have to make arrangements to transport it on the upstream leg. For the time being, the boats still do not have Fish and Boat Commission launch permits, so they should not be used at any FBC boat ramps. But they should have permit stickers by mid-June.
Lewisburg residents have long lamented that it isn’t easier for residents to access the river. Even those who own their own boats find it a bit of a hassle to wrangle them down to the landing for just a short paddle. Or they may want to bring a friend along but not have an additional boat for them. This arrangement should lower the bar and make it less of an effort to decide to go out for a paddle before sunset on a weeknight or a misty morning before the rest of your weekend plans kick in.
Ready to sign up for Public Paddle?
There are three steps which can be completed in any order (just one volunteer hour is needed to get started, then you owe us one more).
- Step 1 — Attend a Safety Briefing. The next Safety Briefing will take place on May 8th 2023 at 5:45pm and on May 21st at 6:30pm at Lewisburg Landing. They can be arranged by appointment by calling or emailing the LN office. A pdf of the outline of the safety briefing is available for download here: Public-Paddle-safety-tips-and-instructions
- Step 2 — Complete a liability waiver. The one for this year is not yet available for download but can be obtained at a safety briefing.
- Step 3 — Pay or Volunteer. You can either pay a $30 fee or contribute two volunteer hours to Lewisburg Neighborhoods. To pay your Public Paddle annual fee, you can bring cash or a check to a briefing, send a check to the office by mail (write check out to Lewisburg Neighborhoods, P.O. Box 298, Lewisburg, PA 17837), or pay using our PayPal link. If you would like to offer volunteer hours instead, contact the LN office to arrange for ways you can contribute at your convenience (participating in weekly Green Team sessions is one possibility — Mondays from 7 to 8 pm at Lewisburg Landing).
What's Ahead
We hope people will take advantage of it to poke around just upstream, get familiar with the remains of the historic slackwater dam, the undersides of the Market St and RR river bridges and the various islands near the mouth of Buffalo Creek. It is often very feasible to paddle upstream in our area, but it will take getting more familiar with the river, which is part of our stated goal. We would love it if more people started realizing the great exercise to be had from paddling with all the upstream workouts this will enable.
Proceeds from this and other contributions will go to covering regular annual expenses like future boat launch permits and equipment maintenance and replacement.
Members of the community working together to preserve natural settings and streetscapes, strengthen ties among neighbors, and improve the quality of life in Lewisburg for residents and visitors.
GET IN TOUCH
Lewisburg Neighborhoods
P.O. Box 298
Lewisburg, PA 17837
PRIORITIES
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