History & local legend
Ole Bull State Park in Potter County is named for the Norwegian violinist who tried to establish a settlement there in 1852. Bull planned a home on the height above Kettle Creek, but it was never completed. After a year of hardship, most of the colonists moved west, leaving the settlement and the unfinished homestead behind.
Folklore turned Bull’s departure into a final performance. In one telling, he walks into the forest playing his violin. In another, he stops at a tavern, plays for the people inside, and disappears into the night.
The music supposedly continued long after the failed colony. In his 1922 book Allegheny Episodes, Henry Shoemaker recorded a tradition of unexplained violin strains rising from the old “castle” site during wild weather. Later accounts still associate the sound with wind and storms among the trees above the valley.
