125 Years Hop Bottom Pennsylvania 1881-2006 by Tim Hortman

Hop Bottom was charted as a Borough in the state of Pennsylvania, County of Susquehanna, on April 11, 1881. Residents of Hop Bottom had petitioned the Court in 1880 to incorporate as the Borough of Foster, but this was denied. The signers reapplied replacing the name Foster with Hop Bottom, and the incorporation was approved. The railroad and Express Office remained as Foster.

Hop Bottom started as a station on the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, in the township of Lathrop. Hop Bottom is solely the creation of the railroad. The location was not as favorable for village purposes as those of some of the other towns in the county until the building of the railroad, in 1850-1851, this section was a comparative wilderness.  The Bells donated lands for the station purposes and trains occasionally stopped after 1852, but it was not until 1863 that a substantial depot building was provided by the company.

There was no improved highway, and on the east side of the creek but a small clearing made by Orson Case, the first permanent settler, but who does not appear to have had any title to the lands on which he lived, that land was part of a large tract belonging to Major Post , of Montrose. When the railroad was located, James G. and Marcus Case, sons of Orson, contracted with the Post family for what is now most of the village site, and soon after they sub-divided the lands. Sales of smaller tracts were made to WM. B. Adams, Alfred Jeffres, Truman Elisha Bell and David Wilmarth.  On the west side of the creek was a small tenant farm belonging to Jeremiah Blanchard, a non-resident of the county.