Great old pictures Ops! I just read that flashback article about Pymy in a local magazine about a week ago. I never knew they grew all those onions there till I read that story. That's why Pymy Walleyes taste so good it's that onion flavor mix added in !....lol
 
Old Dog , I caught my biggest Bass as a 13 year old younger fisherman over near Andover beach that back swampy area behind the beach. I'm sure it's part of some Pymy over flow or something.
I landed with help from my friend a huge 20" Largemouth Bass that inhaled a zero size copper Mepps spinner lure ! I 'll bet 20 people came over to look at that 5lb. hog with that tiny spinner in his mouth! I was amazed myself that day . I still have a few black & white photos of it somewhere.

That's cool something I did not know!

OD the legend follows..
That’s when Jamestown, Pa., residents Abe Palmanteer, John Blair and Lee Mason made a visit to this legend, to get one last look at the rotting hull even as the waters began to rise behind the Pymatuning Dam. The men confirmed its existence, as others had done in prior decades, and reported its wood as being foreign to this area. They also noted it was constructed with copper rivets.
A short time later, the relic disappeared from sight and inquiry, although its romantic tale surfaces whenever yarns of local history are spun around the campfires that glow on the lake’s edge on summer evenings.
 
Pymatuning is a man-made reservoir, and prior to its construction, the area was a huge marsh of some 23,000 acres. Pymatuning Creek fed this wetlands, which was in turn the headwaters of the Shenango and Beaver rivers, which flow through Pennsylvania.
The Beaver terminates in the Ohio River between Wheeling, W.Va., and Pittsburgh. Prior to construction of the dam, spring flooding in the valleys between Pymatuning and the Ohio were common. During times of drought, communities along these rivers saw their source of industrial and domestic water reduced to a trickle.
Years of debate preceded the decision to build a dam at Linesville, Pa., and create a lake that would prevent downstream flooding, while ensuring a steady supply of water for industry, commerce and households in the valleys.
Nature lit a fire behind this plan on March 24, 1913, when flooding brought unprecedented death and destruction to the Shenango and Beaver valleys. The flooding did $3 million in damage, making the $1.5 million price tag of a dam seem like a bargain.
This digression from our story about the mystery ship is necessary to point out that the landscape and waterscape of this region were greatly altered by the dam construction, which was completed in 1934. There existed hitherto an inland waterway stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to within a few miles of Lake Erie, which evidently stirred the ambitions of mariners in search of the secret passage north.
As to why the ship was not recovered by settlers and thereby better documented, we must also keep in mind the remoteness of its location. It’s possible that more than one settler died challenging the muck of what had been an ancient lake created by the last glacier that landscaped our county.
“The nature of the swamp prevented freezing except during unusual winter seasons, and it was seldom dry enough for convenient travel,” notes the “History of the Pymatuning Reservoir, 1909-34.” “Poison ivy and sumac thrived over the entire area, making it dangerous for people to enter the swamp at any time.”
Two explanations
While we know that the Shenango stops short of Lake Erie, the first and most romantic explanation for this mystery ship suggests otherwise.  In this pre-Revolutionary War scenario, a Castilian princess who lived in New Orleans is to be wed to a French nobleman in Canada. The concept of this union was more about politics than romance, for it sought to create an alliance between Spain and France against the English in North America.
There is the obvious question of why the princess would take the difficult route of the Mississippi River to the Ohio to Lake Erie long before canalization of the major rivers. Nevertheless, this tradition states that a 100-foot-long ship carrying the princess and her dowry of 100,000 doubloons was seen passing Marietta, and later, through the junction of the Ohio and Beaver rivers, along with three other boats.
End of story. They were never heard from or seen again, presumably victims of the swamp, the Native Indians or wild animals.
A second, and more likely, version of the story attributes the relic to Pittsburgh traders who sailed up the rivers during high water and ditched the boat when they ran out of navigable stream. The traders continued their journey on foot and never bothered to reclaim their craft.
Those who explain the story in those terms said the boat was 60 feet long, 12 feet wide.
 
Whatever its origin, around 1835 some planking from the craft was removed and taken to Conneaut, where it was cut into souvenir canes. An 1891 account of the boat, on file with the Jamestown, Pa., Area Historical Society, states that John  Hadlock of Ashtabula and John McMurty of Harmonsburg, Pa., in 1850 braved the Pymatuning Swamp in Crawford County, Pa., and found the relic at the point the Pymatuning Creek joined another stream. They removed a piece of plank from the deck, and McMurty made two canes from it.
Its location was given as 20 feet from the channel of Pymatuning Creek. When visited in 1850, the artifact was found to be covered with moss and trees. The trees, birch and tamarack, ranged in size from 4 to 18 inches in diameter. The bow stern rose about 2 feet above the muck.
On the opposite bank of the creek rose an old fort, embankments thrown up in semi-circle form. Spanish coins were discovered within the protection of the embankment. The trees there grew to a size of 2 feet in diameter.
Joel Blakeslee, a pioneer settler, visited an ancient fort in the Pymatuning area on June 14, 1822. Blakeslee’s recollections were submitted to the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ashtabula County in 1846. His description of “an ancient fortification” on the Pymatuning Creek’s west side suggests the same fort is in view here: “This striking monument of antiquity is situated about one-half mile from the south line and near the east line of the township, surrounded on the west, north and east by flat land; on the south by woodland. On a handsome elevation overgrown by a grove of timber stand these works,” Blakeslee wrote.
“On the height of the outer breastworks stands a lofty sugar maple of well-formed body, measuring at least three feet through. Near it lies the decayed trunk of another large maple, fallen into the fort, which Esquire Brown informed me fell over 20 years ago.” Of the ship, Blakeslee made no reference, however.
A visitor to the boat in 1892 described it as “so badly decayed and overgrown with vegetation, it would have to be excavated.”
There’s no record that the 7,000 men who cleared the swamp  uncovered the lost ship. The slogan for the project was “pick up and burn everything that might float later on.” Curiously, the workers did find a long-abandoned log road buried in the muck. Estimated to be circa 1800, the road was made from pine and hemlock logs originally 8 inches in diameter.
Given the evidence of European visitation, perhaps even settlement, long before Moses Cleaveland and his party arrived in 1796, we can only speculate that perhaps the Spanish were among those who wandered into the region centuries ago and left behind artifacts to confound future settlers.
Perhaps  there was no dowry and no princess, just the lovely Princess Pymatuning herself, who forever will conceal the truth of this mystery in her ancient palms of muck and quicksand.
 

Thank you Op for taking the time to print the story. Some reading my post of fishing Pymie may remember me telling tales of snagging my leadcore on a sunken ship. But the location I never revealed shall forever remain my secrete. No "spotburning"......

I have maps of days gone by from anywhere in the U.S.   Here is a map from the Linesville area dating back to 1906 showing the original swamp area and contours.   Hopefully those interested can use your zoom features to explore the map.
 
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 NE end ov lake, why u lookin' for slabs & perch?

  Seems some things never change...
 
https://www.myfishfinder....dex.php?topic=57486.15

I got em good last year I told people on there page they count minnows lol they messaged me freaking out 😂😂😂 I don't even know where that place is haha ....lets turn pyme into walleye ally world class fishing put of signs on 79

Lol ... well guys my GPS is in my gun case , boat is covered up still under carport , it’s 25 and snowing still ... I’m going to a NASCAR Race in 2 weeks ... so maybe by the time I get back you will have all the info I need to put in MY gps so I will know were to go and not waist time finding lunch ..... ok thanks guys 😜👍😜

I like Robinson's shop, but when I leave the place I smell like I just smoked a pack of cigarettes. :)

Well I'm 6'6'' so maybe it wasn't quite as big as me!!  But it was BIG!  

Ixnay on the ghost at Pymie.... they don't take kindly to spotburning.

They hear and see everything....on Youtube💀👻

Speaking of Bigfoot , a guy I worked with use to sneak into Meander Reservoir to fish once in awhile. Seems all that nice looking water is a major temptation to all who live around the lake that's posted to fishing or entering. He would wear a camo gilly suit to blend into the surroundings. Now the best part is he's 6' 8" tall .....so on his way in one trip a woman spots him and calls police and claims that she's just seen Bigfoot near the lake !...lol  We'll police never checked very well and he got away with fishing that day , but a friend of his heard the call over a scanner and told him! LMAO !
 
Poor woman probably thought she was going crazy !